City Parks walked away with eight awards, four of them gold, at the Liveable Communities (LivCom) Awards held in London on 26 November. And in the whole city category it shared second place with Arriyadh City, the capital of Saudi Arabia, receiving a bronze medal. In total, 23 cities competed.
The Dorothy Nyembe Environmental Education Centre in Soweto scooped first prize in the natural built project category. The centre opened in June 2005 and was the first of its kind in a township in South Africa. The Regional Ivory Park, the 2010 Greening Soweto Legacy project and the Thokoza Park / Moroko Dam rehabilitation project all received merit gold awards in this category.
The Regional Ivory Park, surrounded by informal settlements, amazed the judges, who could not believe that Johannesburg had created a first-class park in the poorest of poor areas.
Johannesburg also won the only cash prize, taking the R140 000 bursary prize. The judges were impressed with City Parks's plan to develop a park for disabled children that would incorporate aspects such as wheelchair-friendly pathways, a touch and smell garden for the visually impaired and park equipment geared towards the physically impaired. Construction is scheduled for early in 2008.
Diepsloot Memorial Park
Diepsloot Memorial Park received a silver award in the whole city environmental management category. The park embraces South Africans as people with diverse cultures and beliefs and breaks away from the Eurocentric models favoured in the past. Heritage elements, indigenous flora and the existing habitat are naturally linked to fulfil a dual purpose as a cemetery and an environmental conservation area.
It was the first time City Parks – now six years old - entered a competition and the seven delegates, headed by managing director Luther Williamson, were pleasantly surprised by the many accolades the company received. The awards confirmed what they have suspected all along – that Johannesburg City Parks is world class and can hold its own on the international stage.
Speaking during a press briefing on their return, Williamson said they had put a positive spin on all their presentations, which bowled over the judges.
So far, City Parks has developed two new cemeteries (Diepsloot Cemetery taking silver); two environmental education centres (Dorothy Nyembe taking first prize, gold); unveiled 42 new parks (Thokoza Park and Regional Ivory Park taking merit gold) and has plans in place to plant 200 000 street trees in the next five years.
The environment takes centre stage in city planning in Johannesburg and is a vision carried out through all City Parks activities. The entity, a section 21 company with the City as the sole stakeholder, aims to leave communities with a living legacy, caring for municipal open spaces and biodiversity, and creating urban green lungs - and making the community part of the process.
Community involvement
"From the development phase to the actual maintenance of the parks, we get the community involved," Williamson confirmed.
Joburg has recently prioritised the provision of open spaces in new settlements. At the new, mixed-use Cosmo City, now almost completed, the prioritisation of both natural and recreational open spaces were assured from the onset. A green network of open space was created alongside smaller, accessible parks in the neighbourhood, further complemented through a street tree programme.
City Parks believes it is important to link ecologically sensitive areas and urban green spaces through corridors of natural vegetation. This is especially true in the southern areas, where little open space planning has been done in the past. And the entity is opting for new types of park development. Instead of simply wide-open grassed areas, a variety of activities is incorporated into the new parks.
Natural areas such as ridges, wetlands and koppies are recreated over time, either through natural regeneration or deliberate planning as part of the neighbourhood park system.
Master plan
City Parks has a complete landscaped master plan for the whole city, but requires private sector involvement - Williamson hopes to get corporations more involved in the beautification of the city over the next few years. It will be looking into regulating this beautification, with developers required to plough some money into natural landscaping and tree planting as part of their projects.
"Just like electricity compliance, there should also be tree-planting compliance," he feels.
The LivCom Awards were launched in 1997 and are endorsed and organised by the United Nations Environment Programme. They are the world 's only awards competition focusing on best practice regarding the management of the local environment. The objective of LivCom is to improve the quality of life of individual citizens through the creation of liveable communities. By Emily Visser
Article courtesy of City of Johannesburg website (www.joburg.org.za).
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