However, it concluded that substantially more public-private partnerships were essential in ensuring Durban rejuvenated its inner-city zones completely.

While offering kudos for the milestones achieved in Warwick Junction, the Point, West Street around the City Hall and parts of the beachfront, the research indicated that lack of partnerships was hindering widespread investment on a par with Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The Trafalgar Inner City Report 2007, which was released last week measured world understandings against South African inner-city issues, demonstrating universal approaches to universal problems.

The report, now in its sixth annual edition, reflected the extent throughout the world to which inner cities shared the same problems, experiencing slum conditions ripe for building hijackers and slum lords and yet still home to thousands of people seeking better opportunities.

The report said that conventional measures for downtown Durban — such as office occupancy, rental levels, building values, business turnover, visitor numbers to key sites, new public and private sector investment and residential property values — demonstrated that the city was better off than any time in the past 10 years.

“The inner city has made the transition from the haunt of white, blue rinse pensioners to a funky African hub with relative ease,” the report said.

Yet the city also displayed the lowest per capita income among SA’s large cities, and had been substantially slower than the rest of the country in attracting private sector investment to the inner city.

It also highlighted how South African inner-city problems mirrored those experienced internationally, and called on local experts to consider universal answers when seeking solutions.

The findings showed how redevelopment in Toronto incorporated mixed-use housing and integrated residential and commercial opportunities to minimise the ecological footprint.

Trafalgar chairman Neville Schaefer said it was an international human phenomenon to believe the local situation was unique, yet a broader world view highlighted the commonality of problems and solutions.

“There are other countries and cities that have faced — and resolved — the same issues and in asking for or investigating their approaches, their pathways to success offer hope locally,” Schaefer said.

Durban’s increasing economic growth had attracted job seekers from around the province, but limited accommodation was further squeezed by rising property prices.

The report called for a balance between investors’ needs and those of the urban poor when tackling the question of housing.

This was particularly relevant in the Point area where more than R2bn worth of world-class residential property developments had been built, anchored by the city-funded R730m uShaka marine park.

According to the report, Durban required strategic partnerships that increased the scope for devolved action matched by a coherent social programme — public housing, transport and safety — to leverage change in neighbouring areas.

The city’s increased economic growth in the past few years had attracted job seekers from the KwaZulu-Natal hinterland and in an environment of scarce accommodation and multibillion-rand investments like the International Convention Centre, uShaka and the new soccer stadium, property prices had risen sharply. In the past two years, improved sentiment in the inner city had prompted financial institutions Standard Bank, Absa and Old Mutual to undertake multimillion-rand investments into new buildings within a 1km radius of the City Hall.

However, the report criticised the council’s investments for not necessarily sustainably leveraging private sector investment.

“It is hard to see a clear balance between public capital investment and social programmes.

“We need a balance between meeting the needs of visitors and investors versus the needs of the urban poor for housing and other facilities,” the report said.