Who is designing THE CITY PLANNING FOR GABORONE?

I have always felt that Gaborone is being developed on the parallels of City Planning modes as we were bombarded at architecture & planning schools. I have never seen any Urban design Planning. Who designed or are the City Planners of Gaborone?

Laona Segaetsho, Olebile Molefi and Gaone Keloreng,

“The Problem is information is not always available. Let us Dialogue Professionally: No Politics”

I have always been concerned about the non inclusion of aesthetics in our planning and designs. Our structures are simply designed for one use and most work only for 8 hours in every 24 hours. This seems like a waste. What does it take to incorporate elements of tourism, leisure and entertainment, etc, to optimize value?

Please dig deep and let us know what is going-on here. Where is the blueprint, when and who designed it? Take the Botswana Television (BTV) plot for example. Do you know how many malls, BTV’s and apartments can fit in that plot but look at us we just have one TV station in the entire plot.  Yet we continue to say that there is no land. How come these planners do not seem to have the same vision that everyone has. They don’t seem to know that there is a shortage of land. Look at the schools they are building. We can fit a school and a hospital on those same plots. The university in Palapye is literally a county.

The architects, physical planners, roads engineers, water & waste water engineers, electrical engineers and Environmental Health officers work hand in hand for most of developments in our towns and cities, including villages which are declared as planning areas. Usually the physical planners are the leaders since they have to divide the given area into different types of land use, from there those who get the opportunity to get the land will develop according to the use. The architects then come in with the drawings, they follow a development code and other acts like building control, public health, it is a lengthy process.

I think the problem here is that our planners are not given that mandate to make the city beautiful, unless I am not aware of, every plot holder is given that responsibility even though it is not written down somewhere. So whether it is a residential or a commercial area, the planners only have to ensure that it has been developed for what it was planned for. But for landscaping i think it depends on the concerned local authority, for example for Selebi Phikwe the park section is mandated to beautify the town, so it is not an easy task.  The question is who is the plot owner, what future projection the owner has about the plot, we have to consider a lot of things. So go it is difficult. I think it should start with educating the plot owner about the aesthetic look of the towns and cities.

We need to visit well developed cities. Take Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London, Singapore, Washington DC, they seem to follow a similar pattern in Urban Planning. Bulawayo is another good example, but Gaborone is on a league of its own. My problem then again is that Physical Planners are not trained as Urban Designers.They actually do not do any urban design but just approval of planning submissions. I wonder who demarcates the land to urban planning?

It is about time we change or include the urban planning (I know it is there at University of Botswana) but make Urban Planning a Masters Degree course so that we have seasoned planners. Most seasoned international urban planners have studied architecture, environmental science & urban planning. But when they get to study a master’s degree to have a research topic they want to addressees. So here we are still playing and we are letting ourselves down.