GOOD PLANNING PRACTICE ACROSS LARGE & SUCCESSFUL WORLD CITIES

18 June 2007

The conference comprised of a series of presentations under a number of themes including

Strategic Planning, Precinct Development, Sustainability and Regeneration. It was evident from
all presentations that even large global cities, though in a different form and scale, are still facing
similar challenges as us. For instance the issue of social housing/housing for the poor is still an
issue worldwide. Viena, Vancouver and New York presentation all pointed to some kind of
social housing interventions. In Viena the issue of social housing arose out of the need to attract
youth to the city as existing residents are ageing and property prices are extremely high.

Other highlights of presentations include the critique of planning by Phillip Thompson. He stated
that planning conferences usually remain at abstract level, hence fail to connect meaningfully
with issues at grassroots level.

This report provides elaborative summary of two case studies relating to stadium planning and
transport planning. The two case studies have been chosen because of their relevance to current
planning processes at eThekwini Municipality. These case studies are La Plaine Saint-Denis
regeneration and Portland transit orientated development.

Case study 1: La Plaine Saint-Denis regeneration, presented by Paul Lecroart

This presentation focused on stadium planning. Paul put emphasis on the designing of stadia as
multifunctional venues with a range of activities within the stadium and the stadium precinct,
e.g. retail and accommodation within the precinct. Stade de France is an 80 000 seater stadium. It
was designed to be able to accommodate rugby, football and athletics and non sporting events
such as concerts.

The main lesson in this presentation is the successful use of the World cup to regenerate a
declining town. The decision to build stade de France at La Plaine Saint-Denis was taken in
1994. At the time La Plaine Saint – Denis was a run down/ declining industrial town
characterized by decline in investment, poor housing, and high unemployment rate. The national
stadium could have been built in other parts of France, but a strategic decision was made to build
it in Saint- Denis as this is a central town and they wanted to use the stadium as a catalyst for
urban renewal. Pre-conditions were laid out prior the design of the stadium, i.e. the stadium
should be:
 An urban stadium,
 Physically integrated and
 Meeting local needs.

Building Stade de France in La Plaine Saint-Denis provided the opportunity to launch an initial
set of works to greatly improve the area's urban development. This included roofing over the A1
motorway, moving and enlarging the two regional train stations, providing wide multifunctional
roads and redesigning of public spaces creating large pedestrian zones. As a result, La Plaine
Saint-Denis
 became an attractive area for the service industry,
 experienced real estate boom,

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18 June 2007

 attracted new investment

 created more jobs and
 attracted more people (without gentrification)

There was also emphasis an on socio-economic issues including social housing and footbridge
connecting to poor neighborhoods and improving connectivity to secondary towns. Discussion
on these issues was taken further by Laurent Perrin at the second session where he outlined the
master plan of the world cup precinct. The plan was based on the axis concept; it proposed the
development of 7 new towns, which were later scaled down to 5 due to oil crisis and lack of
funding. New towns were linked/ connected to the city centre through high speed trains. The
plan involved a number of social, environmental and economic developments.

Paul highlighted some of the weak point of the project, e.g. slow infrastructure improvement post
1998. One of the reasons for this is that the government sphere responsible for implementation
was not at the right scale, i.e. state level rather than the city council level. He also stated that La
Plaine Saint-Denis still lacks a real sense of place and urban sprawl is still a problem.

Comments
The City of Johannesburg, as I gathered from Phil Harrison’s comments, welcomed the
presentation with regret; looking back at a number of missed opportunities in the design of their
2010 stadia. It is interesting to note that Durban‘s approach to stadium design and location
reflects international best practice. Similarities between Stade de France and the Durban Stadium
are numerous. Our stadium is strategically located within the inner city; we therefore have all the
opportunities to ensure that major investments in the stadium, the stadium precinct, transport and
other inner city projects result in integrated and sustainable urban regeneration and renewed faith
in the inner city.

We also have a challenge to plan ahead as to how we can keep the momentum after 2010 as
some of our urban regeneration projects have timeframes extending beyond 2010.

Case study 2: Portland: Transport Orientated Development, presented by

Bob Yakas

This was quite an informative presentation. It outlined a strategic approach that combines Urban
planning and transport planning to direct city growth whilst improving the public transport
system and dealing with problems of congestions in the roads. The city of Portland adopted a
strategy of using high speed public transport rail infrastructure to guide urban development. The
strategy worked on hierarchy of centres, that is, the Portland region/main city centre, smaller
regional centres, town centres and station communities. The rail system comprises of 4 lines, the
blue line servicing the east and the west side, the red airport line and the yellow interstate line.

The main lesson from this case study is the planning process adopted in implementing the transit
orientated development. A town planner was appointed for each station area to drive the station
area planning. Improvement in land use intensities and densities were a prerequisite for the

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18 June 2007

extension of rail line to a particular station community. There was also a city wide public
awareness campaign including conferences, symposiums and road shows to educate
communities, developers and other relevant stakeholders about the station communities/Light
Rail Transit (LRT) concept. As part of the institutional structure, were citizens’ advisory
committees and regional coordinators to ensure community buy in, participation and support.

There were number of planning activities involved to bring the plan to fruition. These include
land assemble, amendment of zoning schemes and development of specific area plans. All these
had to be tied back to the Portland - citywide development strategy.

There are also some lessons to be learned from the citywide development strategy. The strategy
outlined preferred form of regional growth and set out related conditions, policies and
interventions. Further to that, government made relevant infrastructure investment in support of
the preferred growth to minimize deviance and attract private sector investment. The intentions
of the citywide development strategy were taken into consideration throughout the planning
process of station communities and station town centres. Intensions of the citywide strategy
cascaded down to the level of detailed design of neighborhoods, streets and pedestrian
walkways. Private parking requirements in new town centre developments were minimized,
streets made narrow and pedestrian walkways widened. Cities were planned to be pedestrian and
public transport friendly without completely excluding automobiles. For instance in the case of
Oronco, extending out from the light rail and town center is a grid of walkable, tree-lined streets
and parks, featuring cottages, condominiums and row houses. There are also park and ride
facilities in each station to encourage private car owners to use public transport.

Bob warned that the provision of high speed, reliable and safe public transport system does not
replace automobiles and does not necessarily solve the problem of congestion in roads. It only
provides an alternative mode of transport, which those who do not want to be stuck in road
traffic may use.

Another important, yet arguably, comment he made is that light rail provides a better public
transport solution than Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as it gives investors, particularly those
interested in investing along the public transport route, some certainty hence present low risk. In
case of BRT, one is not guaranteed of the future of the public transport system, it can be easily
pulled out if not successful as infrastructure investments are limited and can be easily recycled
back to automobiles. He further stated that some cities advocate for a multi-modal approach,
which is a combination of BRT and light rail.

Comments and recommendations

As much as there are some similarities between Portland transit orientated development with
some of the current transport proposals and planning intervention at eThekwini, I doubt if we
have reached the point where we have an integrated citywide strategy that promote higher
densities and high land use intensity along public transport routes. Even though High Priority
Public Transport (HPPT) routes have been identified and intensions to contain high densities
within urban edge and along these routes articulated, there are still no accompanying proactive

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18 June 2007

amendments to town planning schemes or educational campaigns in support of this. It was clear
from the discussion that cities promoting public transport system as a preferred mode of transport
have to move away from using car/motor infrastructure as a foundation for urban development.

It is recommended that a localized transit orientated development perspective be investigated.

Such investigation would have to culminate to proposals to inform a citywide strategy that will
pull together both transport planning and town planning interventions in an integrated and
proactive manner.