Sikhumbuzo Moyo-Bulawayo Bureau
BULAWAYO has run out of State land for development, prompting calls for a shift towards multi-storey flats and office blocks to accommodate more residents and Government offices within the limited available space.
Speaking during the Bulawayo Provincial Development Committee’s fourth-quarter and final meeting of the year at Mhlahlandlela Government Complex yesterday, Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution for Bulawayo Metropolitan Province Judith Ncube said the city needed to rethink its urban development model and make better use of existing land through high-rise buildings.
Minister Ncube said the shortage of State land was presenting challenges in meeting the province’s accommodation and infrastructure needs.
“Bulawayo has run out of State land and this presents a serious problem. We were at the Mabuthweni Government houses where there are 30 of them. If we demolish, say, two, relocate those families and then construct a two-storey building, we will have six families staying on the same land area instead of two,” she said.
Minister Ncube said multi-storey construction would allow more people to be accommodated on existing land, reducing pressure to identify additional land for housing and other developments.
She said a delegation of central and local Government officials had previously travelled to Egypt on a study tour to learn from its high-rise developments, with lessons from the visit expected to inform local planning approaches.
“We need to critically analyse our situation and offer solutions to the land space issue. If we move that way, we can actually reduce people’s cries over lack of accommodation,” said Minister Ncube.
Her remarks come as Government pushes for a change in the country’s urban development model, with planners being urged to prioritise multi-storey construction to curb urban sprawl and protect agricultural land.
Speaking at the Zimbabwe Regional and Urban Planning Annual Conference in Bulawayo last week, Local Government and Public Works Minister Daniel Garwe said Government would not approve urban development plans that failed to allocate at least 40 percent of development land to multi-storey construction. Continued horizontal expansion was putting pressure on productive agricultural land, warning that the country risked compromising its food production capacity if the trend persisted.
“We are aware that Zimbabwe has got boundaries, just like the Republic of South Africa, Botswana or Zambia. We are an agriculture-based region. Our driving focus in our economies is agriculture. If we decide to continue building horizontally, expansively eating into agricultural land, the region will become a net importer of food in no time. So what do we do to circumvent that? We must build better vertically,” he said. Minister Garwe said the National Human Settlements Policy required 40 percent of land earmarked for development to be reserved for flats, adding that plans that did not meet the requirement would not be approved.
“If there is any plan without that provision, that plan will be struck off the register without negotiation. I am now barking orders as the Minister of Local Government and Public Works. We must set aside 40 percent of our land for development for the construction of flats,” he said.
He said the policy shift should also apply to commercial developments, particularly shopping malls, which should increasingly adopt multi-storey designs instead of occupying extensive tracts of land.
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