Camps Bay Neighbourhood - Up To Date

Start walking in Cape Town’s shoes

‘Sometimes it takes an outsider who’s been ‘naturalised’ into becoming a Capetonian, to see into the heart of a city,’ believes Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana. Newly appointed to the post of Managing Director of the Cape Town Partnership, Makalima-Ngewana has spent the past XX years as the organisation’s Deputy Chief Executive, much of it in the heart of the Central City, and many hours on foot. What she witnessed during the World Cup reconfirmed for her the great potential Cape Town has to become one of the great walking cities in the world.

Says Makalima-Ngewana, who originally hails from the Eastern Cape: ‘It’s interesting for me as an adopted Capetonian to see how accessible the Central City actually is; to see how much you can explore and experience, and also what takes you by surprise. It’s only when you take to the streets that you realize the extent and variety of our retail experiences, architecture, memorialization and creativity. Much of it has traditionally happened only in ‘pockets’ around town and the time has come to connect the dots.

“A viable city is one that offers socially cohesive space throughout its footprint; it’s a city that integrates people from everywhere and this happens most effectively in public spaces and literally on sidewalks. In terms of us achieving this success in the Central City of Cape Town, we need to understand who has access to it, who’s walking here, where they are going and even what areas they currently avoid. During the World Cup, thousands of foreigners explored the CBD on foot and there has been much feedback on how they enjoyed this. But for us to continue to design and sustain a walking city, we need to convince first and foremost our own Capetonians that they are in a safe, secure and pleasing space. Many of them discovered this during the World Cup, much to their surprise; but now we need to get them not only to return time and again, but to take ownership of the streets. I want to start by inviting all those that come into the Central City on a daily basis to get out of the office, take a lunchtime walk, and take a really good look around.”

The World Cup fast-tracked a number of initiatives to make the Central City a more walkable city: way-finding in the form of directional and informative signage has been improved, a number of streets have undergone pedestrian and new mobility prioritization. Pavements have been landscaped and widen to incorporate dedicated walking and bicycle paths, and a number of streets have seen a reduction of speedy two-way traffic in favour of slower one-way routes. The widen passageways have also encouraged restaurants and cafes to spill outdoors, particularly in areas such as Green Market Square and along the now-famous Waterkant Street Fan Walk route – a route whose re-design took many years in collaboration with engineers, architects and new mobility specialists, and which now remains behind as legacy - a secure route not only to the Stadium on event days but on a 24/7 basis linking the Central City through the new Green Point Urban Park to the Sea Point/Mouille Point promenade.

Makalima-Ngewana believes that an important component in designing a city as a walkable city that works for all is to create “… that essential connectivity between areas such as public spaces, educational institutes, and both existing and developing economic nodes.”

An example of such a node, explains Makalima-Ngewana will be the East City Design Initiative (ECDI) which currently forms part of the Provincial Government’s Cape Catalyst project. This project, which will help the East City area ’reconnect’ with the rest of the Central City across the great divide that is currently Buitenkant Street, will hopefully see the east of the city around the Harrington Street area become the new home and hub of the creative and knowledge economies in Cape Town. Already a significant number of the over 1000 creative industries in the general Central City are based in or close to this targeted area, supported in turn by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and initiatives as the Cape Craft and Design Institute (CCDI) and its Fab Lab concept.

The Fab Lab (short for fabrication laboratory) has itself already witnessed an increased influx into the area on a daily basis not only from the CCDI’s own craft industries’ membership base, but students from across the city who use the facility during the hours it opens to the general public.

Explains Erica Elk: “The Fab lab is a high-tech facility that on the one hand has open source design software linked to digital desktop manufacturing and tools such as laser cutters, but also on the other hand has tools as simple as a hammer. Although fab labs were originally set up across the country through the Department of Science and Technology, primarily focusing on youth in engineering, the CCDI is now upscaling and fine-tuning this fab lab towards the merging creative class to improve not only their skills and products, but also their entrepreneurial development and understanding of the marketplace.

“The great thing about something like the Fab Lab opening,” says Makalima-Ngewana, “is that we are now seeing people in the area like students who may never have contemplated coming into the East City before. There is a reason for them to be here, but in turn we need to carefully plan this area’s connectively to the rest of the Central City to ensure that these newcomers venture further afield.

“As it is, we already have some 30 000 learners coming into the Central City each day, just to access schools, educational institutes and private teaching facilities. Through connectivity from node to node, we ensure not only their safe passage, but we open the Central City to them as a venue beyond their hours of education, and hopefully they will in turn be inspired to encourage friends and family to come ‘to town’. There’s hope for us to establish a true ‘town to township’ link and a real cross-cultural experience for families throughout the Cape.”

Equally important to creating a walking city, is the connectivity between public spaces. Over the past few years, a number of Central City venues have received upgrades, the catalyst of which was arguably the upgrade of Heritage Square (corner Bree and Shortmarket) in the mid-1990s. This itself was an important milestone that probably marked the beginning of Cape Town becoming less vehicle- and more foot-driven instead.

Notes Laura Robinson, Director of the Cape Town Heritage Trust – the organization behind the Heritage Square upgrade: “The original idea was to demolish all the old buildings and build a multi-level parking garage to accommodate the private vehicles that would have poured into this part of town had the unfinished freeways been finished!

“Thankfully, a public outcry led instead to the City donating a number of the buildings it owned to the then young Trust.”

The Trust, in a joint venture at the time with developer Sam Montsi, restored and created what is today the facility that kick-started the West City urban renewal. In turn, the square, which borders Bree Street, is now in a vicinity that currently benefitting from road that incorporate widen sidewalks and a bicycle pathway – albeit vehicle drivers still need to understand and respect the right-of-way of bicyclists to use the pathway!

“We are not without our challenges!” notes Makalima-Ngewana drily. “Nevertheless, the new mobility upgrades have now created safe, walkable access, from the West City along roads such as Waterkant and Shortmarket, all the way across the recently upgraded Greenmarket Square, to the new Cape Town Station and Civic Centre bus terminus, and beyond to the revived Grand Parade area.

“It’s a very different city to what it was even five years ago. Hopefully the next five will see a paradigm shift in how we access and use our public space.”

• Koblitz is communications operations manager at the Cape Town Partnership, co-ordinators of the World Design Capital 2014 bid.

This article applies to: Middle, Rontree 1, Rontree 2, Glen, Bakoven, Village, Clifton, CPF