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ESG social equity in real estate south africa
107 Plays4 years ago
Welcome to episode 44 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate. This time around we have more of a social equity focus as we're talking to Rashiq Fataar, the Founding Director of Our Future Cities in South Africa.
Rashiq works across disciplines, engaging with city planners, designers, researchers and anthropologists in the quest for promoting more sustainable and inclusive cities not just in South Africa where they are based, but increasingly around the African continent as a whole.
Our conversation covers the weight of South Africa's history of top-down oppression and how that impacted urban development during apartheid, the kind of tactical urban intervention that can turn a handful of parking bays into a parklet, the challenges of developing enough affordable housing, how concerns over safety can be baked into new precinct development plans from the start, examples of successful downtown regeneration in Durban by developers Urban Lime, and the student accommodation opportunity in neglected 1960s era buildings in central Cape Town and Durban in particular.
Rashiq is erudite, determined and fighting on the front line of city development so here he is.
GUEST / RASHIQ FATAAR
- Our Future Cities
- Rashiq Fataar / LinkedIn
- Urban Lime SA
HOST / MATT MORLEY
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Transcript
Introduction to Green and Healthy Places Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to episode 44 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we explore the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate today. This time around, we have more of a social equity focus, as we're talking to Rashek Fattah, the founding director of Our Future Cities in South Africa.
Legacy of Apartheid in Urban Planning
00:00:30
Speaker
Rashek works across disciplines,
00:00:32
Speaker
engaging with city planners, designers, architects, researchers, and anthropologists in the quest for promoting more sustainable and inclusive cities, not just in Cape Town or in South Africa, but increasingly around the African continent as a whole. Our conversation covers the weight of South Africa's history of top-down oppression and how that impacted urban development, the kind of tactical urban intervention that Rashid might propose to turn a handful of parking bays
00:01:02
Speaker
into a parklet for inner city respite and a quiet zone, the challenges of developing enough affordable housing, how concerns over safety can be baked into new precinct development plans from the start.
Urban Regeneration in South Africa
00:01:16
Speaker
We look at some examples of successful downtown regeneration by local developers Urban Lime and we discuss the student accommodation opportunity in neglected 1960s era buildings in central Cape Town and Durban in particular.
00:01:29
Speaker
Rashique is erudite, he's determined and he's fighting on the frontline of city development. So here he is. Rashique, thanks for being with us on the show today. Great to have you as a guest. I thought we could start with an initial introduction to the context you're working there in South Africa in particular and the government's policy of empowerment and how that's influencing the work you do around urban regeneration and development.
00:02:01
Speaker
Thanks, Madam. Great to be here. That's a very large question. But I suppose I'll start by giving some context. I think in most parts of the world, they've obviously been difficult histories, whether it's Colombia or in the US. But South Africa has a very particular history where I would say that over about 200 to 300 years, there has been top-down planning
00:02:29
Speaker
and oppression based on race in particular what we call persons of color or black African or colored in the South African context and so whereas many cities and towns have developed gradually
00:02:43
Speaker
and despite inequality or despite racism. And so I figured it is quite a scientific planning approach so that all parts of urban life and city living for the longest time was based on the ideal that the white population deserves space and ownership of land and a good quality of life.
00:03:07
Speaker
and that everyone else needed to be far away, have less rights and have their movement and who they marry, where they live managed.
Role of Our Future Cities in Social Equity
00:03:18
Speaker
According to the sort of ideal of separate development called apartheid, but ultimately that seeped into every aspect of life from the bus you used to the museums you could access to, whether your culture could be expressed or you could even protest.
00:03:33
Speaker
And so I think that's the point to start with that. We are 25, 26 years into a democratic society, which is very young in terms of having these basic rights and freedoms. But what we've inherited is an urban project, which stems from, I would say, an economic, social, cultural injustice on so many levels of people's psyche and urban environment.
