Urban Age Award should inspire collaborative efforts in Cape Town

WITH Cape Town as the focus city for the 2012 Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award, it’s a good time to look at how we can find solutions to living in an urban age.

We are living through difficult times. Pundits agree that 2012 is unlikely to hold much improvement on the terrible economic times that have become the norm since the 2008 financial crisis. This is most viscerally captured by the deep structural problems in the “old economies” of the world (Europe, Japan and the US), but also manifest in the modest performance of growth regions in the developing world. The economic crisis coincides with the seven billion threshold crossed by the global population in 2011.

These two processes – uneven economic development and continued demographic expansion – collide in the world’s cities. Mckinsey Global Institute argues in a recent report, Urban World, that only 600 urban centres, representing one fifth of the global population, account for 60 percent of worldwide GDP. What they don’t say, but is equally self-evident, is that within these cities, wealth is also highly concentrated. In other words, in the context of pervasive economic globalisation and continued population expansion (and ageing in many developed parts of the world), the underlying logic is one of increasing concentration of economic life, power, opportunity and access.

These trends remind us that we need to take serious stock of our urban centres in SA. The SA Cities Network reports that the five largest metropolitan areas (Joburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Cape Town and ethekwini) account for 52 percent of the total value added in the SA economy. In other words, our national economy mirrors the global situation. And, just as the global economy is marked by patterns of concentration and large-scale exclusion, SA cities are no different. Nearly 40 percent of Cape Town’s population live below the poverty line and if we include those who survive just above it, we know that almost 60 percent of the population live in profoundly insecure conditions. This disturbing structural inequality in the fibre of our cities is unjust and inefficient.

The recent public attention around what Cape Town can and should be doing to become more integrated and productive in the wake of being awarded World Design Capital 2014 status is overdue. It is a fantastic opportunity to define what we could be doing to make the city a leader in finding a more inclusive, creative and effective pathway to long-term resilience.

The Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award has turned its attention to Cape Town in 2012. The R750 000 award recognises and celebrates creative solutions to the problems facing more than half the world’s population now living in cities. Accordingly, the award focuses on projects that benefit communities and local residents by improving their urban environments. It seeks to encourage citizens, policy-mak- ers, private business and NGOS to take a proactive role in creating shared responsibilities for the cities of the 21st century, humanity’s first truly “urban age”.

The award is associated with the Urban Age programme, a worldwide investigation into the future of cities, jointly initiated by Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society and LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

I agreed to join this global campaign as jury chairman for the Cape Town award because it recognises and celebrates grassroots innovations in city building. In my opinion, the heroic efforts of grassroots activists are the critical missing ingredient in building more inclusive and dynamic cities. Urban planners and designers have a pretty good idea of the technical requirements for creating effective cities: resource efficiency, infrastructure, excellent public transport, efficient government, regulatory certainty, maintained open-space networks, and so forth. These policies never achieve their full potential when cities do not work for majority populations.

Thus, the greatest challenge facing us is to understand how we can connect low-key innovations with city-wide policies that raise the quality of life for everyone. This creative imperative is, in my mind, what the World Design Capital 2014 campaign must entrench. A vital stepping stone is to bring to the surface the rich reservoir of voluntary activism and mutual support that keeps communities afloat and hopeful.

It is for this reason that I want to appeal to all proud and active Capetonians to use the occasion of the Urban Age Award to seek out grassroots projects and initiatives that improve the physical conditions of their communities and the lives of their residents. We are looking for input from a variety of fields: housing and shelter, workplaces and commerce, transport and infrastructure, public space and recreation, sanitation and health, education, arts and culture, and any other relevant urban regeneration initiatives.

Citizens can find out more information on how to enter their projects on our dedicated website www.dbuaaward.net or in public libraries across the city.

Edgar Pieterse is the director of the African Centre for Cities at UCT.