May 28, 2007
By Neil Fraser
SOME years ago I was visiting an improvement district in Brooklyn, in New York City. It had been experiencing difficulties related to the numbers of cars illegally using the borough for all-day parking. It was also experiencing a lack of response to the constant requests for the vehicles to be ticketed by the New York City Police.
At about the same time, the president of the city improvement district (CID) was looking for methods to improve the management of the public urban environment within its operational area. A New York company, specifically established to develop software solutions for local authorities, offered a solution in the form of handheld computers fitted with digital cameras and software that included detailed maps of the area.
The maps showed the position of every light pole, parking meter, directional sign, refuse bin and so forth. The CID on-street supervisors could now walk the area, marking on the computer where something needed attention, for example a pole that had been knocked over, new graffiti, potholes or street lights needing replacement globes.
They could also immediately take and email a photograph of the problem to the relevant council or CID department for action. They had an automatic record of the report with date and time of reporting, could issue reminders, if necessary, and finally record exactly when the matter was attended to and provide detailed summaries of the response of the council to all such issues.
As an aside, the system gave them the opportunity to photograph the offending vehicles' number plates and send them to the traffic authorities for identification. It turns out that 90 percent were council employees who worked in Manhattan and found it convenient to leave their cars all day in Brooklyn, from where they would catch public transport to and from work.
This is partly what urban management is all about. And the lack of it, in our case, was what we constantly heard at stakeholder working groups in the run-up to the Inner City Summit on 5 May.
Do the job
"Why can't the council merely do its job?" This related to cleansing, waste removal, street sweeping, illegal dumping, recycling, removal of graffiti and illegal posters, noise pollution, building waste management, management of public space, management of informal trading, storm water drainage, street furniture, signage and public information, painting street poles, road markings, weeding, keeping an eye out for illegal uses of buildings and enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.
Urban management is all about attending to the myriad details of what makes a city work for its users in a systematic fashion and penalising those who don't want to obey the rules of the game, thereby making it unpleasant for everyone else.
Urban management is what we generally haven't experienced in the inner city for nigh on two decades. It was, in fact, the lack of urban management that led to the establishment of the CID initiative back in 1993 - CIDs are all about the private sector supplementing and complementing services provided (and sometimes not provided) by the City.
CIDs have formed the nucleus of urban management provision over a large portion of the core area of the inner city since then.
At the beginning of his second term of office, the executive mayor announced a "return to urban management" through the establishment of a department of development planning and urban management headed up by an executive director, under a member of the mayoral committee at political level. In addition, the responsibilities of the regional offices would change from administering clinics, libraries, community centres, sports facilities and so forth, to being responsible for the implementation of the urban management function.
Implementation
Now, one of the big concerns raised through the summit and Inner City Regeneration Charter process was how the outcomes of the initiative would be turned into reality. Looking at some of the previous processes, one becomes very aware of great intentions but not always a great deal in the way of commitment of resources specifically set aside to achieve implementation, or, maybe, just not enough resources for the job at hand.
On the practical implementation side, a series of workshops have been held over the past few weeks with the council and private sector representatives, to determine the best structure for the council to adopt for implementation of the issues arising out of the summit and charter process and also for monitoring progress.
Although this has not yet been finalised, a further workshop on Monday, 21 May moved a step closer to a solution and there should be a final proposal on the table within the next few weeks.
I was struck again at the workshop how very little in urban regeneration is straightforward. The city is a complex organism that is continuously in process and you can't just switch it off, or get it to mark time, while waiting to insert a new approach.
The decision to recognise the criticality of urban management in the vacuum created by its absence for so many years is extremely important. But who does what, who reports to whom, who is responsible for what and to whom are critical questions to be answered if the system is to work.
For decades the council has worked on a silo approach, each department or municipal entity doing its own thing, with little thought or consideration of the effect of its actions on other departments. Now we will need a matrix-style management that is hard to achieve but essential for the effective and efficient management of the city, let alone the inner city.
Good news
The good news is that the process to find the right formula is well advanced.
The even better news was the announcement by the executive mayor on Wednesday, 23 May in his budget speech, of money being set aside to kick-start urban management and the requirements of the charter.
A surcharge of 2 percent on water, electricity and refuse removal charges "is to create revenue that will fund and support business growth in the city and to stimulate economic growth. It will be utilised to stimulate urban regeneration and improve our capacity for urban management. It will enable us to fast track the required infrastructure needs that have resulted from rapid economic growth and expansion."
The mayor went on to advise that one of the major increases in this year's budget related to the department of development planning and urban management. Here the budget has been increased from R381-million in the current year to R779-million for the 2007-08 council financial year – that is more than a doubling and is "our way of emphasizing our priority in the growth and development of our central business districts".
And then there was the commitment to the summit and charter: "The budget process has considered the commitments made by the City at the Inner City Summit. We are now committing R2-billion capital allocation to inner city rejuvenation over the next five years.
"In the next financial year we will make R300-million capital allocation and R100-million operational allocation for improvements in service delivery."
Now that's putting your money where your mouth is – yah, Amos for president!
Cheers, Neil
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