My colleague Iain Harris, who runs the popular Coffeebeans Routes (“We create contemporary, urban, African experiences that provide travellers deep insights into the places they choose to visit”) raised some provocative questions on his blog yesterday – Where is the centre of Cape Town? What happens if we move the existing city centre?
"Can we change the economics of the city if we change the way we see it?"
I agree with Iain’s sentiments (changing the way in which we see the city in order to better focus on the needs of the majority of citizens located mainly in the metro south east) but not necessarily his analysis or conclusions.
Cape Town is now a multi-nodal or polycentric metropolitan area, no longer a radial city with the traditional Central Business District (CBD) of 50-100 years ago. In fact, we no longer have a single CBD, but a dispersed range of economic centres, which play different economic, social and cultural roles at different levels, i.e. neighbourhood, local, regional, global. So a search for a new, more spatially central CBD is not particularly helpful or relevant.
The key question is how do we best coordinate and plan for growth and investment, and job creation and poverty reduction, in a multi-nodal metropolitan economy? How do we ensure that poor communities get better access to all nodes within the formal metropolitan economy (including but not limited to the Cape Town central city) by, inter alia, provision of well-located affordable housing and more effective public transport systems?
Instead of calling for decentralisation, which has been taking place in the city for over 100 years and which has resulted in disasterous and unsustainable urban sprawl and (mainly) car-based transport options, we should be calling for greater centralisation of people and the economy i.e. higher densities, a more compact urban form that supports public transport, more mixed income, mixed use, higher levels of connectivity, etc.
Cities are about people and places, so I agree with Iain’s point that Cape Town is no longer just the historic central city. As he eloquently puts it, Cape Town is now Klipfontein Rd, Lansdowne Rd, NY1, Thames Avenue, Modderdam Road, Voortrekker Rd as well as Long St. However, history does matter, and I think there will always be a role that the traditional centre plays on behalf of all the people of Cape Town, especially if all communities are empowered to take ownership of the space, and that an inclusive city identity is projected in the names, spaces, memorials, symbols and uses. It still is, after all, one of the few spaces in our divided city where a relatively diverse range of Capetonians meet each other on the streets, in the public spaces and at events. I can’t think of too many other parts of Cape Town to this day where this happens.
So, I say central city and Langa (and Mitchell’s Plain, Khayelitsha, Athlone, Bellville and Claremont). It’s not an ‘either/ or’ (false) dichotomy but a ‘both/ and’ connectivity that is needed.
Breaking News
The Cape Times (Sept 9, 2010) reported that the City of Cape Town is formulating a new densification policy. This is good news!
City to change the way space is used
THE City of Cape Town is expected to adopt a new densification policy next month to force all developments to use space optimally and have no less than 25 “dwelling units” per hectare.
This move is expected to change the face of the city and how commercial and residential developments are carried out. And to encourage densification, the city will offer municipal tax rebates in areas targeted for higher density development.
The policy notes that rapid and continuous low-density development is threatening the long-term sustainability of Cape Town and has created a number of challenges, including:
● Agricultural land on the urban edge and elsewhere is rapidly being consumed by urban development;
● Long travel distances have been created by urban sprawl with fragmented and dispersed urban activity patterns making it difficult to develop a viable public transport system,
● Road-based transport with increased traffic congestion and CO2 emissions has significant environmental pollution consequences;
● The unit cost of providing the necessary infrastructure required to service low-density forms of urban development is far greater than the unit and operating cost of servicing higher-density forms.
Councillor Gisela Jespersen told the planning and environment portfolio committee (Pepco) this week that the policy would have a major impact on how the city would look in the future.
The city plans to achieve densification, by constructing attached second dwellings, increasing the existing bulk and number of units through the expansion and adding additional floors, consolidating vacant or developed erven and then redeveloping them at higher densities, subdivision of land and higher density development on vacant and under-utilised land.
“The city aims to achieve a minimum, average gross base density of 25 dwelling units per hectare in the next 20-30 years and will aim for a higher gross base density thereafter,” reads the policy.
Connectivity is the key, which is of course one of the aims of the IRT system. Somebody living in Langa or Athlone or Pinelands should have an equal chance of using public transport to access a job or other opportunity in any other part of the city.
So regardless of where the official hub is or will be, people should be able to get to all of these hubs, safely and quickly.