Creative and bold new ideas, pooled resources, new partnerships and joined-up mandates are needed if the Cape Town CBD is to recover beyond the 2020 Covid-19 status quo, writes ANDREW BORAINE.
In the late 1990s, the Cape Town Central City faced severe and complex challenges – derelict buildings, a depressed commercial property market, capital and customer flight, rising crime and grime, and high levels of poverty and homelessness on the streets. In response, public, private and professional institutions came together in July 1999 to form the Cape Town Partnership (CTP), a vehicle to help diverse partners with different needs and interests agree on a shared vision for the future of the Central City. It helped partners to forge a common agenda and undertake joint action, including the formation of the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) in November 2000.
The situation today is different. As a consequence of the unprecedented global health and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Cape Town Central City faces even greater challenges than it did in the 1990s. No one sector of the economy, Government or society will find solutions to the crisis on its own. There is once again a need for a collaborative approach. There is a need for a Central City Recovery Partnership.
Back in the 1990s, the Central City’s main challenges related largely to the absence of the fundamentals being in place – safe, secure and well-managed buildings and spaces, responsive urban management, and an ability to care for the vulnerable on the streets. Today, thanks to the continued presence of the CCID, most of the Central City fundamentals are in place. But, however necessary the work of the CCID is, it is an insufficient condition for recovery.
How does the Central City recover beyond the 2020 status quo? Creative and bold new ideas are needed, as are pooled resources and joined-up mandates. New partners are needed, beyond traditional commercial property and municipal sector alliances.
The Covid-19 crisis has both revealed and exacerbated the flaws in our society, and the Central City needs to be part of leading the way to building back better. There is a need for a new, more inclusive and more dynamic vision for the Central City, including affordable housing, greater accessibility, more people-centred streets and spaces, more room for small enterprises and informal economies, urban agricultural production, and social employment programmes, with strong linkages to community economic and social recovery throughout Cape Town. As New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has stated: “Economic growth accompanied by worsening social outcomes is not success. It is failure.”
None of this can or will happen without a well-considered partnering approach, based on mutual accountability, stronger relationships of trust and a willingness to accommodate diverse interests. This needs to happen quickly, with purpose. A partnering approach needs to favour implementation through joint action, not wordy documents and cautious compliance-driven processes. Relationships of trust are built through action, on site, not through long discussions on Zoom.
- This article first appeared in the State of Cape Town Central City Report 2019 – A year in review. Andrew Boraine is CEO of the Economic Development Partnership. He is former City Manager of Cape Town and has been involved in South Africa’s local government, urban and economic development transition processes for the past 35 years.