00:04:04
Speaker
Thank you for that intro. It's such an interesting topic and so crucial, I think, for those of us working in this space where perhaps certainly in Europe, such things are almost taken for granted that that shouldn't be the case. And yet there are clearly examples, for say, in the south of the US, for example, where, you know, similar things happening not that long ago. And so today, in terms of
00:04:34
Speaker
positive promotion as a way to rebalance that status quo, as a way to empower and provide greater sense of social equity. Like how can your role, how can our future cities as a business contribute to that? And up to now, how have you been going about
00:04:56
Speaker
contributing to that sort of generational transformation whereby cities are able to find a greater form of social equity for all groups, no matter what race they're coming from.
Public Spaces and Affordable Housing
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think we've always taken a quite sort of pragmatic approach. The first is collaboration and cooperation with all sectors, so government, businesses, nonprofits, communities, individuals, which is quite difficult, I suppose.
00:05:27
Speaker
I think there is the perception that to be on the side of people and communities and their prosperity, you have to be against government and you have to be against business.
00:05:40
Speaker
And there are times that we are. And we do advocate very clearly. And as an independent group, we do so. So that's the first thing. I think it's sort of creative, but messy, tumultuous, and sometimes productive relationships, which are not perfect processes. And then second, I think, is just small steps to a better future. What can we do in the next year or two, whether it's, let's say, tactical urbanism? Can we take two parking bays away
00:06:08
Speaker
provide free Wi-Fi in a place to sit for those who can't afford coffee shops on high streets? Or can we study the culture in a particular neighborhood of migrants so that the public spaces start to reflect how they trade, how they live, and how they move around spaces? And in that particular case, in the in the Belville town center, which is about
00:06:30
Speaker
20 kilometers from the city center of Cape Town, its priority, people from across the African diaspora, so Somalia, Europe and so forth, living there safely and in societies that are evolving. So I think those two are quite key, is that sort of finding ways to cooperate and
00:06:53
Speaker
and taking small steps, be it policy, being at physical spaces, or getting conversations
Sustainable Communities and Policy Challenges
00:07:01
Speaker
going. For example, in the affordable housing space, one of the biggest challenges we found when we, I suppose, perhaps joined that field through a conference we hosted was that
00:07:13
Speaker
developers had never sat in a room with nonprofits and government working in the affordable housing space. So if you think of London, which has quite an established set of rules and guidelines around affordable housing in South Africa, despite having some of the highest income inequality in the world, if not the highest in Cape Town and Johannesburg, they hadn't sat around a table really to say, how do we make this policy work? What are the requirements and what is possible?
00:07:42
Speaker
It's in its various layers, I suppose, that we do our work. OK, so I'm going to pick up on a couple of things. Let's just dip back into the public realm discussion, because I think that's a really interesting piece there around how you, in a sense, give even a small slice of the city. And I presume we're talking about downtown urban centers back to those who perhaps, as you say, are not in a position to
00:08:11
Speaker
spend the equivalent of US$10 on a milky sweet coffee in a Starbucks equivalent, right? And so you're creating, you're trying to create these small interventions. Now, is that about bringing greenery back into the city? Is that about public furniture and safety? What are the main concerns and the drivers when you're looking at an intervention like that? I think there's the ambition of the dream and that is, you know, large amounts of affordable housing for
00:08:42
Speaker
lots of different incomes and groups in or near the city centre, so lots of supply of housing, which takes a long time.
00:08:51
Speaker
particularly slow in actually all South African inner cities, I think for political reasons, for lack of expertise, for lack of war. So that's the prize. And then we should take our eyes off the prize. You know, the densities of Spain or elsewhere, they sort of thrive based on lots of people living close together and having quality spaces. So that's the prize. But I think the second, what you touched on was
00:09:20
Speaker
is how do we provide a positive lived experience based on how somebody occupies space or their sort of mobility needs. And the way we think about it is as much as possible to have empathy and to understand the lived experience of that person. So while somebody working close to where I am today or close to Parliament or the regional government buildings in Cape Town,
00:09:50
Speaker
might need a community park, of course, where they live. They're probably traveling an hour and a half in the morning, if not more, to the place of work, spending about eight to nine, 10 hours, and then traveling another hour and a half, two hours. So for us,
00:10:07
Speaker
The joy, the safety needs to be incorporated into all aspects. It's really important that public transport interchanges, which are public spaces, are clean, well managed, while let's have free Wi-Fi. It's really important that we understand that when somebody arrives in the center,
00:10:26
Speaker
It might be the norm for people in, let's say, London to walk the last two miles. In Africa, it's required. You're not going to pay for another trip to go two or three kilometers further. So, safety of streets, safe crossings.
