City Planning Geomatics

06 Nov City Planning Geomatics

Posted at 00:34h in City Planning by Creative Ideas 0 Comments

The following documents can be requested electronically:

SG Diagrams

The diagram is the fundamental registerable document prepared by the land surveyor. The essential information shown on a diagram is: The unique designation of the property. An illustration depicting the property. The boundary description listing the corner beacons and the details of any curvilinear boundary.

Zoning Certificates

The second in a mini-series on property zoning, development & value

Your zoning certificate is your golden ticket to knowing:
a) What you can do with your land and
b) How you can do it.

It’s the stuff you want to know when your neighbour comes knocks chanting, “you don’t have the rights”.
In a nutshell, your zoning certificate answers 3 questions:

1. What land do you have?

Joburg’s got a lot of properties, so we use erf numbers to keep track.
Erf is Afrikaans for ‘land’ or as we know it, ‘stand’.

Urban densification means we have:

Farms (undivided land),
subdivided into Erven e.g. erf 5,
subdivided into Portions of erven e.g. 1/5 (portion 1 of erf 5) or RE/5 (remaining extent of erf 5)

Township is town-planning lingo for suburb.

2. What can you use your land for?
Enter complex terms like Res 3, special, consent etc.
Foreign as they sound, they define the realty & premises type your land may be zoned (used) for.
For specifics, check your relevant amendment scheme.
Get the full breakdown in our next article in this series.

3. What can you build on your land?
FAR stands for Floor to Area Ratio – Building to Land Ratio – this tells you how much of your land you can develop.
It represents the maximum amount you can build in relation to the size of your land (AKA bulk).
In reality, your useable bulk is further defined by:

– Coverage, % of land your building can physically cover (on the ground)

– Height, no. storeys allowed

– Parking Ratio, no. parkings

– Building line, how far from the boundary wall you can build

– Density, no. res units/hectare (ha)

Let’s wrap it up…

Your zoning tells you what your rights and development potential are.
You’ll want to consider this when choosing space to buy & deciding how much you’re going to pay for it.

Locality Maps

Principally, locality mapping serves as a tool to provide a visual representation of information in a particular geographical context.

Areal Photo

Aerial photography is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other flying object. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, balloons, blimps and dirigibles, rockets, pigeons, kites, parachutes, stand-alone telescoping and vehicle-mounted poles.