Frameworks, certification systems, and protocols give us a way to name what we’re doing, measure progress, and hold ourselves accountable. But tools don’t stand alone – they reflect the values, assumptions, and priorities of the contexts in which they were created.

For African cities, that raises an urgent question: Can we keep using global tools without localising them, or are we measuring the wrong things well?

At Solid Green, we believe the tools we use must be fit for place, purpose, and people. That’s why our work extends beyond applying frameworks. We actively engage in shaping them.

From sustainable to strategic: tools that shape cities

Over the past decade, Solid Green has worked at the forefront of precinct-scale transformation using tools that guide decision-making, stakeholder collaboration, and long-term impact tracking.

Some of the most influential frameworks we’ve worked with include:

• Green Star New Build and Major Refurbishment v2:
  The new version of South Africa’s green building certification tool, now in pilot phase, includes the PLACES category, a major advancement that invites design teams to engage with cultural context, community stories, and integration into surrounding urban systems. This tool applies to individual buildings, not precincts.
• Green Star Sustainable Precincts (SUP):
  A stand-alone tool focused specifically on precinct-scale sustainability. SUP addresses governance, liveability, ecology, and urban systems across entire neighbourhoods or mixed-use developments. Solid Green has contributed to multiple SUP certifications and continues to guide clients through this process.
• EcoDistricts and Just Communities:
  The Just Communities framework is a direct evolution of the EcoDistricts Protocol, reimagined to centre racial equity, community power, and justice in urban development. The tools are intrinsically linked, with Just Communities building on the foundational values and structure of EcoDistricts while deepening its accountability mechanisms.

Solid Green was instrumental in adapting the original EcoDistricts Protocol for the African context. Adaptation of international tools is essential to ensure that solutions facilitated through these systems are appropriate for local realities .

Why Localisation Matters

African cities are not just copy-paste versions of their global counterparts. Our spatial legacy, cultural richness, climate pressures, and governance structures are unique – and so are the metrics that matter.

Localisation isn’t about simplification. It’s about translation:

• Translating intent into local language and meaning
• Translating outcomes into culturally and spatially relevant indicators
• Translating global ambition into doable, trackable, and meaningful action

At Solid Green, our successful partnership with the EcoDistricts team to localise the original protocol taught us that localisation requires both technical precision and social sensitivity. While the EcoDistrict certification has now been replaced with the Just Communities label, projects that were certified under the EcoDistricts framework have been given the option to retain their certification and we see projects successfully moving through recertification and biennial progress reports to retain and expand on the original goals and aspirations they had set for themselves.

Measuring what matters in the African Context

Frameworks like Green Star SUP and EcoDistricts have taught us that, while environmental and economic performance are vital, so too are:

• Historical repair and social cohesion
• Cultural preservation and local identity
• Psychological safety and lived experience in the built environment

These are not “nice to haves.” They are indicators of whether people will stay, thrive, and invest in their places over time.

The next evolution of our tools must consistently move beyond compliance toward community-rooted accountability.

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EcoDistricts

The S&J Industrial Estate EcoDistricts Steering Committee (SJEDSC) was established in 2021 by JSE listed diversified REIT Redefine Properties and Abland Property Developers. The SJEDSC has been working with the Solid Green team to drive the process for creating a strong framework to progress towards a model rooted in community sustainability, ecological awareness, and conservation.

Anelisa Keke, chief sustainability officer for Redefine, comments:

Our purpose is to create and manage spaces in a way that changes lives, and we are therefore entrenching ESG into everything we do. This requires an integrated approach to making strategic choices that will sustain value creation for all stakeholders through focusing on what matters most. The EcoDistricts success is a crucial stepping stone and endorsement of the progress we are making to ensure a better future for all South Africans.

Chris Roberg, Director of Abland responsible for S&J Industrial Development, says:

To be part of the team that has taken land that forms part of the undeveloped mining belt in Johannesburg and convert this to an Industrial Estate which has now been recognised as an EcoDistrict initiative is extremely exciting and a great achievement to all involved. This aligns with Abland’s drive toward sustainability which is evidenced by various commercial projects which have international Green Star ratings.

