RE-INVENTING APRTHEID CITY
Hein Coumou heincoumou@gmail.com
RE-INVENTING APARTHEID CITY
During my excursion to Cape Town, I was really fascinated by the undefined zones between the different roads and ethnic neighbourhoods across the city. After the lecture of Guy Briggs, I realized that I had to do something to change the scars left by apartheid in the built realm. Back in the Netherlands, I researched the history of apartheid in Cape Town and its spatial consequences. It is completely different from modern planning practices implemented in Western Europe where functions were divided and isolated from one another. Instead in Cape Town, people were divided based on their skin colour and only allowed to inhabit specific zones of the city. Due to the spatial buffer zone around each ethnic related area, these areas manifested as isolated enclaves in the city. Twenty years after apartheid ended in Cape Town, the city still shows the scars of social and racial division. After finishing my spatial research to the social and physical context, I discovered the buffer zone does also continue into the townships. Change was not so much needed in the buffer zones between the townships, but instead, along the roads between them. More roads are needed to connect these areas. And the roads that already are there need to be activated. The roads run through a dune landscape along the sides of houses. The houses have their backs to the roads, lined with big concrete walls. These roads are unsafe, due to the lack of interaction between buildings and the road. Also, there is little consideration for human scale in these spaces. In this project I tested my statement that ethnic and spatial interaction by space can be stimulated on the New Eisleben Road between Mitchells Plain and Phillipi. The idea is that different functions, activities and identities from each area present themselves alongside the road, and in time, they will strengthen each other until a unique city street is created. To reach this goal a strategy is needed. Local retail and a community market is the starting. In order to address the need for extra dwellings the open space along the road can be built for homes. In first instance very basic, e.g. by realizing container homes. Later on more sophisticated homes. This intervention will give the people an opportunity to start a shop from their home or container. Density is needed to make the roads and open spaces smaller and more intimate because of the addition of mixed use. My project launches the idea that densifying the open space along main roads can be a tool to finish the isolation of the existing ethnic related areas, by giving space to local needs and demands. Instead of following the current government’s plan of building more generically neighborhoods, these area would benefit from a new approach. No formal and structured blueprint should be established in order to create an unique neighborhood in the city. Due to the fact that informal housing in this area is inevitable, the places where the growth is expected are defined. In time, different groups of people and cultures or classes will start to live and work along these new urban streets and adjacent neighbourhoods. The isolation of the originally planned introvert enclaves will come to an end.
Date 201411 18
Tutors Jeroen Mensink Gert Breugem
From open no man’s land
To a lively city street
Apartheid Spatial Policy Apartheid zoning plan infill: Functions and people
Apartheid zoning plan bufferzones: Deviding the urban fabric by buffer zones and infrastructure
Re-inventing Apartheid City by new connections and activating the monofunctional roads.
Legend
White High Class white people Mixed neighborhood Asian Coloured Black
0
6 km
Legend
Buffer Zone Infrastructure Highway Railway Road
0
6 km
Phillipi <-> Mitchellsplain analysis
Legend Wall Undifened land Road House / House with backyard house Informal Seattlement
Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; A
Rail Highway 0
200 m
Project Location Cape Town
Mal
Bâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
B Contramal
AA’ T0
BB’ T0
Strategy
Concept Introverted Townships. Functions do not mutually.
Break the townships open by activating the road. Presenting the functions and identities side along the road.
With time functions will strengthen each other and a new economic node will appear.
Possible Outcome
Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; A
Possible Outcome Framework, sidewalk & road
Bâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
New Development Busstop
B
Minibus platform Market Church Trainstation New Policestation 0
200 m
The Framework for New Eisleben Rd
5
12 P
BB’ T1
AA’ T1
BB’ T2
AA’ T2
BB’ T3
AA’ T3
5 P
The Future of New Elseben Rd.