The Impact and Assessment Committee (IACOM) of Heritage Western Cape (HWC) has again stood their ground as an independent expert body on heritage and resisted the pressure to rubber-stamp development willy-nilly in the Two Rivers Urban Park, which is the wider Park in which the River Club development is located. On October 9th this year, they held a meeting to consider the Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) submitted as part of the Two River Local Spatial Development Plan (TR-LSDF), which is meant to update the existing planning framework (the 2012 Table Bay District Plan). The IACOM came to the conclusion that the HIA under the TR-LSDF failed to meet the requirements of the National Heritage Resources Act. The HIA now has to be revised to address heritage considerations more appropriately.
This is an important victory because the LSDF is the policy framework used for planning decisions for the Two River Urban Park (TRUP) and the TRUP is the park in which the River Club is located.
The current District Plan for the Two Rivers Urban Park is the Table Bay District Plan which was formally adopted by the City of Cape Town Council in 2012. This plan endorses the Two Rivers Urban Park Contextual Framework and Phase 1 Environmental Management Plan (2003) as the local policy plan for the TRUP. This recognises the area as a conservation area and is not compatible with the proposed River Club development. That is why the developers have had to seek rezoning of the land, contrary to existing policy, through the Municipal Planning Tribunal (MPT). And that is why we and many others are appealing the rezoning because the decision is inconsistent with the existing planning framework.
Fact 1: The existing land use planning policy framework for the areas does not support the MPT’s decision.
In 2016, the City initiated a process to update the planning framework. That is perfectly sensible because planning documents should stay abreast of latest information. The then-Mayor signed off on a Co-design process to develop a new LSDF for TRUP. Many stakeholders invested much time in developing a vision for the TRUP. This design process involving multiple stakeholder workshops produced, in 2017, an agreed vision for the TRUP and a process plan with extensive participation to reach a final design. The emphasis was on development-lite, conservation heavy for the park. However, it seems that this was not acceptable to the authorities, who quietly binned this co-design output in favour of the usual mode of planning – appoint consultants who work behind closed doors, avoiding communication with stakeholders – and guess what...
The ‘new’ draft LSDF put out for comment in October 2019 is completelly unashamed in including the River Club development as a fait accompli in the draft LSDF. Although the LSDF nominally claims to have taken the previous LSDF co-design process into account, it was clear that the draft put out for comment in 2019 ignored that process completely. In fact, it was more like a 180 degree about turn from that process.
Fact 2: The new draft LSDF from the City of Cape Town accepted the River Club as a given within the broader TRUP.
The LSDF received many objections and criticisms from multiple stakeholders. It also quietly removed the “Urban Park” from TRUP on the basis that it included land in Ndabeni that was not really part of a ‘park’ but part of a light industrial area. OCA objected strongly to this sleight of hand, which we believe was used to open the door to undoing the idea of TRUP as a park and letting development stream ahead unimpeded by fair processes. Many submissions were made and the public participation process is ongoing.
However, the fact that the draft LSDF has not been approved and, in fact, may never be approved (as hinted at by the City’s Environmental Management Department) has not stopped the developers from claiming in their various planning documents that (a) the TR LSDF can inform how heritage should be dealt with at the River Club site; (b) the electricity demand posed by the development will be addressed under this new LSDF; (c) The draft LSDF includes “a change in vision for the Two Rivers area” which they link to a misrepresentation of the “Urban Inner Core concept.” What they say is “It is evident that the proposal for the River Club reflected in the current application is largely consistent with the proposals of the Draft LSDF, which was workshopped within the City of Cape Town and Provincial Department of Public Works prior to release. While it is recognised that this document is currently a draft, it nevertheless reflects the future intentions of these authorities. and will have legal status.”
However, the future intentions of these authorities have yet to be made public or subjected to a fair public participation process.
Fact 3: The developers have tried to use a flawed and as-yet to be finalised LSDF process to imply that their development is what the City of Cape Town and Provincial Department of Public Works want.
However, part of a new LSDF requires a separate Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA). That was submitted under the LSDF as a separate report for public comment in October 2019 and that is the document, with some revisions, after public input, that went to HWC in October 2020.
The problem is that the TR LSDF HIA attempted to compartmentalise heritage by creating this notion of ‘distributed spaces for memorialisation’ and argued that that the HIA should only focus on the highest and most abstract level of understanding of the area and leave determination of detailed layers of significance to precinct level studies. It is exactly this fudge that will create facts on the ground, to allow the River Club HIA (already deemed inadequate by HWC) to allow huge buildings to destroy the intangible heritage linked to the Open quality of the riverine valley. Without stopping to grade the area first, and then develop heritage indicators, there will be no way to preserve or recover lost intangible heritage. Exactly what the developer wants and exactly what we oppose.
In August 2020, a plaque along the Liesbeek, which acknowledges the role of the Khoi people in resisting Dutch colonial intrusion, was mysteriously vandalised and broken into multiple parts, as seen in the image above. Symbolically, this is exactly what the TR LSDF HIA has attempted to do by fragmenting heritage into bits that can be separately celebrated and so permit huge constructions to forever obliterate the intangible heritage associated with the open riverine valley. This is unacceptable. Just as an act of heritage vandalism, a heritage crime, is objectionable, so are the efforts of planner to retrofit heritage to suit development over any other social objectives.
We see now that the HWC IACOM agreed with us.
The IACOM came to the conclusion this month that the HIA under the TR-LSDF failed to meet the requirements of the National Heritage Resources Act for a number of reasons, including:
- A failure to give consideration to the intangible heritage resources and the mapping of these resources;
- Failure to recognise the significance of the site at a macroscale, including the valley, the TRUP and the Two Rivers in terms of a sense of place;
- Grading of identified heritage resources can only occur after significance is assigned and stakeholders are adequately consulted;
- Heritage significance should be the primary informant for the whole site and not just a parcel of the site;
- The assumption and inclusion of ‘assumed rights’ was problematic.
- The fragmentation of the wider site into development areas which are assessed separately risks preventing any ability to consider the TRUP in a holistic manner.
The IACOM concluded by recommending that a sub-committee of the HWC Council be constituted and commissioned to oversee the heritage related aspects of the TRUP project as well as submissions for developments that trigger emergency applications. IACom also recommended that the HIA Consultant review the HIA in relation to
a. Elevated level of significance to be attributed to the study area holistically
b. Updated grading of heritage resources to be undertaken
c. Interrogation and meaningful incorporation of public participation input especially regarding significances.
d. Further developing the spatial implications and indicators arising from the above.
e. Consideration be given to the issue of scale and its implications for the assessment process moving forward so that the holistic nature of the site and its significance is not lost.
Essentially, HWC agreed with us that the TRUP is of extremely high heritage significance. The Committee and consultants noted that the overall site is of at least Grade II heritage significance (meaning Provincial Heritage Status), if not higher (meaning National Heritage Status) and referred to previous IACOM comments in May 2017 as evidence.
Fact 4: HWC has directed that heritage cannot be parceled out into bits and pieces, distributed across the TRUP, but must be looked at holistically, including the River Club, in one assessment. The HIA must be revised.
We hope this will now open the door to HWC formally grading the TRUP for provincial heritage status as we requested in February this year.