The striking Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, on the shores of Lake Michigen

I was privileged to be invited to join the Board of the International Downtown Association (IDA) at the 55th IDA Congress, held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in September 2009. The IDA has been around since 1954 and with over 650 members, represents a great network to share ideas and experiences about urban management.

What I realised is that we in South African cities have now built up a degree of experience over the past two decades that can be shared with the rest of the world. This was apparent when I presented a paper on Public-Private Partnerships in the Central City: Lessons from the first ten years of the Cape Town Partnership.

This paper situates urban management and public-private partnerships in the context of Cape Town as a developing city in an emerging economy, conditions different to those faced by cities in advanced industrialised nations. In particular, delegates from countries similar to South Africa, such as Brazil, showed great interest in our model.

The IDA conference took place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Tasso Evangelinos and I, together with colleagues from the City of Cape Town, took time to walk about the city. Milwaukee is a fairly typical US city, in that it is heavily suburbanised, with a car-based transport system. As a result, although their downtown (central city) area is well-organised, safe and clean, with nice signage and good street furniture, there is almost no-one on the streets. (For similar observations on Milwaukee, see Brad Segal’s comments in his blog Progressive Urban Management Associates)

We were told that there are over 60 000 public and private parking spaces in the Milwaukee downtown area (Cape Town CBD by comparison has 16 000), which perhaps explains the predominant car culture and the lack of people on the streets. My conclusion is that while sound urban management and a clean and safe environment is a prerequisite for a thriving business area, it is not a sufficient condition to make it a vibrant people-space.

Chicago, on the other hand, about an hour and a half away from Milwaukee by train, is an amazing people city. This is reflected in the wonderful public art in the public spaces, such as the giant 162-ton 1967 Picasso in the Daley Plaza to the more recent installations in the Millennium Park, in particular, Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain and Anish Kapoor’s astonishing 110-ton elliptical Cloud Gate.

These public spaces are popular with locals and visitors alike. The Chicago downtown is, of course, a highly dense mixed use area, one of the preconditions for active public space. Milwaukee has created something really beautiful, namely, the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, with a moveable sunscreen with a 217-foot wingspan that unfolds and folds twice daily

Calatrava said that he was not just designing a new building but creating ‘part of a city’. He was right. With the new museum, Milwaukee, without necessarily intending to do so, has created a new icon for the city. Similarly, if you think about it, the new Cape Town Stadium provides a new take on an old and powerful icon, namely Table Mountain.

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, Millennium Park, Chicago

Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain, Millennium Park, Chicago