Johannesburg Executive Mayor, Councillor Parks Tau, announced a multi-million rand investment into the City’s spatial redesign programme – the Corridors of Freedom by the Global Environment Fund (GEF) in Braamfontein on 9 February.
The GEF, which is a financial mechanism for both the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, pledged more than R120 million into the advancement of the Corridors of Freedom.
Mayor Tau described the investment as a partnership and a vote of confidence in the City’s programme that is set to contribute towards greenhouse gas emission reductions in Joburg through an integrated urban planning approach using several pilot projects. “The partnership projects will also see to the improvement of urban food security in the City by increasing the efficiency of food flows and improve peri-urban agriculture techniques,” Mayor Tau said.
The City has entered into a partnership with Global Environment Fund,which has pledged R120m to the #corridorsoffreedom programme ^NB
— City of Joburg (@CityofJoburgZA) February 9, 2016
Tau pointed out that the City and GEF’s partnership will also result in a pilot process being launched in the City where aggregated data on resource efficiency will be used to make informed decisions on the metropolitan municipality’s infrastructure investments. Mayor Tau added that this will also see the lessons learned taken to other municipalities across South Africa.
https://twitter.com/Amu_Hlabano/status/696980700768178177
The GEF investment partnership comes after the Corridors of Freedom, which is a programme designed to reverse apartheid spatial injustices to create equal and sustainable access to opportunities for all the people of Johannesburg, begins to take shape.
Tau said that the Corridors of Freedom was aimed at creating better infrastructure that is supportive of a low-carbon economy, in a socially cohesive South Africa. “This is to be done by using Transit Orientated Development (TOD) and corridor development to transform space and the citizen’s relationship with it,” he concluded.
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