00:10:41
Speaker
For example, outside our central train station, some of the crossings, which I think eight traffic lanes are about maximum 45 seconds. So we do advocate for long crossing times for people walking around or doing the last mile or two trip. And then, of course, when they're at work, apart from their work environment, which is somewhat out of our hands in some cases, the plazas, the squares, the gardens, the parks, that could probably
00:11:12
Speaker
encapsulate somebody's entire public space experience for the day. It is highly unlikely that there are situations where, not highly unlikely, but I suppose it might be possible for myself to go to Seapoint, which is near the ocean, and go for a walk or run off to work, but for somebody else who's traveling two hours back home. And due to apartheid and other reasons, possibly living in a dangerous neighborhood,
00:11:39
Speaker
You know, it's unlikely that at seven p.m. at night in the dark, they're going to go to a local park to enjoy this sort of public space experience. So our city centers do matter. And where people are for the majority of the time influences the health from from the safety, from, you know, a bit of sun on a bench in lunchtime to shade under a tree. And this is how we think about about that is just the big prizes, people being allowed to live in a near economic centers. But until we get there at scale,
00:12:09
Speaker
We have to think about, you know, the 5am to 7pm experience of the majority of our city. You're essentially integrating elements of nature, nature exposure, bringing nature back into the city of social equity and a well-being aspect, I think, with what you're describing there.
Inner-City Housing and Policy Issues
00:12:29
Speaker
So it makes complete sense. The affordable housing piece, just to give us the context on that, in terms of how that relates to geography, is there
00:12:37
Speaker
Or do you see an opportunity in terms of downtown regeneration, in terms of bringing affordable housing in collaboration with developers back into, say, the downtown of Joburg or Durban? Or is it essentially a project that's inevitably going to be limited to the peripheries of the city and therefore that mobility question is locked in place for the foreseeable future? Or is it a combination of both? How do you see it?
00:13:03
Speaker
It's definitely a combination of both. Unfortunately, some of the policies of the early 90s of the Mandela era government meant that where land was cheap, cities built housing, and they were often poor quality and quite far away. So we've actually had a perpetuation of apartheid-style planning because land was further away, was cheaper, large open pieces, governments generally delivering substandard housing.
00:13:30
Speaker
So I think there are a few myths about inner city center or near city center housing. And the first is that there's no financial case when in reality there is massive demand from various income groups. And we're not talking about free housing or housing that is for those of no income. We're talking about, I think in the UK it's called essential service workers, key workers. So we're looking at sort of full spectrum of people whose lives could, you know, who could gain time.
00:13:59
Speaker
and gain so much more by living in or closer to their place of work. And then secondly, you know, some of these centers at night are quite dead, you know, so they don't have the residential density. So if you took an aerial view of the Cape Town City Center, or you took an aerial view of Johannesburg or Durban,
00:14:19
Speaker
They're not dense enough in terms of residential population to be 24-7 walkable, vibrant spaces where restaurants, cafes, schools, and other services start to respond to that demand. So I think there's a financial case, but there's also just a social case for bringing back people into the center. And I think we're starting to see that, especially with the student population.
