For those of you who are wondering just how the new Hospital Bend pre-selection scheme is going to work, here it is (inbound example):
Hospital Bend pre-selection scheme
Download a larger PDF (1,8MB) version Hosp_Bend_INBOUND
You can get a good idea of how the Green Point Urban Park is taking shape from the top of the Ritz Hotel in Sea Point
Ella Smook of the Cape Argus wrote an article this week on the new Green Point Urban Park, which describes the facilities being planned for the area after the 2010 World Cup. Located next to the new Green Point IRT station, the park will become more accessible to communities throughout the city as the IRT system is rolled out, although just looking at how well-used the adjacent Sea Point Promenade is by a wide range of Capetonians, I have no doubt that the Urban Park will become a popular regional facility from the word go.
The outline of the central common can be clearly seen. The Metropolitan Golf Course is in the background
The Urban Park will form part of a wider system of recreational areas and pedestrian and cycle routes, such as the Sea Point Promenade
The Urban Park is adjacent to the CT Stadium precinct, and will be managed by Stade de France and Sail, the stadium managers
There are five key elements of the 2010 World Cup legacy for Cape Town:
The new raised traffic circle in Green Point, allowing pedestrian access to the CT Stadium and Urban Park, is part of the 2010 infrastructure legacy
So, Cape Town is already a winner because of 2010. How do we build on this legacy? Cape Town is well poised to continue the momentum through key initiatives that are already taking us into the future:
We still don’t have a clear vision of where we want to be as a city in 20-30 years time, and how we are going to get there. This means that we tend to continue with ‘business as usual’ type thinking and doing.
What we need is a city development strategy – a planning process used by many cities around the world to set out a vision for the city’s future and a roadmap on how to get there.
A city development strategy or CDS is not a ‘plan’ but a way of getting city leaders and citizens to agree to make the right choices. A successful city strategy cannot be all things to all people – it must provoke choices. To be really useful, a CDS needs to contain a set of ‘change levers’ to ‘bend’ our current unsustainable development path towards a more desirable future.
Khayelitsha - a poor but potentially vibrant economic node
Examples of issues (indicative rather than exhaustive) that would need to be addressed by a CDS include:
The good news is that the City of Cape Town has recently signalled its intention to lead an inclusive and participative city development strategy process later this year. Much good work has already been done by Accelerate Cape Town’s 2030 visioning process, which can be built upon.
It is imperative that we take this process seriously and get involved so that we can collectively shape the future of our city.
We need to get behind the Integrated Rapid Transport System (IRTS)
The question we ought to be asking is not, can the Cape Town afford the IRT, but rather, can we afford not to build it. To continue as a primarily car-based city without a decent, safe, reliable public transport system is not sustainable. A large proportion of our citizens don’t have cars in any case! Rising energy costs will make car travel less affordable. We need to reduce our city’s carbon footprint. The economic cost of congestion on our roads increases exponentially every year. Finally, we cannot continue with the political, economic and social cost of not connecting the disparate parts of our city together and enhancing mobility and access for our citizens.
The IRT is not just a transport project – it is a city transformation project. It is the cheapest form of car-competitive public transport available to cities. It has the potential to drive the necessary city densification processes, with more compact development clustering around stations and along public transport corridors. It can link isolated communities to the mainstream urban economy, offering opportunities to reduce poverty. It can complement the existing rail network. It can provide jobs for taxi- and bus-drivers and many others.
IRT lanes under construction (Pic: Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town)
IRT is probably the single most important infrastructure project in the city over the next 10-15 years. It is the main 2010 World Cup legacy project – if we mess it up, we will have squandered the development opportunity of our generation.
It is a complex project, not for the faint-hearted. The City of Cape Town’s initial estimates of costs were too low, the initial project management processes not systematic enough. However, I believe that the City has rectified these issues, and that we are back on track. There is a top team with experience in place under Mike Marsden, which has instituted proper programming and planning. The Department of Transport and National Treasury are firmly behind the project – but this window of funding opportunity will not last forever. If we are not seen to be actively behind the project, driving it beyond 2010 to all corners of the metropolitan area, the funding will peter out, and with it, our chance to experience a decent public transport in our lifetime.
