Integrated Living

Melanie Veness:  PCB CEO

I bought into the dream of our Rainbow Nation and I believe, that if we are really serious about making this a reality, we need to get people living together and interacting with each other in a meaningful way. I am very passionate about the idea of planning for integration, and I was very encouraged to hear that this is happening in some areas in South Africa. I observed, when visiting the United States, how effective planned integration can be. Allow me to describe what I saw:  a city is divided into zones and each area has a designated focus – area A, for example, might be a High Tech Zone. The city will invest in suitable infrastructure and develop incentives that will attract this sector, and then the city officials actively set out to attract large hi-tech businesses to this zone. All new buildings (aside from industrial buildings) that are built in the specified area, have to be mixed-use buildings – retail on the bottom, office space on the second level and accommodation higher up. Everyone working in a particular zone is encouraged to live in that zone – rental concessions are granted, depending on income levels, so everyone from the sweeper to the CEO can afford to live where they work. This has all sorts of spin-offs. It alleviates traffic congestion going into the city, because there is less traffic on the roads, and because it is easier to do so, people support the retailers and restaurants in the area where they live. A wonderful symbiotic relationship is established. With people of all socio-economic levels living together, there is better social cohesion, the general upkeep of the neighbourhood is good and the level of education is high – developing neighbourhoods on this basis, means that you are able to ensure that people of all socio-economic strata have access to a safe, clean neighbourhood and good schooling. Obviously, we need to address the need for jobs as a top priority, because this kind of planning is only effective if you can deliver jobs to the majority of people. Having said that, Government is committed to creating these jobs, and I do think that it would be foolish for us not to incorporate integrated living in the planning of our cities. Not doing so amounts to perpetuating the kind of thinking under Apartheid.

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