Improving Cape Town’s bid to be the World Design Captial

Cape Town really is a tale of two cities, one a postcard narrative of wild beauty and sophisticated cosmopolitanism, the other a story of poverty and urban degradation.

What links the two is the people of the city, some four million inhabitants who share much the same hopes, depend on the same resources and whose future prospects are inseparable.

If in the past they were divided by design, it is by design – a reshaping of the cityscape – that a safer, more efficient and fairer home for all its residents can be forged.

The potential was no better illustrated than in the way the people of Cape Town rediscovered their city and one another during the World Cup, mingling and celebrating together in public spaces, stadiums, dedicated walkways and on trains and buses.

But it will take more than a soccer tournament to overcome the structural fragmentation of the Cape Town apartheid planners designed, a sprawling city in which the majority of citizens were - and still are - cut off from one another, and from resources and opportunities.

Burgeoning urban population
Like many cities the world over, Cape Town is grappling with the needs of a burgeoning urban population on one hand, and on the other of the investors and businesses which are indispensable to fuelling the economic growth on which the whole population depends.

What we know is that cities that work are sustainable ones which prioritise people - their engagement with the city and their connection with and ease of access to jobs, services, education and cultural and leisure activities. Key issues are public transport, denser and safer accommodation, and vibrant public spaces.

And design is at the heart of all these things: using design thinking and processes to assure a sustainable future.

This, in a nutshell, is the thinking behind Cape Town’s bid, which carries the tagline: Live Design, Transform Life, to be the World Design Capital of 2014. World Design Capital is a global project of the non-profit International Council for Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid), launched in 2008 to promote the value of design in managing and reshaping cities. Recognising that more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, World Design Capital aims to show how design can address the challenges arising out of unprecedented urbanisation.

As Icsid points out, design is “an increasingly fundamental tool in all levels of public and private development’ in making cities ‘more attractive, more liveable and more efficient’. The future success of cities, it argues, “lies in the hands of those who plan, design and manage the shared spaces and functions of their city”.

World Design Capital status
One of the mechanisms for acknowledging cities which succeeds in doing this is the biennial conferring of World Design Capital status on a city. The award is made to cities that are committed to using design in addressing challenges and implementing their vision, and allows the designated city to showcase its design achievements and aspirations through a year-long programme of design-led events and activities. The current recipient of the award is Seoul.

The bidding process for the 2014 award is about to open, giving contending cities an opportunity to submit an application detailing their design assets, as well as their vision and plans. From these submissions two cities will be shortlisted, the finalists then being required to expand on their proposals. The second-round judging process includes a visit by an Icsid panel. The winning city will be announced in 2012.

While cities bidding for the prestigious award are not publicly announced, it is understood that Bilbao and a number of Chinese cities are in the running. Cape Town may not have a Frank Gehry Guggenheim, or the budgets of the Chinese contenders, but its strengths are numerous and its potential impressive.

Cape Town’s unique setting – cupped between the national heritage sites of Table Mountain and Robben Island – is complemented by its culturally diverse population, which gives the city its rich character. Cape Town’s cuisine, music, dance and language reflect this rich variety, as does its wealth of good designers and designs.

Creative industry enterprises
The CBD alone is home to more than a thousand creative industry enterprises, nearly a half of which are design-related. They include large architecture and urban design practices, advertising agencies and IT companies, as well as smaller enterprises in the fashion, jewellery and surface design fields. The leading edge international design conference and expo, Design Indaba, has been held annually in Cape Town for the past 14 years and the annual Toffie Popular Culture Festival, launched in 2009, offers workshops covering a wide range of design disciplines.

Many Cape Town designers have received global design awards, notably the architect Luyanda Mpahlwa, winner of the Curry Stone Design Prize for his 10x10 low-cost housing solution, and Carin Smuts, winner of the 2008 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture; and the team of industrial designer Philip Goodwin, electronics designer Stefan Zwahlen and project leader John Hutchinson, who won the Index Design Award for the Freeplay Fetal Heart Rate Monitor. Local environmental design is also having an impact. The Green Goal programme, which helped offset the World Cup’s carbon footprint, has been widely acclaimed. At the same time a locally designed electric car, the Joule, is ready to go into production.

The city of Cape Town has a compelling story to tell, particularly in how it is using design to overcome the huge challenges created during the apartheid era.

After a long past of divisiveness, the story of Cape Town since 1994 has been about learning to reconnect.

