On 3 November 2022, President Ramaphosa speaking at the National Assembly said “the spatial inequality in our country is one of the horrible legacies of apartheid and of our past… All over the world, and in many places in the world, poor people live inside and near the cities. We have just exacerbated the situation by moving them outside the city…Another problem of course is that skills such as town planning are short and far between. We just don’t have good town planners like the Romans did, the Romans were great town planners, and they were able to build cities.

If you look at the development of cities, civilization was around building cities. That human was able to move forward …”

At the core of President Ramaphosa’s speech is the need for all of us to systematically and structurally implement programmes aimed at transforming the built environment, not just with bricks and mortar but evidencing transformation in its entirety in the sector. This is purely because the built environment impacts on people’s lives.

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