EDITOR – The tragic incident at Tongaat last week highlights the urgent need for an investigation into the way land use management in our city is run. What we perceive as a serial lack of will by our city officials to enforce compliance with the bylaws is precisely why we started our campaign of positive activism called Save Our Berea. Within a few weeks of setting up our Facebook page, we have attracted hundreds of followers who regularly log on to read our opinion pieces on what we believe is going wrong in our city and why we as a community must act now, before it is too late. We can see from the reactions to our posts that all agree something must be done. The Berea, traditionally a residential zone characterised by a relatively high proportion of older components of the built environment, has come under increasing pressure to change.
This is primarily as a result of a worldwide trend towards urbanisation and, for the reasons of accessibility, micro climate, its vegetation for which it was desirable for the first settlers, it remains a desirable enclave for development.
Interventions such as the extensions to the Musgrave Shopping Centre, one-way traffic system, B&B’s and hotels, high-rise blocks of flats, change of use from residential to offices and retail facilities, are evidence of the transformation.
It’s where the change takes place without an appreciation of the Berea’s underlying qualities that things fall apart, and in most cases lead to the destruction of qualities evolving from the co-existence of complimentary activities such as residential, retail, recreation, work, culture and religion.
It’s these changes, happening at a scale and of a nature inappropriate (and in many cases illegal) from which the Berea seeks saving. While change in any living city is natural and inevitable, great care, diligence, foresight and skill are required in the management of such change to avoid losing a city’s asset forever. Illegal building, that is building without the required approvals, including alterations to existing structures, changing use, or exceeding or deviating from the approvals, seems to have become almost as common as driving through the red, or parking on the pavement, or on the red line, or stopping in a traffic lane. By the same analogy, in the built environment it’s as though some drivers have decided unilaterally to drive on the right hand side of the road.
The difference is that within the built environment the consequences are often not apparent until those keeping left are directly affected. It’s not hard to imagine the effects of a panel beater or car-spaying business setting up an operation within a residential area, but the effect of certain types of businesses within zones unsuitable for those activities make their effects known over time. What happens when the soft areas of a residential property are hardened for parking, is an overload on the storm water system, offices become dark voids at night, patterns of vehicular and pedestrian use are altered, noise levels peak at conflicting times, trees are removed, and so on. The more brutal evidence of unilaterally driving on the right hand side of the road occurred at Tongaat yesterday, resulting in injury and loss of life.
If by common consent it’s decided that driving on the right hand side of the road is in the best interest of all who use the roads, Save Our Berea believes that all have to agree to do this, all the steering wheels must be on the left, all the traffic signs must be changed, and all the drivers of vehicles need to re-train.
Cheryl Johnson
Save Our Berea Working Committee
