• Often officials and key informants have specialist knowledge that could provide important insights into an area (for example, the police in Westbury). • When community engagement does take place, appropriate facilitators who speak local languages need to be employed. • Given that the CoJ has very active social media pages that garner a high degree of public interaction, social media forums as a forum to facilitate community participation should be considered. While this could not be a blanket approach, it could work very effectively in a variety of areas where residents have internet access. • The communities along the Corridors are highly heterogeneous; once-off engagement is insufficient and needs to be complemented by ongoing engagement with a recognition of the various groups of people in the area, ensuring inclusion in participation processes. • Relationships of trust need to be built between the City and the various communities. This requires transparency on behalf of the City, building consensus over time, and developing capacity within communities or constituencies that have no history of engagement. • There is a need to take community members seriously as custodians of own knowledge. Dismissing peoples’ perceptions as untruths is counter-productive; rather, participation processes need to acknowledge the importance of an individual’s reality, even if it appears empirically false. Westbury: There are a number of community initiatives in Westbury that tend to operate within their particular sectors, such as drug rehabilitation, skills development and crime prevention. Through partnership arrangements between the proposed community development organisations and the ABM unit of the City, better coordination could be achieved between existing, as well as future, programmes. This coordination could be around enabling common goals and objectives to be shared by the various stakeholders (including state organisations at local and provincial level, NGOs and CBOs).
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Marlboro South: The areas’ complexities require a deep understanding in order to ensure that legitimate community ‘leaders’ are engaged and all perspectives are fairly represented. The suggestion is that deeper analysis and better information sharing between stakeholders and government departments would strengthen existing plans and approaches. Orange Grove and the Louis Botha Corridor: The relationship between the CoJ and some of the middle class residents’ associations has degenerated considerably since the advent of the COF plans – why and how that has happened is important to understand. Firstly, because the relationships require improvement and intervention; secondly, because various nodes along the Corridors have similar community dynamics and all that is possible should be done to avoid creating antagonism and resentment, which potentially leads to delays and the inability of both the community and the City to satisfy their needs.
5.2 Communication and Marketing Within a number of circles there is clear recognition of the importance of the Transit Corridors and their transformative potential. However, the research indicated that despite the marketing and communication drives of the CoJ and the Strategic Planning unit, there is need for further engagement and marketing, both within government and to external stakeholders.
5.2.1 Internal communication There is a concern that despite the strong leadership of the Strategic Planning unit in the CoJ, other municipal, and provincial departments and state entities are not engaging adequately with the project, which has negative effects. The failure of CoJ entities and departments to cooperate and strategise collectively creates issues in the implementation of projects. Failure to improve this capacity will lead to continued miscommunications, duplications of work and discontent from communities, as has been seen in Orange Grove and Norwood and in the Park Station Precinct. • Internal inter-departmental task teams or area-based management teams could be constituted for areas along the corridors receiving CoJ attention. • Further consideration and time needs to be given to gaining internal buy-in.
• Given the limitations of the small but dedicated team within the CoJ, capacitybuilding and increasing the team size to drive development in the corridors should be considered. In addition, ensuring political buy-in would provide officials with the necessary support to demand more from the private sector during negotiations. • Although the CoJ and Gauteng Province have discussed their SDFs and aligned some of the bigger issues, there is still much that needs to be resolved, which requires ongoing engagement. Park Station Precinct: If the CoJ does not improve management of the complex governance dynamics of the Park Station Precinct, the node will not live up to its TOD potential. Most importantly, PRASA needs to be brought to the table for discussion and engagement.
5.2.2 External communication The CoJ has made significant progress in developing regulatory mechanisms and incentives for the COFs and has delivered a number of interventions. However, the CoJ has been far too modest and the general public is not aware of all that has been done.
• The current practice of having ‘point people’ dedicated to specific nodes and corridors is excellent and should be continued but must be supported by up-to-date websites that are current and easy to access all of the relevant information • The full ‘toolbox’ of incentives needs to be ‘sold’ to developers – this should be inculcated in a clear pitch and be easily accessible online. • The City needs to market its significant achievements and its visions through variety of media. Social media, including Twitter and Facebook, which the CoJ already uses effectively in other spheres, should be used to promote the TOD-related achievements and visions of the City.
5.3 Built environment interventions and the BRT Much of what has been accomplished and what will be undertaken in the transit corridors revolves around changes, additions and improvements to the built environment and infrastructure, as well as the key intervention of the BRT. There is no question that infrastructure provision is important and necessary – especially in under-serviced
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