CASE STUDY 1

Waste Management: Clean Cities as a Foundation for Urban Regeneration

“A clean city is not cosmetic. It is structural infrastructure for safety, dignity and economic recovery.”
David van Niekerk, CEO, Johannesburg Inner City Partnership

Waste management is one of the JICP‘s two core focus areas. For JICP, public space cleaning is not a peripheral service. It is a structural intervention that restores the basic functionality required for walkability, safety, investment and social cohesion.

Through its Social Employment Fund (SEF) programmes, the JICP coordinates and funds public space cleaning across priority precincts on the Walkable Network, using spatial targeting to concentrate effort where a consistent, daily presence can unlock broader systemic improvement.

Clean City SA, led by CEO Dalu Cele, is one of JICP’s implementation partners. Founded in February 2020, the organisation works within JICP’s regeneration framework to deliver structured waste collection, recycling and urban greening services across the inner city.

SEF participants are deployed across key nodes including Metro Centre, Park Station, Braamfontein Extension, Hillbrow, the High Court precinct, Faraday, Westgate and Yeoville. Teams sweep streets, collect litter, separate recyclables and plant trees, restoring functionality and dignity to public space through disciplined, repetitive action.

Between October 2024 and May 2025, the JICP’s placemaking teams collected 253,296 bags of waste[PM1.1]. These figures demonstrate the cumulative power of daily intervention. Regeneration is not achieved through a single large project, but through consistent operational presence.

“Joburg’s inner city is full of life and history, but litter and illegal dumping prevent people from enjoying their own heritage. Through our partnership with JICP, we are able to turn concern into coordinated action.”
Dalu Cele, CEO, Clean City SA

Significant challenges remain. Overcrowded and illegally occupied buildings, insufficient waste infrastructure and persistent dumping continue to strain the system. Yet each maintained pavement and restored precinct strengthens the conditions required for broader urban recovery.

Clean streets are not the outcome of regeneration. They are the precondition for it.

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