Considering the complex spatial and social dynamics at play in Cape Town, how viable is a regenerative built environment project? This was one of the questions posed to participants at an interactive session hosted by the African Centre for Cities on Tuesday, 04 June 2024, as part of the ReBuilt Cape Town project. Convened by Bauhaus Earth, ACC and the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership, ReBuilt seeks to initiate and test a stakeholder-led transition pathway towards a more regenerative future for the built environment in Cape Town and the Western Cape.
This was the first Transition Arena meeting hosted by ACC with partners and stakeholders from different fields. The Transition Arena sessions are a series of monthly gatherings designed to unpack ACC’s research across four meta-sectors: The Urban Social Landscape; Policy, Regulatory and Strategy Landscape; The Construction Sector and finally Bio-resources. Through these engagements, our aim is to invite partners and stakeholders to comments, critique and enrich our research. This approach intends to ensure wide ranging consultation with regards to the project’s central aim – stakeholder-led transition pathway towards a more regenerative future for Cape Town’s built environment. The first meeting was attended by representatives from Isandla Institute, Young Urbanists, City of Cape Town, Urban Think Tank, Onile and ACC.
In this session, ACC research assistants Aidan Africa and Mashego Molemane presented findings of their research conducted on the socio-spatial dynamics of three Cape Town districts – Cape Flats, Table View and Blaauwberg. “This presentation is a step towards understanding the place of a regenerative building shift in the context of a spatially segregated, severely unequal and climate changing city,” Africa explained.
Through these engagements, our aim is to invite partners and stakeholders to comments, critique and enrich our research. This approach intends to ensure wide ranging consultation with regards to the project’s central aim – stakeholder-led transition pathway towards a more regenerative future for the built environment in Cape Town.
Amongst other takeaways, the session emphasised the importance of continuous engagements with communities as one of the key factors for the success of regenerative building practices. ReBuilt Cape Town Project Manager, dr. heeten bhagat explained: “The aim of these sessions is to bring in people who are not normally talked to, who don’t normally get invited into these conversations. What we are finding through a project like is that there are several interesting projects and processes; a lot of these initiatives are not really being focused on. One of our key focuses in this project is to try and bring in as many of these initiatives to the fore.”
Echoing similar sentiments on the importance of collaborations, Elohym da Costa from Young Urbanists said the project can gain more insights by engaging with people on the ground who can enrich the technical knowledge of built environment professionals with their lived realities.
Mirjam van Donk from Isandla Institute said the objectives of the project align with their work, particularly low-income housing developments, and recognizes people’s agency and their realities. Van Donk remarked: “I’m here to engage and learn from what the colleagues are working on in the hope that it benefits us…I think we are all working to land somewhere practical like what exactly is going to be the experimentation and testing, so that we can look at what does that mean more broadly for policy.”
The Transition Arena meetings will continue, monthly, until November. For more information, please contact heeten bhagat (souxiip@gmail.com)