00:14:45
Speaker
that almost sort of these overnight conversions of inner city office buildings, I think there are four or five in Cape Town currently underway of converting buildings to accommodate students. And students are one group of the affordable housing group who need accommodation at certain prices, which the market couldn't provide. So I think everything from baristas to nurses to policemen and women, there's a massive demand, there's a financial case and
00:15:13
Speaker
And again, it reduces the carbon emissions of people's travel. And of course, just, you know, sort of pure spatial justice in terms of people being excluded from the past. Yeah. Let's look back around onto the student accommodation piece, because I think I think there's more in that. But it seems like, in a sense, what we're talking about is the creation of sustainable precincts, right? Because
00:15:37
Speaker
you're saying it can't just be a residential piece that comes in because then if there isn't also the public space, the public realm interventions and there are also a ground level retail and street lighting and a sense of community, etc. So other examples that you're seeing in SA at the moment around developments of a sort of precinct level where a developer
00:15:58
Speaker
in a public-private partnership perhaps is able to come in and almost take over a small area of the city rather than just one building. Is that a viable solution and is it happening yet? And if not, then what's the workaround? Is it about various developers collaborating together or are you seeing examples where they're able to do things on a slightly bigger scale to change an entire mini district or precinct? I think precinct and district are the way to go. I think you need
00:16:27
Speaker
focus area of change. And you need to demonstrate change. I think I was recently, again, near the Civic Centre government building in Cape Town.
00:16:39
Speaker
and it's a very windy part of the city and it's got a bus station and the civic centre which is where the city's local government is housed and just across the road there's a private development with a massive open restaurant, a landscape garden, there is shelter and there is wind and it was amazing to me how two different blocks, one delivered entirely by the private sector
00:17:02
Speaker
and one government building by the public sector had completely different experiences. One was harsh, windy, modernist, unprotected, unsheltered, and had no retail. The other had all of these things, had spaces for people to search, you could buy lunch, or people who brought their lunch, it was sheltered.
00:17:21
Speaker
wind protected, it had sort of embedded principles of good landscaping and using rainwater. So I think I think precincts are important because it essentially is private sector needing to drive change.
Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Urban Change
00:17:37
Speaker
And to do so often you need scale from a financial perspective, from a viability perspective. And then you sort of hope the public sector comes along because I think
00:17:49
Speaker
There is this idea, at least in South Africa, that public sector must alone drive a change. And I think that example, with two buildings really adjacent to each other, shows you how you could treat people correctly and provide them with open, welcoming spaces without it officially being a public-led project.
00:18:12
Speaker
And both these spaces are within the biggest transport interchange in the city within a two minute walk. And so I think precincts are great to demonstrate change, to stitch buildings together. And look, South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. I think it's important to think about each and every block.
00:18:34
Speaker
How do you make it safer for women and girls to move through, in particular that group, to move from one block to the next? And I think having two or three vibrant precincts with active street frontages and then having nothing for two blocks is quite a... We call them crocodile zones. So you really want precincts and people to work at scale so that there is enough activity over large parts of the city
00:19:02
Speaker
And that's, I suppose, linked into the way that we've defined walkability here, which is it's not just about having pavements.
00:19:10
Speaker
about having activity, having destinations, having decent lighting, even the most well-landscaped, well-designed route at night in terms of walkability infrastructure. If it's not safe to go, somebody simply won't walk it, despite the best urban design principles.
Student Housing as a Catalyst for Regeneration
00:19:28
Speaker
So precincts are essential, and I think it's that mesh of public-private that people are uncomfortable with here.
00:19:34
Speaker
but it really is the sort of the driving factor we can start to see change which actually includes the majority of people. So you mentioned the student accommodation piece and it's a sector that's currently going through a process of what can only be described reinvention at least in the US and Europe. I mean there's so much to
00:19:57
Speaker
to use an overused term, disruption in the market going on. But I'm seeing a lot of innovation and I wanted to just ask whether
00:20:05
Speaker
In terms of those mixed use developers going into previously less desirable districts in downtown areas, for example, are they leading with student accommodation? Are they leading with affordable housing and building in retail and street level activities? Is that typically the mix? What's the first entry point into that urban regeneration process? Because you might assume that student accommodation could be a good contender for that, I'm guessing.
00:20:34
Speaker
I think it's different. I think because South Africa and cities like Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg don't have
00:20:43
Speaker
proper affordable housing, affordable accommodation, affordable housing policies, which require a certain percentage. It's unlikely that in the short term, that's going to be what's leading. And that's very unfortunate because we've lost, let's say, 25 years of that, of any sort of privately delivered units in that space. What we're seeing is, I suppose, if you look at the work of Urban Alignment, the CBD of Durban,
00:21:09
Speaker
What they found was that there was massive demand from small and micro businesses, but no inner city buildings which provided for their smaller space needs. So in one building, I think it's called Pioneer Place.
