The beginning of the new financial year is starting with a bang as the Gauteng Provincial Government finalises plans to launch the Mega Housing Project approach which will see unprecedented radical transformation of human settlements and spatial planning in Gauteng.
Following on the announcement of Premier David Makhura’s strategy of radical Transformation, Modernisation and Reindustrialisation (TMR) of Gauteng, the Human Settlements Department will officially launch the Mega Housing Projects on Tuesday, 07 April at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Sandton.
The launch will mark a new era in human settlements developments and also learning from the experiences of the first 20 years of democracy and freedom. Especially in Gauteng, housing challenges continue to be one of areas of concerns for residents, and that in the face of ‘new demand’ as witnessed by on-going in-migration to Gauteng.
“As we mark the 1st anniversary of our term in office we are now giving full effect to the province’s TMR strategy and with the launch of Mega Housing Projects, we are aiming to turning around the human settlements space in the Gauteng City Region. We are now going big and clustering human settlements projects so that the yield per mega project can be big enough to make a huge dent in getting more people into homes. Gone are the days of disjointed housing project spread across all empty spaces in municipalities”, Human Settlements MEC Jacob Mamabolo said.
Mamabolo also said that this is one of the major plans that will illustrate the concrete commitments and transformative partnerships between different spheres of government and the private sector in addressing the housing needs and priorities and pillars of the TMR. This speaks to macro interventions that GPG has embarked on which include spatial reconfiguration, township economy revitalisation and massive infrastructure investments.
“This is a considerable and important programme that will work jointly with municipalities and the private sector partners to change the spatial patterns and structure of the economy of the province in order to address unemployment, poverty and inequality”, MEC Mamabolo reiterated.
The Mega Housing Projects will be spread across all development corridors in Gauteng. As noted by Premier David Makhura “going forward, we want to reconfigure the Gauteng City Region’s space and economy along five development corridors that have distinct industries and different comparative advantages”:
- The Central Development Corridor is anchored around the City of Johannesburg as the hub of finance, services, ICT and pharmaceutical industries;
- The Eastern Development Corridor anchored around the economy of the Ekurhuleni Metro as the hub of manufacturing, logistics and transport industries;
- The Northern Development Corridor anchored around Tshwane as our nation’s administrative Capital City and the hub of the automotive sector, research, development, innovation and the knowledge-based economy;
- The Western Corridor encompassing the economy of the current West Rand district and the creation of new industries, new economic nodes and new cities;
- The Southern Corridor encompassing the economy of the Sedibeng district and the creation of new industries, new economic nodes and new cities”.
The launch of the Mega Housing Projects at GIBS will start at 9h00 on Tuesday, 7 April 2015.
For more information:
Motsamai Motlhaolwa
Cell: 079 897 2240
