Evaluating project management through the lens of an Urban Manager: the case of Lehae

Abstract

In South Africa, over the past 10 years, newspaper articles and other publications about local government have commonly been reporting about unsatisfied citizens. The reports indicate that the high levels of dissatisfaction are a reaction to poor service delivery of housing, access to electricity, water and sanitation by local municipalities. This research report takes a qualitative case study approach and aims to evaluate the project management processes in the City of Johannesburg through the lens of an urban manager. The research report outlines that urban management is a broad and holistic approach to the development of a city. Thus, making an urban manager one that controls, balances and influences multiple dimensions that affect the development and growth of an urban area. Urban management is inclusive of all the elements that are essential to the functioning of a city, requiring the effective and efficient management of them all. This research focuses on only one of those elements, and that is the effective project management of municipal development projects. The literature review specifies that the one true test of good urban management is the provision of infrastructure. This research thus focuses on the project management task of an urban manager, as project management is a key contributing factor to the delivery of infrastructure. The research report uses the Lehae Mixed-Income Housing Development Project as the case study through which the evaluation of project management from the urban managers perspective will be done. This research report depicts the dynamics that make it complex for local government to follow a rational comprehensive and systematic method of completing a project within a contested and complex space. The complexity theory explicitly explains the constant complex system that the urban management concept exists in, with local government being one of three spheres of government and the closest sphere to the beneficiaries of government initiatives. Therefore, having to manage and influence the expectations and interests of multiple stakeholders. This research report found that urban management in the context of the City of Johannesburg proves difficult to implement. There are numerous factors that contribute to the difficulty of implementing urban management in the CoJ, the most prominent of them being the decentralised structure of the municipality with clear division of labour and city officials that practice within specialised areas. The lack of the holistic urban management practice at a lower level contributes to the limited project management implemented by the city on the Lehae Mixed Development Housing Development