Green commercial property development in urban South Africa: emerging trends, emerging geographies

Abstract

Within sub-Saharan Africa South Africa is one of the leaders in greening and initiatives for sustainable urban development. Notwithstanding the central role of climate change impacts and of the green challenge for the future, the greening of urban development has not been a major focus in local geographical research. The task in this paper is to investigate one aspect of reorienting the economy towards a pathway of low carbon growth and of addressing the green urban challenge. Specifically, issues around the greening of commercial property developments in South Africa are explored. Under the ratings of the Green Building Council of South Africa 50 green buildings existed by early 2014. Geographically these properties cluster in South Africa’s major cities, in particular Johannesburg, the country’s economic powerhouse and centre for corporate headquarters, and Pretoria, the administrative capital. New proposals for building retrofitting may result in a greater spatial spread of green buildings in the near future.

Unpacking the geography of tourism innovation in Western Cape Province, South Africa

“…Further practices are the use of vehicles with better fuel consumption and lower emissions and new build green buildings (cf. Rogerson, 2014). The largest shares of structural and social innovations are also found in the Cape Town city-region.…”

Urban tourism and climate change: Risk perceptions of business tourism stakeholders in Johannesburg, South Africa

“…As South Africa's most important locus for business tourism as well as the location of the largest cluster of green property developments in the country -including of green hotelsthe Sandton area of Northern Johannesburg provides an instructive case study in terms of interrogating the risk perceptions and responses of tourism stakeholders concerning climate change (Rogerson, 2014b;Rogerson & Sims, 2012). Nevertheless, South Africa's national baseline assessments about vulnerability and the impact of climate change on major tourism attractions and activities in the country inevitably focus mainly on nature tourism in the country's protected areas, Cape Town and the Winelands, the Garden Route and the beach attractions of coastal Kwazulu-Natal (Golder Associates, 2012).…”

The Importance of Sustainability Implementation for Business Corporations

“…Other than that, most research reveals that sustainable buildings manifest social benefits through improved safety and health (Lu & Taylor, 2018) that directly enhance the quality of life (Ajayi et al, 2019) and promotes a healthy life (Zhang, Kang, & Jin, 2018). Eichholtz & Kok (2018) and Rogerson (2014) experience reduced number of employee sick leave days and reduced staff turnover. Tenants report that employee skill intensity relates positively to corporate use of green office space.…”