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Cape Town’s Integrated Rapid Transit System takes shape

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The City of Cape Town announced deadlines for the implementation of phase one of the Integrated Rapid Transit System (IRTS) at a meeting of the Cape Town Partnership’s Central City Partners Forum this week.

The West Coast trunk route between Bayside Shopping Centre and the CBD/ Waterfront will be up…

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Whoops! Did someone perhaps jump the gun?

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Sunday, 22 August. We had been waiting for about two hours at the Clyde-Pinelands sports fields, along with a good crowd of about 5 000 people, to watch the demolition of the Athlone Towers. Finally, three minutes to go. Nearly time for the big event. A stir of anticipation began…

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Athlone Towers – a giant new opportunity for a different approach to city building?

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When our boys were small, their name for the Athlone cooling towers was the ‘giant’s coffee cups’. Located near the N2 highway out of Cape Town, the ‘coffee cups’ usually signified the start of a holiday weekend out of town, or the end of a long tiring journey home.

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The ‘unhappy compromise’ shows signs of coming of age

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The Cape Town Foreshore has been described as an ‘unhappy compromise’ resulting in series of ‘wind-blown stretches of asphalt and concrete, filled with car parks and roaring traffic, inaccessible to pedestrians.’* Yet on a still winter’s morning, in the early dawn light, on foot, the Foreshore can almost be beautiful.…

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Post 2010 paradigm shifts create opportunities for new city development

Pedestrian zone in Adderley Street

In 2008, the City of Cape Town and the Cape Town Partnership published the Central City Development Strategy – a framework to guide change and manage growth over the next ten years. We are currently reviewing and updating the strategy in light of the 2010 World Cup experience.…

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Cape Town Squared (or how some of our most valuable public assets are not being properly used)

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Do you remember the popular zebra artworks dotted around public spaces in Cape Town during the World Cup? Well, they’ve now migrated to the Artscape Piazza on the Foreshore.

The 33 zebras form an exhibition entitled ‘Not all is Black and White’, by the World for All

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Storming the ramparts: How the Castle of Good Hope can become part of city life

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One of the good things about hosting a large global event like the 2010 World Cup is the way we were able do things that previously seemed impossible. Like regular road closures to create safe pedestrian spaces, reliable public transport, dressing the city in bright colours, colourful wall murals and outdoor advertisements,…

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Cape Town Station – on track for 2010, but a lot more still needs to be done

The CT Station has been receiving its first major overhaul since it was built as an apartheid station in the early 1960s. I walked around the site a few days ago with colleagues from Intersite and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) to look at the progress that

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Siyajikeleza, Laat Wiel, Going Places

At the invitation of the City of Cape Town, I went for a ride on one of the new Integrated Rapid Transit (IRT) buses today to view three of the stations that have recently been completed: Civic Centre, CT Airport and Cape Town Stadium. It was exciting experience, as it is now possible to…

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The infrastructural benefit of South Africa’s World Cup

A useful article by Nate Berg, who argues that the main benefit of South Africa’s World Cup is the urban infrastructure investments, particularly with regard to public transport, but that the real test will be in the country being able to maintain momentum after the World Cup. Read here

Nate Berg…

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Don’t write off the Joburg inner city

It’s become convention wisdom in certain quarters to write off the Johannesburg inner city, especially amongst those who haven’t been there for a long time. I’ve got a meeting next week with Lael Bethlehem, who heads up the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) and her team, so I’m hoping to catch up on…

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Who’s afraid of South African urban culture?

I am a bit worried when I read the description of the design of the South African Pavilion at the $60-billion Expo 2010 Shanghai, which opened at the beginning of May. The theme of the Expo is ‘Better City, Better Life’. You would think therefore that this would be…

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