The Church Square Revival Group invites interested parties to a tour of Church Square, Pretoria. RSVP here, Church Square Tour, and if you want to invite friends and family, point them in the same direction.
How Does It Work?
The free tour includes a guided insider’s tour of Church Square and the surrounding historic buildings. See Rediscover Church Square Pretoria Review
Parking is available at One on Mutual (215 Madiba Street) and Capitol Theatre (Parliament Street)
At 10h00, a walking group with a guide will meet in front of the Old Raadsaal. Depending on how fast the group moves, the tour will take 2 – 4 hours.
You can also walk alone, but certain buildings can only be accessed with a guide. Look out for the guided tour to visit buildings such as the Palace of Justice, Old Raadsaal, and possibly others.
You can follow news on Kerkplein Pretoria Church Square’s Facebook Page.
Market at the Sheds
After the tour, you can visit an inner-city arts and culture experience at Market at the Sheds.
Market at the Sheds parking is available at the State Theatre or by walking down Helen Joseph Street towards the Reserve Bank.
Background on the Church Square Revival Project (CSRP):
The Church Square Revival Project is a Public Private Community initiative working towards rejuvenating Church Square as a tourist destination and public space. Making the area cleaner and more accessible is the first step in creating a healthy public square with empty or underused buildings activated into vibrant community assets.
It is also seen as a way to revitalise Pretoria’s inner core. A communications gap has kept stakeholders, government institutions, and development assistance groups apart for too long, preventing us from being aware of our common interests and realising our combined power. Fortunately, the gap is closing, and we are starting to realise that what unites us is vastly more important than what divides us. We need to Make a Common Cause.
The CSRP Project is driven by a group of people from the community, the private, and the public sectors. It includes the City of Tshwane Municipality, Capital Collective NPO, TMPD, SAPS, the Pretoria Society of Advocates, and the City Property Administration. Shops, property owners, businesses in the area, and the community are also engaged, encouraging involvement and support.
Ultimately, the group wants a formal Public-Private Community Partnership working towards the sustainable rejuvenation of Pretoria’s city center.
An article on Inner-City Decay and Problem Buildings in Major South African Cities Two Decades Into the 21st Century, written by H F Conradie, J D Taylor, and W E Shaidi, provides a potential framework for the way forward:
In a context where city governments need to turn around inner-city decay, effective public sector program management is vital to a successful strategy, in line with international good practice. Aligning interest groups and stakeholders within a city government with interest groups in the private and community sectors is the first decisive step to be taken. The next logical step is allocating sufficient resources in a sustainable long-term model.
A turnaround program can only be successfully executed if a dedicated senior program manager is appointed at the city government level. Furthermore, a precinct-based approach is critical, where a manageable geographic area (for example, several street blocks in the historic inner-city) is brought under control and targeted for rejuvenation and property investment. A dedicated municipal unit to deal with problem buildings needs to be established – problematic properties could strategically become part of the solution.
The integrated public sector program management framework, regulatory regime, new normative inner-city turnaround model, and specialists’ recommendations can all be useful to city governments facing the challenges of inner-city decay and problem buildings. Accelerated local economic development, well-maintained inner-city properties, increased property tax income for municipalities, and enhanced tourism are the potential results of a successful inner-city turnaround. A long road lies ahead to achieve such progress in most South African cities.
That is it from me on the How to Explore Church Square Pretoria. I hope you found the information helpful and that it inspires you to go on the tour yourself.
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