Estate Living Magazine Precinct Living - Issue 33 | Page 8

PLACES TO BE,
TO LIVE AND TO THRIVE
People move from their rural agricultural existence or small-town life to
cities, drawn by the allure of financial freedom and a better life – who doesn’t
dream of living better, safer, and, dare I say it, financially more secure?
This has resulted in rampant urban sprawl, some organised but most often haphazard, segregating
and sometimes downright ugly. Which in turn has city planners and developers scrambling for a
solution that satisfies all aspects of Maslow’s hierarchy – the innate need for wellbeing.
Historically, these areas of low-density urban sprawl, such as the suburbs of old, the RDP
government-funded social housing projects and apartheid-era townships, have been of little
social and economic value and reek of inefficiency with their reliance on lengthy transport routes
– both to work and to play. Roll on a new era of doing things where progressive developers,
along with city planners, look at things through a new lens – that of densification and multi-use
developments, and the creation of polynuclear ‘precincts’. In a nutshell, these precincts are ‘new’
towns and development areas that operate holistically, providing places to live, work and play.
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