{"id":324961,"date":"2019-06-23T08:27:13","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T06:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=324961"},"modified":"2019-06-23T08:30:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T06:30:21","slug":"ramaphosa-dreams-of-skyscrapers-and-bullet-trains-but-heres-what-happened-to-the-last-r84-billion-smart-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/324961\/ramaphosa-dreams-of-skyscrapers-and-bullet-trains-but-heres-what-happened-to-the-last-r84-billion-smart-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramaphosa dreams of skyscrapers and bullet trains – here’s what happened to the last R84 billion smart city"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined his vision for a new state-of-the-art South African smart city in his state of the nation address<\/a> <\/strong>this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dream of a South Africa where the first entirely new city built in the democratic era rises, with skyscrapers, schools, universities, hospitals and factories,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a dream we can all share and participate in building. We have not built a new city in 25 years of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The smart city, the president said, would be connected to other hubs by a bullet train. “We should imagine a country where bullet trains pass through Johannesburg as they travel from here to Musina, and they stop in Buffalo City on their way from Ethekwini back here.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHas the time not arrived to build a new smart city founded on the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution? I would like to invite South Africans to begin imagining this prospect,” Ramaphosa said.<\/p>\n

The president’s vision of the future however, has been met with skepticism. Professor Loren Landau, of the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University told the Sunday Times<\/a><\/strong> that the concept of a smart city is a distraction from the real work that needs to be done.<\/p>\n

“What we need is a dream for how existing cities can be made more equitable, connected, and productive,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I expect a highly designed, fantasy city will further the country\u2019s spatial division. Much like the elite enclaves constructed by private developers, it will reinforce the divisions between highly productive, well-serviced sites and places of poverty and marginalisation.”<\/p>\n

Landau said that Ramaphosa should instead focus on upgrading and integrating existing cities that work for everyone.<\/p>\n

Failed project\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ramaphosa said his dream has been fueled by president Xi Jinping, “whose account of how China is building a new Beijing has helped to consolidate my dream”.<\/p>\n

However, South Africa’s most recent effort to build a smart city did not go according to plan, and was eventually aborted.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Chinese development group Zendai Developments, announced its intention to build an\u00a0$8 billion city<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(around R84 billion at the time) in Modderfontein in the east of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

The development was promoted as a smart city which would rival Sandton with nine functional zones, including a CBD, entertainment centre, and residential and educational districts.<\/p>\n

The project was earmarked to be built on a 1600ha piece of land over 15 years (to be completed in 2030), housing approximately 30,000 families and creating up to 200,000 fixed jobs for the local community.<\/p>\n

However, with some infrastructure development making headway, news coming from the project fell silent by mid-2016. And by the end of the year, the project was dead.<\/p>\n

Research conducted<\/a><\/strong> by Ricardo Reboredo, a PhD Candidate in Geography at Trinity College Dublin, and Frances Brill, a research fellow at UCL, tracked the project’s progress, trying to identify what went wrong with the plan.<\/p>\n

According to the researchers, the project was thwarted by conflicting visions between the developer and the City of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

This was exacerbated by unexpectedly low demand for both housing and office space \u2013 which meant the original plan for the project was incompatible with the city\u2019s real estate market.<\/p>\n

“Zendai\u2019s aspirations to produce a high-end, mixed-used development did not fit with the City of Johannesburg\u2019s approach. Rather than a luxurious global hub, the city wanted a more inclusive development \u2013 one which reflected the principles outlined in its 2014 Spatial Development Framework,”\u00a0 the researchers said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Joburg gives update on planned water outage<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined his vision for a new state-of-the-art South African smart city in his state of the nation address this week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":55989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-324961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324961"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324979,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324961\/revisions\/324979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}