Hout Bay residents are furious after the Western Cape government gave the environmental nod for a gated housing development on the slopes of the Karbonkelberg, next to the Sentinel.
The Residents’ Association of Hout Bay describes the housing plan as “an upmarket elite development for the very wealthy” and says the approval by the provincial Environment and Planning department last week is “insensitive”.
“We are amazed that this application, by a Johannesburg developer, has been approved by the province on the Karbonkelberg mountainside, in spitting distance of the Hangberg,” says chairman Len Swimmer. “The timing of this approval could not be more insensitive, coming at this time.”
The issue of housing on the mountainside above the valley has become a political hot potato in the past two months, after violent protests against efforts by the City of Cape Town to remove illegally constructed shacks on and beyond the firebreak on the slopes of Hangberg and the Sentinel.
Hangberg residents say the area is bursting at the seams and requires new land for housing.
An environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the proposed upmarket development was done in 2007.
The province did not approve the full development proposal for erf 3 477, submitted by Elegant Square Trading 249 cc, for 35 single residential properties, two general residential erven for group houses, and roads and stormwater services.
It refused to allow 14 erven to be developed along the top section of the property but authorised 21 single plots and two general plots for 26 group houses in the lower half, covering a total of 1.9 hectares.
The other 18.52ha making up the property will be incorporated into the Table Mountain National Park, the submission states.
But the residents’ association argues that making the ceding of part of the land a condition of approval is not legally competent, as has been proved in other development applications.
In its approval, the province notes that there will be one entrance to the development with access control. It says its approval was based on a combination of factors, “related primarily to the biophysical characteristics of the site and the prevention of urban encroachment into natural areas on a mountain slope”.
The botanical specialist had rated the site as being of “moderate to high sensitivity” and of “high to very high conservation importance” on a local, regional and national level.
“A list of recommendations/mitigation measures was compiled by the botanical specialist which, if implemented by the developer, would, in the botanist’s opinion, make the development acceptable,” the province states.
Its approval also states that the access entrance to the residential estate must not be visually intrusive and it expresses concern about the figure of a “large, tall entrance” given in the visual impact assessment of the EIA.
The City of Cape Town does not ban gated residential developments outright but adopts a “cautious” approach and says such proposals are only considered “where constitutionally justifiable and subject to strict criteria”.
Its 2007 policy states: “Whereas cities are usually open and accessible places where citizens can freely move about and interact, engage in business, social activity and recreation, gated communities can result in an exclusionary environment with large areas closed off from general public access, causing fragmentation and segregation of the social and urban fabric.”
The residents’ association, which is formally appealing against the province’s environmental approval, says the property lies outside the approved urban edge.
It also points to its initial objection to the proposed development last year in which it noted that the erf was wholly within the proclaimed Cape Peninsula Protected Natural Environment, where any development is allowed only by permit.
“Previous attempts to rezone and develop the erf were rejected for good reason – nothing has changed,” the association said.
The assumption that there was any good reason to move the urban edge “considerably further up” into the Cape Peninsula Protected Natural Environment and finalise it there was outrageous, Swimmer argued.
But the province’s approval notes that the Peninsula Urban Edge Study of 2001 “clearly” states that the urban edge relating to erf 3477 “will be determined by the outcome of appropriate development proposals for this property”.
The property is zoned rural, which allows for only one main building and appropriate outbuildings, and rezoning and subdivision applications have yet to be approved.
The city’s planning and building development management department was unable to comment.
Its director, Cheryl Walters, said it had not yet received any request to comment on rezoning and subdivision applications.
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