Crime hotspots and “decaying” suburbs across the Cape Flats and parts of the northern suburbs are to get a facelift and are the focus of mass upgrades which will benefit thousands of residents and a multitude of businesses.
The turnaround plan is part of the mayor’s urban regeneration project in which eight problem areas have been selected.
The upgrades are based on those of the Special Ratings Areas (SRAs) and the Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) plan. SRAs were previously known as City Improvement Districts. Areas that have benefited from the initiative include Cape Town’s CBD, Sea Point, and Claremont.
Some of the benefits include increased law enforcement and additional cleaning staff.
Open spaces, which are crime hotbeds, will be transformed into recreational areas. This is already happening in one of the areas – Harare in Khayelitsha.
Driving the project are the city’s area co-ordination teams. They comprise city officials, ratepayers, non-governmental organisations, and in some cases, informal traders.
There are eight “nodes” in the project. These are:
* The Bellville CBD and surrounds.
* Mitchells Plain Town Centre.
* Manenberg, Hanover Park and Lotus Park.
* Bishop Lavis, Valhalla Park and Bonteheuwel.
* Harare and Kuyasa in Khayelitsha.
* The Wesfleur business node in Atlantis.
* Athlone CBD.
* Ocean View.
In some areas like Manenberg and Khayelitsha, a VPUU was already up and running.
The city recently hosted a briefing where officials gave an overview of the progress in one of the areas, the Bellville central business district and surrounds.
JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security, said the area had fallen into a state of “urban decay”.
Crimes like drug dealing and prostitution were on the increase.
“There was a the collapse of infrastructure… areas were looking neglected and broken.”
The goal was to bring the improvements seen in the SRAs, but without the multi-million rand budgets.
In the case of the SRAs, residents in the area pay an added fee on top of the normal rates. The additional money went toward services like extra law enforcement and cleaning services.
Bellville, for example, now has a permanent law enforcement component of 23 officers.
At the briefing, Sam Pienaar, city councillor, said there were 50 “problem buildings” along Voortrekker Road.
Pienaar said a problem building audit started in December. Since then, officials had started forming relationships with some of the bodies corporate of apartments along Voortrekker Road. This was leading to agreements to improve the appearance of some of the problem buildings.
He said mayor Patricia de Lille was set to announce a series of investments from the private sector in the Bellville CBD in the next few weeks.
The University of the Western Cape has already bought the premises of the former Jan S Marais hospital in the area.
An SRA for the Voortrekker Road corridor has already been approved. It will stretch up to Durban Road and through to Parow. It will start operating in July.
Gert Snyman, from the steering committee of this SRA, said they had to work fast to turn the situation in Bellville around.
“I’m a business owner here. And we know if we don’t manage to turn the area around this year, it’s going to the dogs in the years to come. We will have reached a point of no return.”
He said in the coming financial year, the SRA had a budget of just over R11 million. And of this, just over R6.2m was allocated to safety and security.
Work was also being done with a local NGO to assist homeless people, with the goal of re-uniting them with their families.
At the briefing, Alistair Graham, the manager of the VPUU projects, explained the goal of the regeneration project.
“It’s to uplift former neglected, dysfunctional areas which are regressing rapidly.”
Graham said one of the aims was also to redress inequality.
“We live in Cape Town within a divided city, certain areas have been excluded for many years.”
Each area has a different “action plan”.
At the town centre, 90 percent of the walks had been completed – these were designated walkways for pedestrians and a central marketplace for traders.
The only snag in this system was when residents and businesses in the SRAs failed to pay the extra fee on top of their rates.
The Cape Argus reported last month that the existing SRAs owe the city more than R18m in rates.
In the Cape Town CBD boundaries, government institutions owe more than R1.4m in levies, a city report showed.
As of December, the Groote Schuur district had arrears of just more than R1.1m.
One of the biggest reasons for arrears is that some property owners who did not want to be part of the SRAs are refusing to pay levies.
Sea Point SRA arrears stood at just more than R945,000.
Much of this stemmed from previous valuation adjustments and an “under-recovery” from property owners, the report said.
Claremont Boulevard’s SRA is made up only of business owners and only 61 percent are paying the levies. This is another area where the city is suggesting a debt drive.
The report said arrears were common in an SRA’s first year because some property owners did not support the concept and others disagreed with the regulation that the levy should be based on property valuations.
“Even those who support the establishment of the SRA want to experience the improvements before making payment,” the report said
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