In parallel to working with the S&J Industrial Estate EcoDistrict, Solid Green had been working with the City of Johannesburg, to develop and test the EcoDistrict Methodology for the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) for the Orange Grove Special Development Zone, as part of the city’s innovative approach toward a low carbon city.

As part of the COJ appointment, the Solid Green team created a modelling protocol for a tool that was developed in line with the EcoDistrict requirements, to calculate an area’s energy use profile along with a CO2 emissions inventory. The COJ project team generously gave permission for the S&J project to apply this same tool to their project, to be able to learn from its application to a different project area, in order to further support the use of forward-thinking certification systems such as the EcoDistricts Protocol to guide neighbourhoods in their efforts to reach carbon neutrality.

The successful conclusion of the certification component of the S&J Industrial Estate EcoDistrict process is an exciting start to the long-term journey for this project. The project will now be required to submit biennial progress reports beginning on the second anniversary of certification and continuing every two years thereafter.

How EcoDistricts works

The EcoDistricts approach is regarded as a new model of public-private partnership that emphasizes innovation and deployment of district-scale best practices to create the neighbourhoods of the future – resilient, vibrant, resource efficient and just.

The Protocol puts a comprehensive lens on every urban regeneration decision, drives the delivery of meaningful performance outcomes, and sets the conditions for sustainable, collective impact. Above all, the Protocol is designed as a flexible performance framework rather than a prescriptive standard, recognizing that every community has the ability and need to advance a place-based sustainability agenda. District teams can tailor the Protocol to local circumstances, set performance targets based on local conditions and aspirations, and measure progress against the Protocol’s Imperatives and Priorities.

The protocol is structured around three core elements as illustrated by the three colours used in Figure 2 working from the inside out:
First up are the three IMPERATIVES which form the inner circle of the figure, and which are the guiding principles that will drive design-making and implementation: Equity, Resilience, and Climate Protection.

EcoDistricts Core Elements

Next up are the six PRIORITIES which will enable the district to achieve meaningful outcomes and which link directly to interventions or projects being planned or implemented on the ground, namely Place, Prosperity, Health & Wellbeing, Connectivity, Living Infrastructure and Resource Regeneration.

And finally, the external ring represents the three IMPLEMENTATION PHASES: Formation, Roadmap, and Performance.

Performance focuses on measuring impact and gauging a district’s progress towards its performance targets. This is an ongoing phase during which reports are shared regularly in the community and publicly on the EcoDistricts Registry. A district’s biennial progress report becomes the basis of measuring impact over time and supporting peer-to-peer learning.

Certification includes three core submission requirements after project registration. The required documents are developed in line with the guidance provided by the EcoDistricts Certified Handbook. They are then submitted for third-party verification sign-off, and an endorsement is secured for that step.

As soon as the project secures endorsement for the submission documentation for all three steps, it will be EcoDistricts Certified. In order to maintain certification, districts must submit biennial progress reports beginning on the second anniversary of certification, and every two years thereafter.

Protocol Certification Process

Three important lessons learnt

There is a plethora of lessons that can be taken away from the work done with S&J EcoDistrict that we, as a team, will keep in mind with regards to future projects. Some of the key take aways include the following:

Importance of collaboration:

Once you make an ambitious triple commitment to ensure equitable, resilient and climate protected urban scale development, a lot of factors come into play that require a multi-disciplinary and bi-directional approach. This requires all interested party representatives to be included in the conversations. This can be seen as challenge when there are opposing views; however, the opportunity is to find goals and strategies that satisfy the main imperatives.

Creativity and exposure to better practices:

The challenge that comes with working with a sustainability framework as opposed to sustainability rating tool, is the non-prescribed strategies and benchmarks to be implemented to demonstrate your commitment to a sustainable EcoDistrict. The challenge is reminding the team and ourselves, as consultants, that the scope is wide and imagination can run wild on what this development can really be if it is driven by the commitment to equitable, resilient and climate protection principles.

Process over perfection/benchmarks:

Process is everything with precinct scale development. When you have a development that runs over numerous years, with a variation of individuals involved in the project, it is very easy for initial principles to get lost in everyday obstacles. The EcoDisticts protocol provides a framework that developers can use to ensure their goals and mechanisms are set in the initial phases to guide future decisions and withstand the various ebbs and flows that come with precinct development processes.

