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Cape Town - The African context demands that development is more than real estate and infrastructure, according to Nico Venter, associate director: cities lead at independent design and engineering firm Arup in South Africa.
He spoke at the recent African Real Estate & Infratructure Summit in Cape Town.
Venter quoted Khabele Matlosa, director of political affairs at the African Union Commission, as saying that African countries need to adopt new development models designed to take advantage of urbanisation by facilitating structural transformation, creating jobs and addressing social inequity and poverty, while creating sustainable human settlements with equal opportunity for all.
Urbanisation among Africa's population of 1 billion is estimated to be at the rate of 4% per year. This creates immediate needs for basic services and challenges like poverty, inequality and crime.
Venter looked at transit oriented development in Addis Ababa as a case study of integrating new development with public transit to tackle recognised urban problems such as congestion and access to economic opportunities.
One of the key challenges for Addis Ababa is the lack of coordination between transport investment, planning, and land-use decisions. As a result, mobility in the metropolitan area has become a big challenge, with growing congestion despite relatively low motorisation rates.
This congestion negatively affects pedestrians, public transport infrastructure, the users, investment, perceptions, the rate of development and cumulative economic benefits. Even though most trips in Addis Ababa are made on foot, facilities for pedestrians and public transport users tend to be inadequate and substandard.
Overall, however, there has been significant investment in transport infrastructure in recent years, including an urban light rail network and bus rapid transport system.
Strategies for the city include building new developments on vacant land, optimisation of existing urban blocks and improving informal neighbourhoods.
Building on vacant land seeks to deliver a mix of uses at appropriate density, create new connections and public spaces, integration with wider city networks and delivering large scale change.
The optimisation of existing urban blocks seeks to integrate the built heritage, maximise the value of the existing built area, optimising on-plot operation, define better public private and shared space and reinforce activity on key streets.
The various interventions include upgrading, incremental development, resettlement and government led public housing.
Lessons learnt include having a flexible model for implementation, allowing for a variety of implementation models, the inclusion of a multitude of developer types and scale, facilitating short and long term financing and including capital expenditure, operations and maintenance.
Effective assessment and communication is also important and one should measure the impact, communicate the benefit and facilitate inclusionary development, Venter emphasised.
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