Metropolis conference a success

This follows an exchange of ideas at the four-day long Metropolis Annual Meeting held at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton.

The meeting attracted leaders of more than 78 cities around the world including mayors, municipal officials, academics, thought leaders, gender activists and civil society officials. The attendees discussed a range of critical urban issues such as rapid urbanisation, spatial planning, food security, resource resilience, safety and security, how to create greener cities, social cohesion and developmental funding models.

Joburg Mayor Parks Tau said the city faced multiple problems on a daily basis due to urbanisation.

“Oftentimes, urban development agendas are inextricably expected to balance the objective of delivering services and ensuring a stable state of affairs at the expense of dealing with social problems of urbanisation. Given the current realities facing cities, it is important that they strike a fine balance to ensure development, service delivery and improve socio-economic conditions,” he said.

Tau said the city council would place additional emphasis on the usage of technology to create safer communities and better safeguard citizens, adding that the city considered to adopt several successful internationally used concepts and programmes.

Referring to Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit System, which received a 10 out of 10 for infrastructure excellence from a peer review process conducted by a number of international academics and global transport leaders, Tau said the city council would look at a model to discourage private vehicle usage, adding that bold decisions would be taken as the transit system was an opportunity to restructure the city and reduce car usage.

“There is a need to improve the level of buy-in from the community and to get the community to commit to moving towards the transit system as the main transport solution. The transit system is designed for everyone. It has opened up many new opportunities,” said Tau.