Conclusion

In committing to the EcoDistrict certification process, the S&J Industrial Estate has set a new benchmark for precincts in southern Africa. Solid Green is proud to have been part of this process!

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We want to be the change. That’s why we are leading the charge and doing the EcoDistricts work in South Africa.

Solid Green is investigating and testing the EcoDistricts methodology by looking at a specific node in the city, including developing an energy use and carbon emissions calculations tool. Once this is done, the project will then start to identify interventions that could de-carbonise the neighbourhood. The intention is to ultimately assist the City of Johannesburg to identify ways of scaling this work up and replicating it throughout the city.

Watch the video here:

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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11, also known as the UrbanSDG , aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. We regard this as a truly transformational element of the 2030 Agenda, as it is the only goal that is location-specific at a manageable scale. However, collective impact is essential to ensure that the ambitious goals of this, and other related SDGs, can be refined and supported.

Over the past decade, the terms resilience and sustainability have become used more frequently, sometimes interchangeably. It is our intent to ensure that there is greater clarity on the full meaning of these terms because, although these are certainly compatible concepts, they are not the same thing. In an ideal community, economy or business there will be both sustainability and resilience. However, either can exist without the other – although that is not the ideal scenario.

The term sustainability implies continuity – an ongoing process which starts with a functional system and works to maintain that system without artificial inputs. Resilience, on the other hand, refers to the ability to bounce back after a disaster (man-made or natural), so this path starts from a negative point of impact and works toward recovery and proactively preparing for the future.

Since its inception, Solid Green has worked with sector leaders and policy makers to further both sustainability and resilience in Africa’s urban centres. Recently, this work has included Net Zero and Net Positive certifications and advocacy work; training and policy formulation in South Africa and other African countries; and projects that move toward addressing sustainability and resource efficiency at a precinct, district or even city scale – such as Oxford Parks and Sandton Gate; and our current work testing the EcoDistricts protocol for the City of Johannesburg.

We envision that Solid Green’s newly formalised Sustainable Cities and Research department will provide a platform for our experts to engage in various research projects, sustainable city-making guidelines, and strategic input to guide the implementation of policies and plans. We are inspired by the opportunity that this affords us to continue our important work in this sector, to support our clients and our communities and, importantly, to actively participate in shaping our ambitious shared future.

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The City of Johannesburg’s journey to encourage urban revitalisation of the inner city and its surroundings is clearly indicated in its Inner-City Revitalisation Programme initiated in 2006. The main goals of the programme are as follows:

• Attract private investment into the City
• Increase the supply of affordable, quality housing in the inner city in terms of the Inclusionary Housing Policy
• Support intermodal activity
• Public amenity development
• Reduce crime activity in the city
• Job creation

To inject new energy into the process, in April 2019 the City released the details of 97 properties around the city that were to be earmarked for mixed use development. These properties were released to the private sector to aid the city to realize over R20 billion in investment value.

The Target Areas

The properties, which are dilapidated and situated on prime property land, are in regions such as Randburg, Rosebank, Orange Grove, Houghton and Wynberg. These properties were targeted due to their great accessibility and proximity to economic hubs within the city. The City put out a call to the private sector to invest by proposing mixed used developments with commercial and retail activity supported by ample affordable housing linked to the Inclusionary Housing Policy.

To date, there have been few responses from the private sector to the City’s call, with implementation being hindered by issues such as resident displacement and social justice priorities not being addressed (resettlement of poor residents to the periphery is contested); minimal community participation; and the viability of cost recovery for developers.

The EcoDistricts Protocol

At Solid Green, we believe that the EcoDistricts Protocol – which is “an urban development framework for achieving people-centered, economically vibrant, resource efficient, neighbourhood- and district-scale sustainability” – can aid the City’s regeneration efforts.

This is because the protocol requires projects to make an Imperatives Commitment at the initial phase of the engagement processes. These imperatives, strongly align with the goals if the City of Johannesburg’s urban revitalisation vision, are:

• Equity – Ensuring all members of the community can participate, lead, and thrive. Focus is placed on identifying vulnerable community members such as people of colour, low income, and people with disabilities, for example.
• Resilience – The capacity of a district to withstand social, economic, and environmental stresses.
• Climate Protection – Projects must have a pathway to carbon neutrality.

