SA and Germany collaborate on urban development

INTEGRATED urban development and creating liveable neighbourhoods were top of the agenda at an inaugural workshop between South Africa and Germany which started at the weekend.

Speaking to The Herald yesterday at the Tramways Building where the workshop is being hosted, event organiser Esther Wegner, from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, said the workshop was aimed at strengthening ties between South Africa and Germany. GIZ is a company which specialises in international development,

“There has been collaboration between our two countries for many years on a national level . . . for more than a year now we have been trying to elaborate on the collaborative work,” she said.

The four-day information-sharing session, titled “South AfricanGerman City Network for Integrated and Liveable Neighbourhoods”, has been punted as a joint endeavour which will see South Africa and Germany championing an alliance on integrated urban development.

Centres which would benefit from the partnership between the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety include Nelson Mandela Bay, Ekurhuleni and Msunduzi in South Africa and Halle, Munich and Ludwigsburg in Germany.

The collaborative work forms part of the two countries’ national urban development policies – the Integrated Urban Development Framework in South Africa (IUDF) and the National Urban Development Policy in Germany.

Wegner said city delegates and experts from both countries met yesterday to discuss presentations and contexts of the various cities.

The delegation would embark on site visits and a tour around Nelson Mandela Bay with a focus on the Zanemvula housing project which had been earmarked for integrated development.

The Zanemvula project, which started in 2005, involved the relocation of families from the Chatty River floodplain.

The concept behind the workshop is aimed at generating new thinking in urban development towards more integrated and liveable neighbourhoods.

Wegner said this would be achieved through participatory approaches to “[re]developing, upgrading and improving housing and public spaces of communities in marginalised, culturally diverse, urban neighbourhoods”.

Mandela Bay Development Agency spokesman Luvuyo Bangazi said the workshop presented a platform for sharing challenges and good practices in the implementation of strategic city projects.

“In a nutshell, the opportunity facilitates peer-to-peer knowledge exchange,” he said.

The presentations and discussions aimed to assist the parties involved to generate new thinking in urban development.

Bangazi said the integrated neighbourhoods catered for the needs of those communities, “be it live, work or play”.

“The integration stretches from basic services to public transport and recreational facilities,” he said.

Today, the delegation will look at integrated urban development of the identified cities and areas.