He addressed the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipal Council and guests at Faranani Multipurpose Centre in Tsakane this morning (April 20).
Gungubele outlined the three corridors of development to drive the economy of the city in areas such as logistics, manufacturing, education, trade, construction and hospitality.
“The approach of building a new city and an identity means that a significant proportion of this administration’s time was vested in the development of spatial development frameworks,” Gungubele said.
“This new city design has led to the conceptualisation of an effective way to reconfigure our urban spaces, and economic centres, along three key functional economic corridors.”
He highlighted the OR Tambo Aerotropolis’ core focuses that will develop along the triangle formed by Kempton Park, Boksburg and Germiston, including Edenvale and Benoni.
According to Gungubele, the city is taking a new approach to densify the provision of houses through building high rise residential units including flats for both RDP, rental and or buying through bank loans.
“This new approach will lead to a quantum leap in housing development in Ekurhuleni enabling us to efficiently accommodate more people and provide more livable human settlements with a full basket of services and social amenities such as schools, clinics and public transport,” he said.
The mayor touched on the service delivery programme for the past five years, which saw all townships having their own fire station, the roll-out of free WiFi to 900 hotspots, the introduction of e-Health in 40 clinics and investing over R2.7-billion in roads and storm water infrastructure.
He said the work done in the last five years in improving the management of its finances, reporting on service delivery and compliance to legislation was rewarded by the two back-to-back clean audits.
Also read: Cleaning up the city
