City pledges to work with the Princess Vlei Forum in the transformation and management of Princess Vlei

31/5/2015

The Princess Vlei Forum is encouraged by the City's commitment to working closely with local communities in the transformation and rehabilitation of the public open space surrounding and including Princess Vlei.
        At a general meeting in March this year, Fay Howa (Conservation manager of Princess Vlei, City Parks) and David Gretton (Executive Support Officer to the Mayoral Member for Community Services and Special Projects.) confirmed that the City is willing to liaise with the Princess Vlei Forum as a "Friends" type community custodianship group in the transformation and management of Princess Vlei.
        The City has been drawing up a plan for Princess Vlei, based on the community vision presented by the Forum, as well as on its own management priorities. Once this proposal has been approved by the relevant City departments, and considered by the Forum, the Forum will work with the City on enabling a process of thorough and meaningful community engagement. The Forum is strongly committed to ensuring that any decisions regarding Princess Vlei are taken with active community consultation. We have been informed by the City that these proposals will be available for discussion in June.
        Since its inception in 2012 to co-ordinate efforts to prevent the mall proposed for Princess Vlei, the Forum has grown steadily, and now has a support base of 900 people on its mailing list, and an active membership of over 90 individuals and organisations. This includes local civic organisations, WESSA, schools, and religious and cultural groups.
        A critical part of the Forum’s work has been not only to stop the mall, but to ensure that Princess Vlei is developed and managed under the guidance of the community. The Forum has therefore been committed to building a broad-based, transparent and democratic organisation that can gather the views of interested groups, facilitate the formulation of a community vision for the space, and act as liaison between the City and the community. For this work, the Princess Vlei Forum was recognised as a World Design Capital project on Community-led design, and received an award from the International Association of Public Participation.
        Through the campaign a vision emerged of how Princess Vlei could best serve the surrounding community as a natural recreational site, celebrating the Khoisan cultural heritage of the site, its environmental beauty and rich diversity, its spiritual value as a baptism site, its educational value as an outdoor classroom, and its recreational and community building value as a public space. Several workshops were held and an online survey conducted to canvass views on this.
        These ideas were consolidated and presented to the City in March 2014, at the historic meeting where Deputy Mayor Ian Nielson announced that in response to the community efforts, the plans for the mall had been scrapped.  Since then, the Princess Vlei Forum has been in ongoing dialogue with Alderman Walker’s office to explore ways not only to transform Princess Vlei, but to enable meaningful community engagement in its management. As Princess Vlei is a complex site, involving several City departments, the process has been frustratingly laborious, but we have been assured that the draft plan will be available shortly for review.

7 Comments

jimmy

3/6/2015 04:08:05 pm

I support the Peoples Plan as developed by CAMPS. This is a great vision as inspired by the greater community of Grassy Park and Retreat

Tarryn

4/6/2015 04:00:39 am

I agree with Jimmy, why has no one seen the Forum's plan, the ideas and ground work was done by one person. Every school was brought on board by one person, adopt a plot, whose idea was that?

I support the People's Plan too! It has great vision and our Community needs something like that

Shaun

4/6/2015 04:07:45 am

There has been no transparency with regards to the plans for Princess Vlei. The Princess Vlei Forum has stolen one man's intellectual property and made it their own. Everyone is clearly fighting for the same thing which is restoration of open spaces and yet no one can come together and make it happen. They'd rather have feuds which are unnecessary. We all want the same thing for the community, BUT, what CAMPS has come up with is more transparent and has been shared with important people and the community itself.... What exactly is the plan that the CITY has come up with?

Princess Vlei Forum link

5/6/2015 02:52:56 am

In response to above comments:
1. The City did not "come up with" the plan. The City has taken the vision presented by the Forum, and is assessing it for feasibility. It will present an implementation plan based on that assessment. As the land-owner and critical stake holder, obviously the City needs to approve all proposals.
2. The vision was canvassed extensively in several open workshops, attended by key stakeholders. It has been available on our website for several months, and can be viewed at http://www.princessvlei.org/uploads/2/4/5/1/24519386/imagine_pv_the_peoples_visionsm.pdf. The workshops are all documented on this website.
3. We are working with the City to ensure that this process remains transparent. Once the City has drafted the plan to implement the vision, we will invite all to engage with it through a rigorous process.
4. The City has recognised the Forum because we are a constituted, broad based organisation accountable to our membership. Any individual or organisation may join, and any member may nominate and vote for office-bearers and on policy matters.
5. We would like to invite CAMPS to join the Forum. We are committed to enabling a sustainable and community-led transformation of the space. What is important is that the community pulls together to bring about this transformation.
6. At the onset of this process, Kelvin Cochrane was part of the Forum, and agreed that the plan should be shared and discussed by the community. While we have freely acknowledged that his ideas inspired the discussion, many others have come up with similar and other ideas. (See www.princessvlei.org/imagine-princess-vlei.html.)
7. Scores of volunteers put long hours in the work to save and create a vision for Princess Vlei. To say that it was the work of one man is untrue and undermines the huge community effort.

5/6/2015 08:54:32 am

I just read your response, your link says 'Imagine Princess Vlei' but on your website it says The People's Plan, which isn't any different to Camps' proposal, the only difference is the Eco duc Bridge. So if the community and your Forum worked long hours you did not really change anything.These ideas were long in the making since he started the Dressing of the Princess, he got the schools on board starting with South Peninsula High. Yes, the right thing would be to correspond with the man who's ideas your forwarded to City, because at the end of the day we would like to see the plan put in motion for the better of the community.

8/6/2015 05:36:13 am

Please be assured that we too are committed to realising the implementation a dynamic plan at the Vlei, but we are equally committed to ensuring that a proper process of stakeholder engagement is observed. However, given the complexity of the issues, it is not helpful to continue this discussion on the web. If you or anyone else wishes to meet with us, please send an email to [email protected]

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City pledges to work with the Princess Vlei Forum in the transformation and management of Princess Vlei

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