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Public to be consulted on new strategic plan for Seychelles |26 January 2015



Members of the public will be consulted soon on a proposed strategic plan for Mahé and a master plan for Victoria.

This came out at the end of the second workshop or ‘charette’ on the Seychelles Strategic Plan, Mahé Framework Plan and the Victoria Master Plan which was held over five days last week at the International Conference Centre (ICCS).

The last day of the charette on Friday saw the wrapping up of discussions on the preferred growth strategy on the various scenarios adopted which form the basis of the Mahé framework plan.

The presentation was conducted by Christopher Tunnel, director of ARUP (the contracted UK-based consultancy firm for the project).

The consultants also looked at Praslin and La Digue as well as the other islands. They were aided by resourceful local persons.

The wrap-up session was held in the presence of the Minister for Land Use and Habitat Christian Lionnet and the Minister for Finance, Trade and Investment Pierre Laporte.

The charette was conducted by the Ministry of Land Use and Habitat (MLUH) in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council which was represented by Ahmed Al.

Consulting work was being done by ARUP represented by Mr Tunnel.
Also present were members of the National Assembly, MLUH and planning authority officials, among other guests.

Both ministers gave their views on the draft plan by expressing their concerns on certain points and suggesting amendments or considerations.

The workshop was aimed at assessing growth scenarios which include population, transport, resilience, development, community facilities, environment, agriculture, tourism and utilities; securing consensus on proposed growth strategy which highlights what growth goes where, meaning detecting the best possible location where development or growth can take place; developing topic framework plans and understand their policy implications and agreeing on the key issues component for the Victoria Master Plan.

In his presentation of the preferred strategy adopted, Mr Tunnel said one of the messages that have come out clearly is the total and committed involvement of the locals in marking out places.

“The plan has proved to be bottom-up and top-down, top-down and bottom-up. And I think that alongside its strategic document we quickly realised the need to consider local places. An immensely valuable exercise we have been taking to consider how these places might develop in the form of a strategy,” he said.

He said the aim of the charettes were to discuss the growth scenarios to develop a great strategy to identify where each growth should go, to develop topic plans and start Victoria Master Plan.

He said he was pleased that through the stakeholders’ hard work all those goals have been achieved but adding they now need to work on the details.

”Our achievement is that we’ve developed the strategic options today; we have undertaken a detailed place-making exercise; we understood the role and capacity of places, we developed a series of framework plans and we have outlined the preferred growth strategy,” said Mr Tunnel.

The next step is public consultation where the discussions will move to the community.
The next charette will be held in May this year.

 

 

 

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