History of Cape Town
At the end of the 1900s, Cape Town was a relatively contained port city with a diverse population of slightly more than 100 000, mostly living between Table Mountain and the sea.

While racial prejudice was already deeply rooted in colonial-era town planning, the 20th century saw this prejudice codified in law, most ruthlessly in the Group Areas Act of the 1950s, which carved the city into racial blocs.

The net outcome of this programme of discrimination denied black South Africans the opportunity to live and work in the city, and forced out others who were not white. Residential segregation became a fixed feature of Cape Town and its ‘solution’ of developing sub-economic housing on the Cape Flats.

A once vibrant Cape Town closed in on itself, shutting out its citizens and, by default, encouraging decay, degeneration and crime.

As the political tide turned, however, so the city began slowly to reconnect.

For the past decade the inner city itself has been the centre of a major regeneration project, driven and funded by a private/public partnership. While the Cape Town Partnership facilitates strategic collaboration that has spurred development and investment, its operational arm, the Central City Improvement District, has created a safe, clean environment.

Restoration of District Six
The restoration of District Six to its historic claimants and redevelopment of the area is underway, albeit painstakingly slowly and beset with political challenges. The area linking it to the Central City is, however, enjoying a rapid reawakening. The East City, as it’s called, is occupied by an increasing number of creative industry enterprises, as well as artists, musicians, writers and theatres, coffee shops and restaurants - reprising the precinct’s role as the centre of creativity in the city.

This is also where the East City Design Initiative is planned, an innovation hub focused on design and ICT that will provide the space and impetus for those in creative industries to benefit from the growing knowledge economy. What was once the Cape Technikon is now a campus of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology where the unique Faculty of Informatics and Design promotes socially conscious design, and staff and students collaborate with communities to source design solutions to social challenges.

For decades the clothing and textile sector, with a base in the suburbs of Salt River and Woodstock, was a robust industry and a major contributor to the Cape economy. When this failed, the area degenerated. But, like many cities worldwide that have used design to revive locales, this precinct is experiencing a process of regeneration, led in large part by the presence of designers and design-related businesses. Furniture designers Pedersen+Lennard and Haldane Martin, lighting designers Heath Nash and Brett Murray, and fashion design company Darkie Clothing all have studios here. The area has also witnessed a proliferation of art galleries, advertising agencies and design shops. In the old clothing and textile district, a cosmopolitan environment has arisen, where design and lifestyle are key elements of its character.

Cape Town is a city with a cosmopolitan offering of art, culture, entertainment and leisure, adding another string to Cape Town’s marketing bow as a destination.

Benefits of the Integrated Rapid Transport system
Cape Town has also recently benefited from the beginnings of an Integrated Rapid Transport (IRT) system. A network of road, rail, pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths, it has the potential to connect people, giving them greater access to different areas, resources and opportunities. Through the application of design, the IRT could potentially unleash sustainable economic development and densification in the nodes surrounding stations.

Beyond the central city, there have been other initiatives that reflect Cape Town’s commitment to addressing the fragmentation of its layout. One example is the municipality’s Dignified Places Programme which aims to create positive, inspiring, safe spaces in the most under-resourced areas of the city for people to meet, trade and relax.

Cape Town needs to get better at communicating its design assets and achievements and sharing its design know-how so that best practices can be replicated. Bidding for the World Design Capital award will help it communicate design innovations.

Cape Town already has an extensive range of great designers and design assets, including product and graphic designs, film and television animation, advertisements, furniture, jewellery, ceramics, fabrics and clothing. The city also has a calendar of major events of which Design Indaba, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and the Loeries, annual awards for the advertising industry, are just a few.

Design competition winners
A number of winners of international design competitions are from Cape Town.

Organisations like Cape Craft and Design Institute (CCDI) and Bandwidth Barn, and programmes like Creative Cape Town, are committed to design thinking that unlocks creative potential.

World Design Capital will provide the city with the opportunity to showcase its design assets and design savvy to the world.

More significantly, the award will turn public focus to design so it can be used as a tool for social change.

Lorelle Bell is the World Design Capital coordinator at Cape Town Partnership, which has been delegated to drive the bid application by the City of Cape Town. The above blog is an edited extract from an article in Creative Cape Town Annual 2010.

How do you think design can make Cape Town a better city to live and work in? Share your ideas on how new designs could change the city for the better. Send your contributions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with ‘World Design Capital 2014’ in the subject line.