The City of Johannesburg, whose population is expected to grow to 8-million by 2040 from 3.8-million currently, has acknowledged that it will need to make material investments into transport, water and energy infrastructure if the city is to cope with this anticipated new population dynamic.

In releasing a draft Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) document on Tuesday executive mayor Parks Tau indicated that the city would also need to arrest key infrastructure backlogs that have emerged, while seeking to decouple the city from its current resource-intensive economic trajectory.

The draft document, which highlights a range of 2040 objectives, from dealing with health, housing and job creation problems, to adapting to and mitigating climate change, would now be canvassed at a series of consultation sessions over the coming nine weeks, culminating in a summit on October 20.

Speaking at the launch at the landmark Turbine Hall, and attended by hundreds of business, labour and community stakeholders, Tau said the strategy should emerge from the "conversations" that would take place over the coming weeks and should not be the product of any individual "genius or vision".

But the new strategy should seek to build on the previous GDS adopted in 2006, while the "choices" made should "frame" the five-year integrated development plans, as well as city investments over the period.

WATER WARNING

Tau warned that, in the absence of urgent infrastructure and conservation investments, water demand could exceed supply within two years. The city would also interrogate rainwater and stormwater harvesting to deal with the likely shortfall ahead of any supplementation from the second phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

Transport and urban planning investments were also critical, both to further "integrate" the city and to safeguard its future economic competitiveness.

The investments made should help deal with the current material distances between townships and suburbs in relation to where the citizenry work or are able to buy goods and services.

City manager-designate Trevor Fowler argued that the current dominant role played by private cars in the city’s transport system was "unsustainable". It would become more so as Joburg's inhabitants grew by 2.5-million over the GDS period.

Further bus and rail investment were, thus, required to build mass-transit solutions that could claw back the losses made to private transport over the past decades. In fact, research showed that taxi use had expanded from 3% in 1975 to 41% by 2009, while the use of bus transport had fallen from 22% to 4% over the same period, while train use had declined from 20% to 8%.

Tau also raised concerns about the future of waste management, indicating that there were few new suitable sites for landfill, while the existing facilities would reach their limits within eight years.

The city, therefore, hopes to include plans for separation of waste at source as well as programmes to facilitate the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste in the final GDS document.

The production of electricity from landfill gas could also be pursued as the city sought to diversify away from its reliance on coal and Eskom.