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.
“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,” Gungubele said.
The Thami Mnyele corridor concentrates development in a straight line from Tembisa to Vosloorus, including all surrounding areas along the corridor.
The main driver for economic development in this corridor is high-level roads and transport infrastructure.
The Aerotropolis core focuses development along the triangle formed by Kempton Park, Boksburg and Germiston, including Edenvale and Benoni.
This corridor leverages the creative, gateway trade, technology research and development, and logistics sectors.
The Thelle Mogoerane corridor runs from Vosloorus to Nigel, including developments such as the Carnival Junction and OR Tambo inland port, aimed at unlocking the logistic potential of the City.
The developments in this area will have mixed-land uses that include industry as well as human settlements located nearby.
The city is taking a new approach to densify the provision of houses through building high-rise residential units, including flats for RDP housing, rental and/or buying through bank loans.
The Brakpan old location development, for instance, would have yielded 2 500 units, but will now yield 11 598 units as part of this policy.
“This new approach will lead to a quantum leap in housing development in Ekurhuleni, enabling us to efficiently accommodate more people and provide more liveable human settlements with a full basket of services and social amenities, such as schools, clinics and public transport,” Gungubele said.
The mayor also touched on the service delivery programme for the past five years, which saw all townships now having their own fire station, the roll-out of free Wi-Fi to 900 hot spots, the introduction of e-Health in 40 clinics to shorten waiting times and removing the need to open files if your details are on the system, as well as investing more than R2.7-billion in roads and storm-water infrastructure.
The mayor pointed out that the call centre continues to be a single point of contact for residents to report service interruptions, while the Harambee bus service is on track to roll out from July in Tembisa.
He pointed out that CBDs are being kept clean through the Inner City Night Cleaning programme, while clean neighbourhood Fridays continue.
He said the work done in the last five years in improving the management of its finances, reporting on service delivery and compliance with legislation was rewarded by the two back-to-back clean audits.
“Our efforts to keep Ekurhuleni spotless and hygienic have resulted in it scooping the 2014 Bontle ke Botho award for being the cleanest municipality in Gauteng.
“Ekurhuleni has been the leader in the TB cure rate in the country for the past two years, while our landfill gas recovery project won the best Waste Managenment Project in Africa in the 2013 New Economy and Sustainable Energy Awards, and a few years ago we were named the Greenest Municipality in the country by the Department of Environmental Affairs,” Gungubele said.
He also encouraged people not to allow the country to play host to racism, xenophobia and homophobia.
He said people should ensure that colour, race and gender become only a God-given gift to each one of them.