Central City Development Strategy (CCDS)
The CCDS is an existing ten-year framework to guide public and private planners, investors and developers in the Central City (defined as stretching from Green Point to Salt River), published by the City of Cape Town and CT Partnership in 2008.
There are two exciting new projects currently underway that will potentially have a large impact on the future development of the city:
Land Use Change Management: This project aims to address issues that often cause difficulties when it comes to deciding on applications for rezoning and departures, such as building height restrictions, development densities, views, heritage and conservation, active streetscapes, parking ratios in buildings, amongst other things. The intention is for the City to be able to publish development parameters to guide future developments in the Central City and thereby give more certainty and predictability to developers when they are drawing up their applications, investors when they are considering funding projects and planners when they are making approvals. The City of Cape Town intends to consult publically in April. If successful, this path-breaking planning project could be used to guide development in other parts of the city.
Cape Town Central City by night as seen from Table Mountain
Provincial Central City Regeneration Project: The Provincial Government is a major owner and occupier of space in the Central City (some 200 000m2). MEC Robin Carlisle has begun a process whereby all Provincial assets in this area are evaluated in terms of their development potential, for example:
The MEC has brought in the participation of the four universities through the Cape Higher Education Consortium. He is also currently liaising with Intersite and Passenger Rail Services (Prasa) with regard to the Cape Town Station phase two regeneration project (in itself, a major potential post-2010 initiative) and Transnet with regard to their Culemborg site, to ensure an integrated public asset management strategy.
This project, which will hopefully be implemented over the next 5-10 years, could have a dramatic impact on the momentum of development in the Central City, and provide ways of addressing the need for affordable housing, spaces for small businesses and non-profit organisations, and additional educational and social facilities. If successful, the intention is to be able to use the model elsewhere in the City and Province.
Cape Town CBD and harbour, with Blaauwberg on the other side of Table Bay
World Design Capital Bid 2014
Creative Cape Town is a programme of the Cape Town Partnership which promotes the development of the creative and knowledge economy in Cape Town. One of our projects is the East City Design Initiative (ECDI) which aims to create a precinct for design, innovation, creativity & entrepreneurship in the Central City.
The East City Precinct is already attracting major attention. It was recently designated a Cape Catalyst project by Provincial Government. It is the home of the successful Cape Craft and Design Initiative, Fabrication Laboratory, the District Six Museum and Homecoming Centre, and the new Central Library in the restored Old Drill Hall. The Old Granary Building is scheduled to be upgraded into a cultural hub.
The new Fugard Theatre opens this week in the old Congregational Church Hall (one of the best restorations of an historic building I have seen) and is destined to become one of the best theatres in SA. The Spier Contemporary is opening in March in the City Hall – showcasing 100 SA artists and 132 works of art – which in turn is helping to restart the process of using the City Hall as a dedicated music and cultural centre.
On the basis of these trends, we will be launching a process to bid for World Design Capital status for Cape Town in 2014 at the forthcoming Design Indaba.
This award is conferred biennially by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) to a city that is dedicated to using design for social, cultural and economic development. If we are successful, this title will give Cape Town a chance to showcase our achievements and aspirations through a year-long programme of design-led events and activities – just as World Design Capital designees Seoul (see YouTube video) and Helsinki will do in 2010 and 2012 respectively.
More importantly, pitching for this title will also give city stakeholders an opportunity to once again work together towards a common goal – just as we have done with the 2010 World Cup. Already, many key stakeholders including the Mayor of the City of Cape Town have endorsed the project, and prominent individuals associated with design innovation have agreed to join a bid advisory body.
