Consultation workshop for safer cities through the IUDF – Blog
The vision for South African urban areas, as described in the draft Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF), is to have Liveable, safe, resource-efficient cities and towns that are socially integrated, economically inclusive and globally competitive, where residents actively participate in urban life. Within this vision, safety is located as a core outcome, recognising that the high rates of violence and crime in South Africa’s urban areas pose a direct threat to the achievement of the intended outcomes of the IUDF.
As part of the public consultation process of the development of the Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF), a stakeholder consultation workshop on urban safety took place on the 3rd of March 2015 at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria. It was hosted by the South African Cities Network (SACN) and the GIZ (Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit) Violence and Crime Prevention Programme. It gathered approximately 35 individuals from government, civil society and academia, all united by their interests in and linkages to urban safety and violence prevention.
In the first session, Ms. Thandeka Kabeni from Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) introduced the IUDF and the current safety linkages, followed by a detailed input on urban safety considerations by Mr. Terence Smith from GIZ-VCP. The second session featured a panel discussion with commentators from academia, Ms. Chandre Gould (ISS) and Mr. Tinus Kruger (CSIR), who reflected on the safety elements in the IUDF from a social development and urban planning perspective. The presentations were followed by two responses from a local government perspective (Ms. Nazira Cachalia from the Joburg City Safety Programme and Mr. Mvuyisi April from SALGA).
Furthermore, a world café session took place in which different recommendations were collected with regards to the different policy levers of the IUDF and how the issue of urban safety can be integrated. Finally in the last section, a brainstorming took place around the considerations for the implementation of the urban safety issues.
The process provided a valuable platform to discuss the currently proposed safety-related content in the IUDF, as well as to obtain inputs on how urban safety, with a strong emphasis on violence and crime prevention, can be more strongly positioned in the draft policy.
A full report on the stakeholder consultation process will be published on SaferSpaces soon. For more information on the IUDF, visit www.iudf.net