Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa April 2014 | Page 48

SMART MOVES

BY ADRIAN MASEROW

A sustainable environment
Mixed-use developments yield greater gains and spreads risk

W

e must actively include places of work
(offices), with places to live-in (hotels/
homes/ apartments), with shopping centers
and retail nodes, places of relaxation and play (from
parks and squares to bars, to theatres and galleries), the
Civic realm, transportation hubs (stations), educational
facilities and other programmes.
Separate use zoning disconnects with the principal
of diversification and healthy and efficient urban
development from its full potential. The result is that
these developments diminish their ambition and result
in unsustainable environments. With the complex
issues around mixed-use developments we can engage
more fully with an active urban context. Yet precincts
and single structures must actively be changed towards
compact and integrated developments that belong to
the economics of sustainability. Development which
encourages the connections of a wider web of spatial
relationships must now be promoted. According to
the author Peter Buchanan, “this pursuit is driving
evolutionary change in architectu