Perhaps it’s disingenuous of those who may be casting aspersions on the motives of the council and we should all just be grateful that something tangible is in the pipeline for underserviced communities, even if it isn’t necesarily infrastructure, housing or education related.

According to Mayoral Committee Member for Community Services, Councillor Tandeka Gqada: “It’s important that residents of all communities have the kind of facilities that ensure an improved and more enjoyable quality of life. We are committed to providing this for the people of the Cape Town municipality and this upgrade plan is just one of the many ways we are doing that” the SA The Good News website reports her saying.

In short the City of Cape Town’s Community Services Directorate is embarking on a series of planned upgrades, with the intention of providing quality recreational and educational services across the City. In total, the upgrades will cost more than R132 million over the next municipal financial year.

The City will be building brand new facilities and upgrading established facilities in order to attain what it says are “world class standards.”

Plans include sports centres and swimming pools, halls, libraries and parks. One of the main buzz phrases to come out of the announcement is ‘spray parks’. A spray park is a water feature which sprays water so users can play in it. Essentially, it is sprinklers installed intermittently in a grassy area.

Gqada has explained that the spray park concept is being applied worldwide with great success. She has pointed out that as a spray park has no standing water, it “eliminates the need for lifeguards or other supervision as there is practically no risk of drowning”.

Spray parks are intended to service communities where there is no municipal swimming pool, school pools or pools in private houses. The City has mapped every single swimming pool in the metro to ensure that new pools and spray parks are built in the most ‘appropriate’ areas of the city.

Areas in which community upgrades and new developments are planned include Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Imizamo Yethu, Du Noon, Nyanga and Athlone. The City’s position is that identification of these areas form part of the City’s long term redress plan to eradicate the historical legacy of Apartheid.

Athlone is an example area for Community Service upgrades and development. The City of Cape Town’s Community Service Directorate has added Vygieskraal Stadium, the Manenberg municipal pool and the Athlone municipal pool to their list of facilities to be revamped. A total of R3.2 million of the project’s funds will be spent in Athlone. The project is set to be complete by June 2013.

Tandeka Gqada said via a press release that two primary methods are used to identify and prioritise under-served communities. “Firstly, community research is used to determine from communities what their needs and preferences relating to community facilities are,” she said. “Secondly, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was commissioned by the City to analyse current community facility provision and distribution, and model future needs spatially, for the whole metropolitan municipal area.”

Kewtown and Heideveld will be receiving a full-size artificial soccer field in the next municipal financial year to the tune of around R5 million each based on the above facility planning methodology.

People’s Post spoke to Kewtown resident and high school teacher, Ian McLean, who believes not upgrading any educational services in Athlone “is an indictment on the City itself”. However, he is thrilled that the Athlone pool will be upgraded. “An upgrade for that pool is long overdue,” says McLean. “We were promised it would be fixed up before the 2010 World Cup but nothing happened. I’m glad that something will finally be done about it now,” he says.

Ian McLean at least has a positive attitude despite concerns about unattended areas of need. One can only hope these upgrades and developments have a positive spin-off for the communities involved. However when communities are in turmoil about basic service delivery spray parks and the like may seem like offering “Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" that is: “let them eat cake.” On the flip side, why should 'basic' services be euphimism for drab or uninteresting and surely one's ranking on the LSM scale should not detract from concepts such as quality and creativity. At least Cape Town is thinking creatively if nothing  else. No doubt more debate will emerge over time concerning related matters around social infrastructure delivery in SA.