What South Africa’s new multi-billion smart city with its own international airport looks like today

·27 Jan 2025

The Lanseria Smart City promised a new way of living for 350,000 to 500,000 South Africans. However, years later, it is still only open veld and informal settlements with shacks.

The new smart city gained prominence after President Cyril Ramaphosa promoted it in his 2020 State of the Nation Address.

“A new smart city is taking shape in Lanseria, which 350,000 to 500,000 people will call home within the next decade,” he said.

A year later, he said the Lanseria Smart City, the first new city to be built in a democratic South Africa, is now a reality in the making.

While Ramaphosa first mentioned it in 2020, the Lanseria Smart City has its origins in 2007, when it was still known as Cradle City.

Cradle City was set to be the first South African city built around an airport, which has been achieved successfully overseas.

In 2008, the Cradle City website stated that it is one of the most ambitious property developments in South Africa.

The developers said the new Cradle City will be conveniently located with excellent infrastructural and transport links.

“This mega project involves the development of a city which will offer its inhabitants the luxuries of time, security, and sustainability through well-planned execution,” it said.

The project gained traction, and Crosspoint and the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements planned to implement the Lanseria Airport City Mega Project over ten years.

Crosspoint has also partnered with the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) to develop the 90-hectare Lanseria Business District as part of the project.

The draft master plan for the Greater Lanseria Growth Node was released for public comment in November 2020.

It highlighted that the new smart city is a joint initiative of the Presidency, the Office of the Gauteng Premier, the City of Tshwane, the City of Johannesburg, and Mogale City.

The aim is to create the first post-apartheid city in South Africa based on best practices in urban sustainability and the principles underpinning the smart city.

“It is to be inclusive of the broadly defined South African socio-economic spectrum and must stimulate a vibrant, mixed urban economy,” the masterplan states.

The city would be built surrounding Lanseria International Airport, north of Johannesburg, in a project which would take around 25 years to complete.

Sitting in the centre of the development, the airport will be the main economic driver for the city’s growth.

Strong residential growth in the surrounding areas is expected which would be supported by improvements to existing roads.

Building a new smart city

The Lanseria Smart City is set to be an innovative, sustainable, and green environment designed to “interface with nature” to ensure minimal environmental impact.

It aims to move urban sustainability beyond existing planning, engineering, and urbanisation paradigms to increasingly appropriate levels of sustainability and innovation.

The project aims to move beyond ‘leading-edge’ approaches into what may now be ‘bleeding edge’.

There is a strong focus on limiting the need to commute using cars. It wants the city’s residents to use walking, cycling, and public transport.

In planning terms, people must be able to walk to work, shopping malls, or schools within 5 minutes (400 meters) and 10 minutes (800 meters).

The current plan is to make the lateral extent of an activity zone within this new city roughly 1600 meters, a 10-minute walk in any direction from its epicentre.

If a service is not available within one activity zone, safe, reliable, and affordable public transport should be available to access it further afield.

The planning also heavily focuses on smart technologies, including the latest mobile technologies, Wi-Fi, and high-speed broadband connectivity.

“The city will be built on smart technology and systems in a way that is helpful to all residents, companies, businesses, and visitors,” the city said.

To further increase the appeal of the city, there are plans to expand the Lanseria International Airport.

The Lanseria International Airport is exploring different options for expansion, which could include the extension of the existing runway.

To accommodate the increased traffic to and from the Lanseria International Airport, existing roads will have to be upgraded, and new roads will have to be built.

Additional interchanges, subways, bridges, and service lanes are planned to enhance the current road system around the airport.

The Lanseria Business Gateway will be located on 130 hectares of prime real estate between Lanseria Airport and the upmarket Blair Atholl Golf Estate.

It will be a 24-hour smart city zone that will offer retail, conference, and business facilities. It will also host the Lanseria luxury hotel.

To make the Lanseria Smart City safe for residents and workers, the streets, sidewalks, marketplaces, and parks will be well-policed and well-lit at night.

The city’s public areas are aimed at street life and social interaction, and the design of the buildings facing these areas will encourage this.

Lanseria Smart City broke ground

On 28 October 2024, the Lanseria Smart City broke ground with a R320 million water treatment plant.

This 18-month development will produce two megalitres daily using advanced membrane-aerated biofilm reactor technology.

Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi hailed the project as essential to fulfilling President Cyril Ramaphosa’s vision of a modern smart city.

The water treatment plant represents phase 1 of the larger smart city initiative, which includes a wastewater treatment facility designed to process 50 million litres of sewage daily.

The water treatment plant is funded with over R320 million from Invest International Capital and Exim Finance.

It aims to address critical infrastructure needs in Lanseria while substantially reducing its environmental impact.

The plant is expected to save 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually and reuse 90% of processed water.

Crosspoint Property Investments, the lead contractor, aims to tackle water and sanitation gaps in Lanseria.

Upon completion, the plant will provide potable water to approximately 1,800 residents and open over 300,000 square meters of commercial space.

What the Lanseria Smart City looks like today

BusinessTech visited the area where the Lanseria Smart City will be built and found that very little has happened since Ramaphosa punted it in 2020.

Ramaphosa stated it is an “actual city that is rising from the ground up”. However, there was no evidence of anything ‘rising from the ground up’.

He said they had “put together an innovative process that will fund the electricity, water, digital infrastructure and roads that will be the foundation of this new city”.

Our visit to the area did not show any infrastructure development. Apart from the Lanseria International airport, we saw large stretches of open land and growing informal settlements.

There were numerous shacks in the area, which may pose problems when the time comes to develop the land.

In 2020, a group of unlawful occupants on the Lindley Farms property who were not evicted before the sale caused big problems for the project.

The land occupiers obtained Extension of Security of Tenure (ESTA) rights through time for being tenants of Lindley Farms in the past.

What started as a seemingly minor issue evolved into a major problem which stalled the development of the Lanseria mega smart city.

The same may happen when it comes to the rapidly growing number of informal settlements on land needed for the Lanseria Smart City development.