UP TO nine mini-clusters have been identified by the University of Fort Hare in its bid to turn Buffalo City into a modern, young African city.
“Campus design will be the new city design,” UFH scholars said of their 2030 Campus-City vision of Buffalo City. The early design cluster has justice and social development at the bottom of Oxford Street, and will include the university’ s law school, social work and psychological services, magistrates courts and police.
UFH vice-chancellor Dr Mvuyo Tom said the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) had already commissioned land to construct an enormous complex to house both a business and public management and finance school focusing on building environment and planning.
The schools will be linked to research projects and will take up land behind the Windmill roadhouse close to the department of economic development and tourism’s existing economics hub.
Part of the bottom of Oxford Street, taking up a lip of land overlooking the East London port, will be the marine science, oceanography and environment hub.
The UFH library which has already been commissioned at a cost of R200- million will be complemented with a new student centre and administration hub situated at the old Wool Exchange and Elco buildings.
But the sleeper site is where the city’s glittering civic centre and BCM precinct will reach for the sky.
It is hoped it will serve as a smart, modern entrance to BCM, and will have a theatre, and space for arts, culture and heritage, as well as retail shopping.
The civic centre will be situated at the intersection of Signal Street and Tutton Terrace. An auto engineering hub driven by a UFH engineering and technology school will connect to the light business districts off Commercial Road, Quigney and Fitzpatrick Roads, they said.
A long sliver of Transnet land near the Southernwood railway station will become a hub for health and sports science, and will connect to sport grounds nearby.