Estate Living Digital Publication Issue 11 November 2015 | Page 41

“To be a success a development must have a sense
of exclusiveness; it must be able to tell a unique story
and live by it in its layout and lifestyle offering. Today’s
homeowners are demanding a wealth of sporting
activities, state of the art security, outstanding
schooling, superb medical care and a unique story
that sets the development apart from others. If you
can achieve the above and in a smart rural village
too, where food is produced with integrity and there
is care for the environment, then what a pleasure.
Agriculture is very much the new golf”. The CMAI
philosophy is highly influenced by the long and
continuous working relationships and exposure to
America, where the rural new town concept has
received extremely positive feedback. “When we go
on holiday, we plan it in such a way that we can look at
developments in different countries, as it is important
to see and understand what is going on everywhere”,
says Chris, who when designing Thesen Islands spent
days in Venice with his wife, measuring canal widths,
sidewalks and bridges and then the same again in the
Intracoastal Waterway on the American East Coast.
One of the most exciting projects on the drawing
board for the talented team is a new rural town in
the Limpopo Province for the ZZ2 group, the largest
tomato farmers in the world. The model is similar
to the Crossways Farm agri-village model and will
interweave ZZ2’s cutting edge high tech green
farming techniques in order to create a sustainable
new rural town. “This really has all the makings
of a unique development and I think it will be the
only new town with a fully-fledged, fully stocked,

commercially managed game reserve woven into the
town boundaries. It will also have amazing heritage
sites, farm lands, rivers and mountains, as well as a
series of state of the art agriculture research facilities,
all interlaced into the fabric of the land. In addition
to the mandatory green measures such as rainwater
harvesting, solar water heating, security and fibre
optics, it will also involve commercial agriculture as
well as poverty alleviation, job creation and training,
all of which are national priorities. Once the rural
new town development really gets off the ground,
Chris would like to see how these same concepts can
be used in low cost housing instead of the current
approach where people are given homes with no
sense of a neighbourhood, community spaces,
walkability or sensitivity to the design; a lack of basic
land development principles and no attention to
sustainability.
Over the last three decades, CMAI has been involved
in numerous projects countrywide, including the
master plan for Pezula Golf Estate, Belvidere and
Thesen Islands, as well as several other completed
estates which are awaiting approval from local
government. Despite a wealth of experience in urban
design, architecture, land planning and landscape
architecture, it still took the company seven years
to obtain formal approval for the Thesen Islands
development. “You literally have to fight your way
through the quagmire of rules and regulations whilst
another obvious challenge is obtaining finance,
especially if it is a new or unconventional concept like
a Rural New Town”, explained Chris.
Having received the Outst [