Pretoria – Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is working with planning practitioners and decision-makers to transform ordinary places into “Great Places”.
“Our plan for Great Places must make economic sense across all classes, where all the amenities are easily accessible to all,” Minister Sisulu said on Tuesday.
She was delivering a keynote address at the South African Planning Institute’s 6th Planning Africa Conference held at Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban.
Minister Sisulu said planners need to understand the local conditions and more importantly, communities, dynamics and opportunities to contribute effectively to building inclusive human settlements.
Held under the theme ‘Making Great Places’, the conference follows the signing of a Social Contract for the Development of Sustainable Human Settlements during the National Human Settlements Indaba and Exhibition held in Johannesburg last week.
The convener of the 6th Planning African Conference, SAPI, is one of the signatories to the Social Contract, which seeks to mobilise different human settlements stakeholders to partner with government in its quest to deliver 1.5 million housing opportunities in the next five years.
Minister Sisulu said the effect of urbanisation requires South Africans to rethink the attitudes and strategies with which they approach and plan for human settlements.
She said this will set the stage for the next five to 10 years of interventions aimed at creating more and better opportunities to provide quality of life for all South Africans.
“I need not indicate that the only way we can manage our growing cities is to plan and prepare for growing urbanisation and this is where we depend on you.”
The Minister said the department was ready to engage with planning practitioners in order to deliver better settlements.
“We’ve got our basics right and are ready now to engage in more complex interventions. In 2008, this same Planning Conference deliberated on growth, democracy and inclusion… We did not take full advantage of the opportunity to share views with you, possibly because we were [grappling] with where we were ourselves,” she said.
She announced that the department’s Master Spatial Plan has been concluded and the department has now reached a point where the issue of spatial planning has become an absolute priority.
“It … will determine for us how we would be able to turn around our deeply divided societies and transform them into my understanding of ‘Great Places’,” Minister Sisulu said. – SAnews.gov.za