00:21:23
Speaker
empty for years. Each floor was compartmentalised into sort of smaller units for musicians and tailors and seamstresses and the entire building within a year was fully occupied. And I think the same, you know, in parts of Cape Town where we see B and C great office buildings, you know, with windows and views of the harbour and the ocean and
00:21:48
Speaker
and the mountain are, again, almost within a year or two, being converted into student accommodation just because of the massive demand there. So I think there'll always be a response based on what people need and what the demand is. And I think in Durban, you could only really rent a massive floor plate in an office building. But there was a demand from businesses.
00:22:14
Speaker
And in Cape Town and other places, there's a huge demand for well-located student housing because of the proximity of academic institutions and colleges. Unfortunately, due to the lack of policy, we've seen that in areas that need regeneration, often it's
00:22:34
Speaker
there's either a lack of response or lack of investment, or there's a lack of incentive to develop student or affordable housing, or in cases where there is development, it's really speaking to the upper middle income, micro units, one bed units. And again, that's just because that's the market that can afford that project without any subsidies or support from the government.
Incentivizing Developers for Public Benefit
00:23:01
Speaker
So we're,
00:23:03
Speaker
We're also seeing, in some places, industrial areas slightly changing. There are slightly more design and art firms moving in.
00:23:11
Speaker
But I think like various parts of the world, you know, the east end of London, that's generally how it happens. And quite slowly, I'm told the sort of glass towers start arriving. So I think it's in this case, it's really up to the public sector to to earmark land available for social and affordable housing to get those sites off the ground and to have a broader sector of the population benefit from the change. I think as much as we don't like change, there are
00:23:39
Speaker
So many case studies around the world with the edges of cities, the semi-industrial areas, the areas within five to 10 minutes of the center of the city changing.
00:23:52
Speaker
Industrial areas are no longer needed in particular places. I think we'll see even now, for example, offices are no longer needed in particular places. So there's always going to be an evolution. It's just about whether a public benefit is embedded into that and whether municipalities and councils can be proactive in making sure that as that change happens, the public benefits over two or three decades.
Opportunities in South African Urban Development
00:24:18
Speaker
At the city planning and legislation level, are there currently incentives or even enough pressure being placed on the private developers to incorporate elements of either an enhanced public realm or some element of social housing, which is something that we see a lot of in Europe, for example. You might expect to find that in South Africa, but it sounds like perhaps
00:24:43
Speaker
at the moment that perhaps isn't happening or isn't happening at a uniform level across the board? No, it's not happening. I think firstly, as I mentioned earlier, the word cooperation, I think in a maturing or young democracy, I suppose like if you could think of the US or more developed societies, cooperation, lobbying, negotiating, it's pretty much part of the culture.
00:25:12
Speaker
You know that you'll come to the table of 10 items, but you're probably both only around six. In South Africa, we haven't quite gotten there. It seems to be all or nothing. And then, of course, with the absence of policy or incentives, the market simply won't respond. And I think we've missed the mark when it comes to public infrastructure as well.
00:25:35
Speaker
So if a building can't include or meet all the requirements, then there could be alternatives. So I think it's called Section 16 or Section 16 policy in the UK, where you need to or are required to contribute to build the nearest subway station or to provide the station or to maintain a park. And I think with those sort of new relationships, you simply have to start.
00:26:03
Speaker
And I think given the pressure on local government budgets here, unfortunately, they'll be forced into that space, which will require that deals be made to ensure that, let's say, a new developer maintains the park over 20 years or develops spaces above the transport hub.
