The biggest challenge facing Johannesburg's city authorities is addressing apartheid's legacy of years of discrimination and neglect

Artworks from trash
An art exhibition at Ubuntu Village shows the weird and wonderful objects one can make from the things we throw away

Newtown showcases best practices
Best practices in sustainable development. will be highlighted at an exhibition in Newtown during the World Summit in August

Making Alexandra a summit showcase
Alexandra, the site of a multi-million rand presidential development initiative, is to be promoted as a model of sustainable development during the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development

Alex to get state-of-the-art resource centre
Alexandra township is to get a resource centre - one of the first legacies from the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August

Eco-City: Turning hopelessness around at Ivory Park
The sprawling shack settlement of Ivory Park once epitomised hopelessness. But since 1999, small but steady dents have been made in that despair, thanks to initiatives that have looked more closely at the damaged environment and how local people could live more harmoniously with it

Turning the green alien tide
The environmental havoc wreaked by alien vegetation is arguably second only to global warming. SA’s Working for Water project, the biggest conservation endeavour on the continent, tackles the problem head-on – at the same time employing 18 000 people who would otherwise be jobless

The people get behind Soweto dam project
A showcase project to restore a Soweto dam and the adjacent park has rekindled community spirit among local residents. The upgrading of the neglected Moroka Dam and Thokoza Park, once prime attractions of Rockville, Soweto, is a R20-million mayoral showcase project

Turning the city into an art gallery
Johannesburg's inner city is about to become one large art gallery, its buildings posted with giant murals chosen from entries to a competition called the JHB Art City

Why VIPs are clustering around a Yeoville loo
Yeoville resident Richard Holden is piloting a revolutionary new method of dry sanitation in his own home. Holden is sanitation operations manager for Mvula Trust, the country's largest water and sanitation NGO

Making work from cleaning up
The Dobsonville Waste Management Buy-Back Centre in Soweto is part of a council initiative to create employment for the very poor.

Jo'burg's ecological fertilizer JOGRO
Jo'burgers don't know it, but by going about their everyday business, they are helping produce a high quality fertilizer called JOGRO - thanks to a new method for treating the city's waste

A green corner of the inner city
IN the heart of the inner city is a green project that combines community involvement and education with environmentally friendly building principles - all in a small corner of Joubert Park in Johannesburg.

Jo'burg's best-kept secret
It's Johannesburg's best-kept, back-to-nature secret: just 11 kilometres south of the city centre is an unspoilt 680-hectare stretch of open veld and koppies, filled with 150 species of birds, and around 650 indigenous plants and trees, with the pleasant Bloubosspruit flowing idly through it

Visit the urban forest
It's appropriate that the summit is being held in a city which boasts more trees than any other. It's even classified as an "urban forest"

Jo'burg water: good as bottled
Don't bother with bottled water when isiting Johannesburg. Our piped municipal water is world class

The gardens of healing
Volunteers at an AIDS clinic discovered that patients often have no food at home. So they started a permaculture food garden

The first 'ubuntu' university
A remarkable college educates the poor on the principle of "helping each other". Lecturers are volunteers, and students clean and maintain the campus and grow their own food

Farmer on the rooftops
In the middle of inner city Jo'burg, a pioneer grows vegetables on his flatland roof

Delta Park proves exotics can be useful
Purists would argue that alien trees should be removed from Johannesburg's public spaces - but there's evidence that exotics do have a role

Jo'burg goes greener
The city's parks and street kerbs will be greener and cleaner this winter, thanks to a massive refurbishing project

Soweto goes green for summit
There are 2 000 hectares of open space in Soweto, much of it disused and unkempt. Now that space is to be made greener and more user-friendly