We have to be ready to submit our bid in February 2011. That gives us a year to get our act together. I invite any individual, organisation or business who is interested in getting involved to contact the Partnership, which is acting as a bid secretariat on behalf of all the stakeholders.
Conclusion
I know of many other examples of initiatives and projects in Cape Town, which have the potential to take us beyond 2010. However, time does not permit me to list them all here.
Plans and projects on their own are not good enough – we need to look at how we do things. In implementing plans for 2010, we have shown that we can do things differently. We have taken complex decisions. We have met deadlines. We have mobilised people out of silos and compartments, beyond ‘business as usual’. We have become less parochial and more outward looking.
The key question is: can we continue on this basis, or will we slip back into comfortable mediocrity?
Capetonians came together in 1989 to help get rid of apartheid. Can we again come together around a common vision?
I visited the Museum of Sydney in December 2009. It is a relatively new museum (1995) in downtown Sydney on the site of the first Government House. It is architecturally inserted into the base of a large office tower building. I was curious to see how the story of the City of Sydney is portrayed, particularly given the historical similarities between Sydney and my own city, Cape Town.
Entrance to the Museum of Sydney
Edge of the Trees installation
The first installation one is confronted with is at the entrance to the museum – the iconic Edge of the Trees, by Fiona Foley and Janet Laurence. The name of the sculpture comes from an essay by Australian archaeologist Rhys Jones: “…the ‘discoverers’ struggling through the surf were met on the beaches by other people looking at them from the edge of the trees. Thus the same landscape perceived by the newcomers as alien, hostile, or having no coherent form, was to the indigenous people their home, a familiar place, the inspiration of dreams.”
As the plaque outside says: “Edge of the Trees is about contact. It acknowledges the indigenous place and people of Sydney, home of the Eora, and the many layers of occupation since 1788… A place to enter, explore, contest anew; perhaps reconciliation?”
Throughout the museum, there are genuine attempts to come to terms with the impact of ‘first encounters’ – contacts between first Australians, with their 40 000 years of history in the Sydney region, and British colonisers, most of them convicts. For example, in Invasion 1 – an Aboriginal perspective by Gordon Syron, the perspective of Aboriginal Australians towards the newcomers is clearly portrayed.
Gordon Syron, Invasion 1 - an Aboriginal perspective, 1999
Elsewhere in the museum, there was an exhibition of the work of Sydney artist, cartoonist and song-writer Martin Sharp. Sharp, a well-known 1960s counter-culture artist who designed the cover of the Cream albums Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire in 1968, also shows his concerns about Aboriginal justice through his painting Australia, which is a reinterpretation of the cartoon A Curiosity in her own Country by Phil May that appeared in 1888, itself an ironic comment on the Centenary celebrations of the time.
Martin Sharp, Australia, 2003-09
Phil May, A Curiosity in her Own Country, 1888
All this brings me to the point of this particular post – where is our own Museum of Cape Town?
To find the story (or stories) of our city, you have to try and piece it together through visits to a range of different museums: Iziko Slave Lodge (slavery), Rust en Vreugd (visual images of life in early Cape Town), Koopmans de Wet (household life), Bertram House (the British period), Groot Constantia (Cape Dutch life), Bo Kaap Museum (Islamic, slave and apartheid history), Castle of Good Hope (artefacts, military history), South African Museum (archaeology, social history), District Six Museum (apartheid forced removals), SA Sendingstigting Museum (missions and slavery), Heart of the City at Groote Schuur Hospital (first heart transplant), Lwandle Museum (migrant labour), SA Maritime Museum (history of Table Bay Harbour), SA Jewish Museum (social history), Robben Island Museum (colonialism and apartheid) and so on.
I’m sure I’ve left some places out, and this is not a comment on the good work done by the museums in our city, but the point I am trying to make is this – our city story is fragmented and largely untold. There is no single place which brings together the histories and memories of our city in a coherent way. This is why for example I believe our own ‘first encounters’ continues to be uncritically and stereotypically depicted on many contemporary Cape Town websites largely through the painting of Charles Bell: Jan van Riebeeck arrives in Table Bay in April 1652.
