Cape Town - The City’s plans for the urgent densification and intensification of the historic suburb of Wynberg have alarmed members of the Wynberg Residents’ and Ratepayers’ Association (WRRA), who are worried about what the end product will look like.
WRRA members are so concerned about compliance with aesthetic and spatial requirements by developers and the City that they are formulating a blueprint proposal which will be presented to the City in time for the deadline of the public participation exercise, which ends on August 30.
Last month, the City hosted a series of public meetings where residents, business owners and all other interested and affected parties asked questions about, and commented on, the eight draft integrated district spatial development frameworks (DSDFs), environmental management frameworks (EMFs) as well as the draft municipal spatial development framework (MSDF).
The WRRA members, who had their session with the City early this month, have said their blueprint would include guidelines regarding greening-in developments as well as improved lifestyle.
WRRA spokesperson Phillipa Duncan said: “We welcome densification, provided it is done sensitively and with sufficient forethought into access and aesthetic integration.”
Duncan said the WRRA planned to hold both the City and the developers accountable to unaddressed deviations from approved plans.
“We will not allow our residents to be bulldozed into accepting so-called errors.”
She said their position was that densification could not happen if current residents in an area were forced to sacrifice their quality of life due to insensitive developments “that are focused on a developers’ end-game and not the community”.
Duncan said there was a precedent with recent residential developments that have left residents being forced to live “with their boundary walls morphing into the side of a block of flats”.
She said these same residents had also lost sunshine and light on to their properties and that all of those developments had happened without due process and proper consultation.
She said they were also concerned that no current proposed developers include grey water recycling or solar, all of which they say are crucial, given the country’s struggling infrastructure.
The WRRA said they did not want “to see the same mistakes made in Wynberg that have resulted in the Cape Flats destroying multiple generations of residents due to lack of access and safety”.
Asked what assurances the City could give residents concerned about the implementation of the densification, deputy mayor Eddie Andrews admitted there were challenges at times with the implementation of new, and also existing, developments across the city.
He said Cape Town continues to grow and resources for maintenance, management and new infrastructure are limited and scarce.
However, Andrews, who is also the Mayco member for spatial planning and environment, said: “A key objective of the MSDF and supporting district plans is to maximise alignment, prioritisation and co-ordination between all sectors involved with urban development across the city.”
He said this would ensure urban development-related problems can be mitigated as far as possible.
“Every new development is assessed in terms of spatial policy and local context. Each application follows due process as stipulated by the Municipal Planning by-law, the national building regulations, and all other relevant policy documents and legislation.”
He said the guidelines in the district plan and the MSDF were policy documents which would be closely considered for guidance when the City assesses applications for proposed new developments.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za