The city of Victoria Falls has embarked on an ambitious project to become ZImbabwe’s first ‘green city.’ This forms part of the city’s alignment to the National Development Strategy (NDS1), ensuring that they meet the objective of ensuring sustainable environmental protection and resilience.
Picture: Meraj Chhaya/ Flickr Commons
According to a report by The Herald, more pedestrians and electric cars will be part of the new normal envisaged in the zero-emission zone, where the city hopes to have more bicycles than cars in its centre.
This idea was tabled after a recent workshop facilitated by the Public Service Commission to train council workers, councillors and key stakeholders on the basic tenets of a functional city. The city has already embarked on installing solar-powered streetlights.
Victoria Falls has been meeting all their targets, where the five-year strategic plan to attain city status by 2022 was achieved in 2020, and now the focus has shifted to providing clean water and maintaining green city status.
The concept of the green city envisions creating denser, greener and more livable cities. Victoria Falls will be minimising the number of trees cut down, promoting the use of recyclable materials, maintaining buffer zones and encouraging routes for walking and cycling.
The community services director in the city told The Herald ensuring the environment remains pristine will bring wildlife closer to tourists, and add to the experience of the city.
‘In our planning, we are saying buffer zones should be maintained as animal corridors so that we become a clean or green city,’ Nyamande said.
Picture: Getaway Gallery
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