The EcoDistricts Priorities and Objective Categories are the guiding elements that can be used to assess areas to define how nodes could use strategic interventions along these lines to move the city toward its goals of a low carbon city.

Implementation phases are as follows:

• 1. Formation – intensive stakeholder engagement, governance framework development and declaration for collaboration between all stakeholders.
• 2. Roadmap – identify priorities, objectives, strategy, and performance indicators to move the city or EcoDistrict to a carbon neutral future.
• 3. Performance phase – requires continuous progress reporting on how strategies are evolving to move toward carbon neutrality.

The EcoDistricts Protocol requires that projects follow the procedure of Formation, Roadmap and the Performance stages to ensure that the imperatives highlighted in their commitment are carried out throughout. The Protocol gives timelines for when each stage must be complete and sent for review.

Commitment to continuous engagement

Collective impact is a strong theme throughout the EcoDistricts Protocol. The protocol calls for power-sharing, collective decision making, shared problems, and shared skills and resources within the City context, which is occupied by diverse stakeholders and interested parties. This core principle is integral to successful development. The protocol suggests communication measures and consideration on how to “bring everyone to the table”.

Final Thoughts

The City of Johannesburg’s move to release properties to be developed by the private sector, alongside outlining its main goals for urban revitalisation, are key starting points to guide the direction of the City. The EcoDistricts Protocol has the potential to educate the developer teams on how to successfully take these goals and properties forward, to successfully realise a regenerated city centre.

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The most-attended courses were:

• Places matter to Microbial Interactions

  Hosted by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) – attended by Khosi, Adrie and Mbongiseni – which explored strategies to manage the spread of infectious disease in buildings and communities, in the context of the recent spread of COVID-19; and how buildings can also contribute to the strengthening of our immune systems.

  

• EcoDistricts Accredited Professional Course

  Attended by Marloes (as a refresher), and Noma, Bronwyn, Jeffy, Khosi, Andi and Adrie who successfully took the exam – in preparation for Solid Green’s upcoming work on a methodology for creating EcoDistricts in the City of Johannesburg.

• DesignBuilder

  Attended by Giant and Wayne who are studying Building Energy and Simulation online, mentored by Chilu.

• Health and Well Being: Rethinking the Built Environment

  Hosted by the Green Building Council of Mauritius – attended by Zendre and Adrie, this cross-case discussion of 3 different frameworks was presented by Catriona Brady, Head of the World Green Building Council’s Better Places for People; Meelan Thondoo, Anthropologist, Socio-economic Analyst and PhD Candidate in the EU Commission EMJD Program; and Dr Shalini Ramesh, Director of the Commercial Team at the International WELL Building Institute.

It goes without saying that online learning related to health and the built environment took centre-stage. Jesse is currently undertaking the WELL AP Exam Preparation virtual series, with the intention of writing the exam by August. And Marloes ambitiously undertook, and was super inspired by, the Living Future Accreditation, which comprises 20 hours of Foundational Course webinars and then another 16 hours of other educational activities. She also listened to FutureCities podcasts on how Covid-19 is impacting our industry – particularly the podcasts hosted by Daniel Claassen with Giles Pendelton (Chief Development Officer at Attacq) and Henning Rasmus (Director at Paragon Architects).

A highlight for Marloes was the Living Future Unconference online: ‘Sustaining Hope within Crisis’ with an inspiring keynote address by Jason McLennon, Founder of the International Living Future Institute, titled ‘Community Resilience in Difficult Times’. Hosted by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI), this game-changing event was THE place for the global green building and sustainability community to come together.

Climate Crisis in the time of Covid-19 (attended by Zendre), was hosted by Daily Maverick journalist Rebecca Davis in conversation with Former Secretary-General of Amnesty International, Kumi Naidoo and Chair of The Elders and former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson. A learning from this talk was how democracy, human rights and sustainability are linked and how times of crisis should be used as a moment of learning and awareness around the problems (beyond Covid-19) that face our society.

Covid-19 and Real Estate: The Young Professional’s Outlook, attended by Noma, was hosted by the South African Institute of Black Property Practitioners (SAIBPP) and looked at how the professional environment has changed during the Covid-19 era, inspiring Noma to investigate opportunities for growth within her ambit.

