Online Reporter
THE proliferation of fuel stations around Harare, usually in residential areas and usually surrounded by houses rather than being placed in existing shopping centres, has been opposed by the many who suddenly find themselves next door to one of these new service stations and all the ancillary development.
There are safety concerns, although the safety regulations are tight and there have never been fires at service stations, new or old.
The far more severe problem is the accompanying noise, smell and disturbance of vehicles revving all day and night, made far worse by the additional development that those building these service stations seem to be allowed to get away with.
It is rare for a new service station to be minus its take-away shop or shops or even a food court, guaranteeing not just the immediate disturbance but a flood of extra street litter as drivers and their passengers dump the remains of their meals out their vehicle windows onto nearby roads without a care in the world.
Almost always a row of shops is added, and in some cases even a supermarket, probably because a service station planning permission in the past automatically included permission for a kiosk that sells tyres, batteries, the odd car accessory, a few snacks and sweets and some cold drinks. The commercial rights for such a little kiosk have been stretched into the food courts and shopping centres.
Harare City Council has been responding very slowly. New regulations have been drawn up, although it took questioning by a Parliamentary committee to find that out, and to get an outline of these new unannounced regulations. A more responsive council would have acted earlier, inviting public participation and input into the new regulations.
One major and desirable change is the way the proposal is to be advertised. The developer has to erect a billboard on the proposed site with details of the development and details of the procedures for objections, comment and even letters of support to be submitted, along with the deadlines.
There are also, so far unpublicised, minimum distances from the nearest houses and for the service station complex to be walled. We have yet to hear about what sort of additional commercial development will or will not be allowed as the traditional kiosk permission is stretched into something a lot grander.
Slightly more promising is the requirement that any new service station must be at least 1,5km from any existing service station.
These planning changes ameliorate the problem, but do not sort out the fundamental objections. Until a few years ago any service station had to be in an existing commercial area, either the city centre, industrial sites or in or adjacent to a suburban shopping centre. That concentrated the traffic and disturbance and allowed planners to make provision for required access roads, car parking and the like.
Those who did not mind a degree of disturbance, but wanted convenience could live next door to one of these shopping centres, which it was recognised could well expand over time, while those desiring higher levels of peace and quiet would live further away. Liberalisation of planning rules mainly allowed more conversion to offices or quiet home businesses without much traffic.
But service stations are closer on the decibels and disturbances to panel beaters than to offices of accountants and lawyers or a software house and it is surprising that they were allowed outside the traditional commercial centres. New shopping centres are often needed, but the planning approval mechanism, including the requirement for new local plans, is far more complex than sneaking in a new service station with a row of shops and a major drive-in takeaway.
Admittedly there are a handful of shopping centres on former farms incorporated into Harare, with the grandfathered farm kiosks selling cabbages becoming giant shopping centres since there was an ill-defined commercial right.
Even with the new requirements for new service stations being spread out more, the ribbon development that has been allowed to proliferate along the main roads in Harare, rather than being concentrated into properly planned district, regional and local shopping and commercial centres, is still making the city more and more difficult to navigate
Rapid economic growth will entail a lot more commercial development, and will entail more commercial and shopping centres. But this should be incorporated into the master plans for the metropolitan area and the local plans for the city centre and each suburb or ward, so that we can create liveable environments rather than just a concrete desert that rich people can drive through on their way to their estates beyond the borders.
Such centres can also include modest regulated markets for those micro businesses now run by vendors out of shacks or wooden cabins, businesses meeting a demand but not adding to the attractions of each area.
It is naive to think that because there has not been a fuel fire or explosion before then it is something to worry less about. We never had a ferry carrying so many people capsize on the Kariba waters but it did. So do not underplay the possibility of an entire service station with all its underground fuel storage tanks exploding in the middle of a residential area and creating a disaster of unparalleled proportions. We were too naive not to see the Kariba ferry disaster. We are naive not to see the pending disaster at rickety Rufaro Stadium and we are naive not to see impending cholera pandemic ensuring as a result of our dirty urban areas come the rains. We must not get comfortable with reacting to crises. They can also be avoided by taking precautions. Buses, Kombis, private vehicles are still flying on the ground. People are still building houses on wetlands, illegal mining is destroying the entire environment while we praise ourselves for breaking gold production targets. How many times have we had fire gutting the Glen View Area 8 furniture complex? 15 times!! Are we waiting to have casualties before something is done about that place? Who has been to Sally Mugabe hospital lately and see how run down that place is? Are we waiting for a fire to gut the place down taking hundreds of patients with it before we upgrade that hospital’s fire fighting equipment? There are so many potential disasters in this country waiting to happen and people just don’t care to pro-act.