{"id":598,"date":"2016-09-14T09:43:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T09:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/six.stimulatingminds.co.uk\/?p=598"},"modified":"2022-07-11T20:16:11","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T20:16:11","slug":"six-series-blog-no5-little-actions-bring-people-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialinnovationexchange.org\/legacy\/six-series-blog-no5-little-actions-bring-people-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Little actions that bring people together"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Little actions that bring people together<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As the CEO of a grant funded organisation, a non-profit, I am often challenged to validate the importance of placemaking programmes and allied activities in a country characterised by staggering inequality, high unemployment and poverty. These issues are of vital importance and require consistent intervention by civil society and the public and private sectors. Placemaking is often seen as a soft issue, not equal to infrastructure investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty-two years into South Africa\u2019s democracy, divisions along race and class lines are becoming more pronounced than ever. Spread by social media and the growing ubiquity of some form of Internet access, cellphones and other forms, these schisms are becoming part of the public discourse today, and this is not only true of a country shadowed by a history of institutionalised prejudice, but it\u2019s a global issue as well. One needs only to be aware of the outcome of the recent Brexit elections, or listen to the xenophobic bluster of a certain political candidate to know that the world is becoming more divided than ever into \u2018like us\u2019 or \u2018different them\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legacy of apartheid spatial planning in a city like Cape Town means that many suburbs continue to manifest apartheid-era realities in terms of racial composition. Since moving to Cape Town 16 years ago, I\u2019ve lived in a relatively integrated, previously \u2018white\u2019 suburb that is slowly becoming integrated. However, it took a chapter in a report<\/a>, the General Household Survey<\/em>1, published by Statistics South Africa, in May this year which opened my eyes to the true extent of segregation in South African cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applying Theil\u2019s entropy index<\/a> to the latest census data, researchers were able to discern that though municipalities around the country have become more integrated, the situation is still dire. Cape Town<\/a> shared several general attributes with the five other large municipalities in the country. These included central business districts (CBDs) with a high percentage of black African residents; these CBDs are surrounded by suburbs with a high concentration of white residents, while the high-density townships \u201cdominated by black African, coloured or Indian\/Asian residents \u2013 are disconnected from the CBD.\u201d2 And as per my own experience, racial mixing seemed to occur most frequently in previously \u2018white\u2019 neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings around the CBD were of primary interest to me, since when the Cape Town Partnership was first established in 1999 \u2013 to address urban flight and contributing factors such as crime and grime, which saw large corporates shutter their buildings and low residential and commercial occupancy rates \u2013 our area of focus was limited to the Cape Town CBD. Within ten years, Cape Town\u2019s CBD came to be regarded as one of the cleanest and safest in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From about 2006, the next phase of our evolution saw us concentrate energy on property investment, while since around 2012, we\u2019ve expanded our model to include placemaking. Every phase of our development has been appropriate for the environmental context, which leads to a fully integrated model focused on putting people (and their needs) first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And when we talk about people, we mean Capetonians, since we believe that if ordinary citizens feel at home in their cities, visitors will too. Recently, Cape Town\u2019s CBD was shown to attract the highest number of international visitors amongst all attractions in South Africa \u2013 according to research by South African Tourism.3

Since citizens are a vital partner in our work of bringing people and places together, we have several programmes that enable citizen activation of public spaces to take place. These include Open City, held on the first Thursday of each month as part of the First Thursdays movement, during which individuals and organisations are invited to use historic Church Square as their stage, and City Walk Saturdays, held on the third Saturday of each month in which people are invited to activate the entire\u00a0City Walk<\/a>\u00a0route, stretching from the Company\u2019s Garden, up St George\u2019s Mall to the Fan Walk and culminating at St Andrew\u2019s Square.

During these and a 17-year history of events, we\u2019ve seen sights of true unity that would have been unthinkable in the past. We\u2019ve seen people from various walks of life initiating ideas: from the older woman giving away cones filled with soil and seeds to raise awareness about sustainability, exhibitions by students at design and arts colleges in the area, live installations, mime, puppetry, theatre, tears, laughter, and throughout all this, people from diverse walks of life meeting each other as equals in public space.

These days, the Cape Town Partnership regards placemaking as a core strategic focus that permeates all we do. Although we\u2019re only begun articulating this, and using the term in recent years, it encapsulates what we\u2019ve been doing since we\u2019ve first begun: creating clean, safe, public spaces, where people feel welcome. And while there are many noble causes and dire needs in Cape Town, South Africa, and indeed, the rest of the world, surely activities that seek to unite people rather than divide them, are worthy of our support?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n