00:26:22
Speaker
but operates and maintains the transport hub over 20 years. So these relationships now might seem complicated or outside of policy, but I think like we've seen with the water crisis in Cape Town or the pandemic, the future often arrives and we only seem to be responding because I can show you that the
00:26:44
Speaker
the current model of local governments here, which relies on property taxes as a main revenue source, it's not really a viable approach. So I think for the best, they'll be forced into partnerships like the ones you've mentioned. It strikes me that there is, as so often with South Africa, this complex mix of historical
00:27:09
Speaker
ties and the weight of past events on the present and the struggle to liberate society in some way from that and to sort of reinvent. But at the same time on the flip side there's just amazing opportunities. Every time I'm back there
00:27:28
Speaker
you can see glimmers of hope of just fantastic work being done by visionary developers, perhaps not at the scale that you might like, but I think it's worth pointing that out, right? I mean, it's like, I know there's a lot that isn't working, but at the same time, if you go down there with the right vision and you can see what's going on in some corners and they might be, you know, the exceptions to the rule rather than the standard or the norm, there are still, there's just so much that can be done and I think
00:27:58
Speaker
And we need to balance the two, because it must be so frustrating to be doing what you're doing and to be facing an uphill struggle. But at the same time, there is surely this sense of amazing opportunity and ways to really have a tangible impact, not just on individual lives, but effectively on the future layout and livability of the cities that you're working in. So in a sense, you're well positioned for that.
00:28:26
Speaker
Absolutely. I think the base of our work is also, which I might have failed to mention, is that if we get this right in, let's say, Cape Town or Durban, it's really an exceptional quality of life for the majority. The weather is great, first of all. If you think of a city like Durban, between
00:28:44
Speaker
their World Cup Stadium in the center. There are huge plots of land publicly owned, which would essentially give 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people social housing within five minutes walk of the beachfront, sort of three, four, five kilometer promenade. So we're not talking about
00:29:03
Speaker
simply giving people better access. We're talking about probably one of the highest qualities of life that could be delivered. If you think about Cape Town, if we can improve people's travel time by just 50 or 40 minutes, they'd have time to walk on the beach, to go for a hike. So I think that's really the opportunity is that if you can start to provide a city for everyone, both in terms of housing and transport,
00:29:29
Speaker
they will have better access, more time to be in some of the best places in the world, really. And I think that's why it's so important to frame the opportunity that way. The cost of living is reasonable. The amount of amenities that are available at no cost are numerous. The amount of parks and
00:29:54
Speaker
nature reserves that you could use without, you know, without buying anything is incredible. So I think this is why we pushing so hard for these changes is just the I would say it's you know, it's if you give people more time, and of course, a better way of living and improve their economic situation, they arguably are living in one of the best places they could.
Future Initiatives and Pan-African Connections
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'm with you on that one. Well, look, it's great work that you're doing. It's really admirable stuff. What have you got going on at the moment? What does the next 12 months or so look like for for your team and our future cities? I'd have to pull out the planet. But at the moment, we are we are actually looking into the student accommodation space. We're looking into into forming better connections across Africa. So expanding the kinds of
00:30:46
Speaker
work and projects we're having in the next few months looking more at a sort of pan-African level. And then, yeah, we're continuing a lot of our research on, you know, we were inspired, for example, one tiny project, we were inspired by London's colorful crossings. You know, how do you raise awareness around community safety? And I think London delivered about 18 of those art-inspired pedestrian crossings.
00:31:12
Speaker
We're trying to sort of ramp up that project and get through the red tape with the city on that. And then yeah, something that is closer to my heart is we're looking at a 2040 horizon at infrastructure and spaces.
00:31:27
Speaker
and what the city might need in the longer term. But yeah, I watch the space and they're always at any one point 10 or 15 different projects. And I should probably organize my thoughts better to present the punchier ones.
00:31:46
Speaker
It sounds great. Good on you. It's meaningful work that you're doing. I think that's the key message. Listen, if people want to reach out to you, follow along, see what projects you do have coming over the next few months, what's the best way for them to connect? They could follow our future cities on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and then they could even just connect with me on my personal LinkedIn as well.
00:32:14
Speaker
We haven't quite gotten to some of the other platforms like TikTok or any of the others, but you never know. Sounds good. Rishik, thanks so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks so much, Matt. It's great to be here.