Charles Bell, 1813-1882, Jan van Riebeeck arrives in Table Bay in April 1652. Charles Bell was the Surveyor General at the Cape. He was also an artist and a stamp designer (he designed the famous Cape of Good Hope triangular stamp). The suburb of Bellville is named after him.
In essence, the history of Cape Town, known as the ‘Mother City’ for good reason, is the history of our nation. It is the original place of our own first encounters – the first dispossessions around water and land, the first conquests and subjugations, the first struggles for freedom and justice.
So, do we need a Cape Town Museum? I believe we do, but then where should it be located? What form should it take? Who is going to get the ball rolling?
Gulp! Do I have to go down there?
I’ve just got back from an amazing walk underneath the city through an old water tunnel that runs from Oranjezicht to the Castle. The walk was part of the Reclaim Camissa project, which is currently managed by Caron von Zeil at the Cape Town Partnership (021 – 419 1881 for more information). The walk was conducted by Dwain Esterhuizen and his colleagues from Figure of 8, a Cape Town event and teambuilding company.
See Ella Smook’s article in the Cape Argus
CTP staff also seem a bit apprehensive... (picture: Shaen Adey)
Do I have to do this? (Picture: Shaen Adey)
Its perfectly safe, he grinned nervously (Picture: Shaen Adey)
The first part of the tunnel is 1,5m in diameter - great for someone 1,82m tall
Millions of litres of fresh water pour off Table Mountain every day into Table Bay
Deep under Buitenkant Street!
After about 20 mins, the tunnel expands to 2m in diameter, relief for aching calves! (Picture: Shaen Adey)
Yuk! (Picture: Shaen Adey)
Amazing brickwork in the tunnel (Picture: Shaen Adey)
Light at the end of the tunnel! Rhonda makes her exit
Emerging near the Nassau Bastion of the Castle of Good Hope
Safe and sound! The Cape Town Partnership team soak up some well deserved sunshine
The Mandela 46664 concert in the old Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, November 2003
Devil's Peak, Signal Hill and Table Mountain from the old Green Point Stadium. The views from the new Cape Town Stadium will be similar
Salief Keta sings for Mandela as the sun goes down behind Signal Hill
Mano, Maya and Angelo on the mezzanine level above the 120 new check-in counters
Breakfast at the airport? Well, if you have children who like watching Skychefs load meals onto planes, and baggage handlers driving strange vehicles around the apron, not to mention planes taking off and landing, then breakfast at the new CT Airport is the place to be. I took my two sons, Mano and Angelo, and their cousin, Maya, there on the morning of the opening of the new central passenger terminal. After checking out the new Mugg and Bean, Vida-E, Woolworths and Wimpy, amongst others, we eventually settled on that old Cape Town children’s favourite – the Spur. Located high up with a great view of the planes and other runway activities, its bound to be a hit with families.
As a Capetonian, I am proud that we will be able to ‘welcome the world’ in style next year to our great new airport. The design is elegant, the decor is subtle, and the service is very good. As a father, its wonderful to have another interesting place in Cape Town to take the family for breakfast.
Zakumi, the 2010 mascot, was on hand to welcome us on opening day
View from above
IRT lane under construction in Cape Town (picture: Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town)
There has been a lot of public debate about the costs and funding of the planned new Integrated Rapid Transit System (IRT) in Cape Town recently. Many commentators and ratepayers are asking – can we afford it? My view is – can we as a city afford not to implement an effective system of public transport such as the IRT?