Wayne and Alex both chose to focus on urban sustainability. A Udemy course on Aquaculture offered Wayne a better understand on how to keep fish in captivity for aquaponics systems and urban farming; while Alex researched urban crop management and Hydroponics in answer to a question sparked by the Covid-19 situation around how a household could survive from the land for 6 months to one year.

 Adrie attended a number of online events hosted by industry leaders including live discussions on Cities After COVID-19 hosted by The Big Rethink, such as How Public Transit Bounces Back; Housing: Room for Improvement; and Lessons for Greenfield Megaprojects; and webcasts by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) such as Places matter for human health; Places matter for stress and immunity; and Power of place: A conversation about racial inequities highlighted by Covid-19. Other events included the World Green Building Council on Indoor Air Quality, Lessons for the Future of Public Health, Circular Economy, and Net-Zero and Close to Zero Buildings – Africa Green Building Webinar Series; while the GBCSA Planet Shapers events covered Applying Net-Zero in Africa, and Greening a Property Portfolio.

Solid Green’s super-efficient office manager (and new mum) is planning to take a number of tests through the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting (CIMA); and also attended Are you ready to re-open? presented by Mike Miles from HR and Skills Market, and How to create a High Performance Culture in a New World of Work by Natalie Wickam from Quantum Workplace.

Overall, we’re impressed with the initiative shown by our team and look forward to finding out what new learning opportunities they are planning as lockdown progresses!

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In March 2020, the City informed us that a little celebration dance was in order! Our EcoDistrict team consists of Solid Green, Activate Architecture, KDM Quantity Surveyors and Satplan. From the Solid Green team, Marloes Reinink and Adrie Fourie are the overall sustainability leads for the project team; Chilufya Lombe and Alex Varughese are in charge of the modelling; and Zendre Compion is the EcoDistricts Accredited Professional guiding the team through developing an appropriate methodology suitable to the CoJ.

The overall aim of the project focusses on reducing the carbon footprint of the city and on allowing for better adaptation to the challenging climatic conditions the world is facing. The project must achieve the following objectives through its methodology:

• Develop CoJ’s approach to neighbourhood and district-scale equitable and sustainable development.
• Explore different facets of sustainable District Design.
• Guide Public and Private interventions and investments in the EcoDistrict to achieve greater sustainability.
• Draw together this learning as a tool for the City to inform its policy, standards and guidelines towards a sustainable low carbon future.

The EcoDistricts Protocol is an urban development framework for achieving people-centred, economically vibrant, resource efficient, neighbourhood- and district-scale sustainability. The tool is a freely-available, flexible performance framework rather than a prescriptive standard, recognising that every neighbourhood or precinct has a unique history, set of challenges and opportunities – and therefore its own individual ability and need to advance a place-based sustainability agenda.

The study area for this project is Orange Grove Special Development Zone, a neighbourhood in Johannesburg that is part of the Corridors of Freedom. The team will be looking at sustainability issues at the building, block, precinct and neighbourhood scale. Some of the outputs will centre on developing a carbon model that sets a baseline and targets for emission reduction goals and pathways, as well as new standards and guidelines for EcoDistricts to meet local context and constraints.

Says Liana Strydom, spatial planner at the City of Johannesburg:

Neighborhoods provide a unique scale to accelerate innovation and impact: small enough to innovate, yet big enough to leverage long-term investment and public policy. Orange Grove, and specifically the area identified as a Transit-Oriented-Development precinct, provides an excellent case study to prioritize the right kind of investments at the right scale – and also to consider the impact that investments will have in either creating more or less inclusiveness.

Reinink adds:

With the current global health crisis, we believe that this forward-thinking work is more important than ever before. Research shows that those who are most vulnerable to health hazards, namely those living in under-served communities , are also those who are most at risk from climate change. This includes the health risks posed by air pollution , which is linked to higher rates of death in people with Covid-19. EcoDistricts are therefore essential to the City’s pursuit of spatial equity.

Solid Green is excited to be working on this ground-breaking project, and wholeheartedly supports the forward thinking of the City of Johannesburg. We hope to contribute proactively to the sustainability of the city in which we live.

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