Future congestion costs, pollution costs and energy costs all mean that Cape Town is not sustainable without a serious shift to public transport over the next ten years. As Ibrahim Seedat and Bill Cameron of the National Department of Transport point out: “The next 10 to 20 years are going to see traffic congestion, oil depletion, climate change restrictions and economic contraction seriously challenge inherited movement systems. Sustainable cities will be those that develop energy-efficient and user-friendly movement networks. Mass car use will not meet this challenge, but nor will ineffective public transport systems that are ’stuck in traffic’” (Cape Times, 02 November 2009)
Of course there must be accurate budgeting and costing for a project this size, and we have to live within our means as a city. It is prudent to ensure that promised funding from Central Government materialises. Bill Taylor, a US citizen living in Cape Town makes the point very well: “So now imagine a city where the authority running the mass transit scheme is facing a multibillion-rand gap in its budget because of the recession. Some of the projects have shot up way over the estimates, entire sections of the system have been left off the budget and forgotten. If this sounds familiar, consider that this is the recent report card not for Cape Town but for New York City. The main thing, however, is that despite all of this, there is no mention of stopping development. The city has realised that to retain its status and function properly it cannot allow itself to fall behind, although all five of its transport projects are costing more than anticipated” (Letter to the Cape Times, 02 November 2009).
The IRT is the one project that can serve to reconnect and integrate our physically and socially divided city in a relatively short period of time. I have a vision, in years to come, of an instantly-recognisable network of red bus lanes criss-crossing the city, connecting all communities to each other.
I say – let’s all get behind the Red Line. Hamba Bomvu! Go Red!
The instantly recognisable 'red line' snakes through Cape Town (pic. Bruce Sutherland)
Steel re-enforced concrete with a red ochre tinge makes the new IRT system instantly recognisable (pic. Bruce Sutherland)
Workers construct the IRT lane coming in from Paarden Eiland to the Cape Town Central City (pic. Bruce Sutherland)
Table Mountain and Lion's Head are recognisable from the new IRT lane under construction between Milnerton and Blaauberg
Bruce Southerland's beautiful aerial picture captures the 'red line' as it moves up the West Coast
Transit-led development
The IRT financial sustainability issue is not just confined to Cape Town. The City of Johannesburg went through exactly the same debate two weeks ago. Enrique Penalosa, ex-Mayor of Bogata, Colombia and IRT expert pointed out at a talk in Johannesburg recently that the real issue, in all SA cities, is our low density urban sprawl. I agree with him.
Any form of public transport will not be sustainable unless we seriously tackle our current urban form. More people travelling shorter distances, with better peak to base rations, will ensure that a future IRT service is viable. The City of Cape Town has recently published a draft policy on densification for comment. In my view, far tougher measures need to be put in place, but it is a good start and we should all be getting involved in the debate.
Last week, the Cape Times published a 3D city population density map by UCT academics Ivan Turok and Ken Sinclair-Smith, showing that our highest densities, not surprisingly, are in the townships and informal settlements in the south-east, rather than near the traditional urban centres. In my view, what would be useful is to show at the same time the population density pattern in relation to the location of the urban economy and current development patterns and the transport connections between them. While we need to try to take the economy to where the people are, in the long run, we need to bring the people nearer to the production centres and the jobs, reduce the physical footprint of the city, and the resulting distances.
This means promoting transit-led development, where there is a confluence of people, economy and public transport in nodes and along transport corridors, is given a high priority.
Two examples will suffice:
The new IRT station adjacent the Woodstock/ Esplanade rail stations, has the potential to drive the redevelopment of Woodstock, Salt River and Culemborg, and connect back to the proposed CT Station phase two redevelopment project.
The development of a multimodal transport connection (rail, bus, cycling) in Woodstock has the potential to lead the regeneration of the land east of the Cape Town CBD
Similarly, the IRT Red Line through Paarden Eiland could lead to the creation of a well-located mixed use, mixed income area
The IRT West Coast route goes through Paarden Eiland along a disused railway track (pic. Bruce Sutherland)
Birds eye view of the new Central Processing Terminal
New public plaza, CT Airport New Bus Rapid Transit station under construction next to the public plaza, about 30m from the entrance to the new terminal
Copyright & Copy 2009 Andrew Boraine