Critical for city to make most of creative, intellectual capital

THIS week marks the fifth anniversary of this column, which began as a collaboration with architect Mokena Makeka. Last week we had a wide-ranging conversation about Cape Town and what has changed in these five years. This is the first instalment of our discussion.

When we started this column it was the Fifa World Cup and there was this sense that we were at a turning point in grappling with some of the city’s planning and design challenges, that Cape Town could actually be something different, and that infrastructure could help. And it seemed that the role of an active citizenry was being talked about more than before.

I think it was an amazing moment for the country and the city, and even for ourselves, and interesting that a newspaper was prepared to talk about urban issues and city-making, which one would hardly have imagined would be something of general interest.

A number of initiatives have arisen that I would like to think have come out of that notion of active citizenship. Whether it’s think tanks or World Design Capital or public events or even just entrepreneurs beginning to occupy the street in front of their businesses in a different sort of way. So I think there has been an unlocking of the imagination for many people, but I’m not so sure that has actually filtered through to government.

But they must have had a sense of economic opportunity when they decided to host the World Cup and build a stadium and the fan walk and related things. They must have thought this is a worthwhile investment.

Sure. But it was clearly a national strategy. It took a while for local government to look at World Cup infrastructure as an asset. It was seen as a fiscal risk, and I think it took a long time for them to see the opportunity of turning these burdens into assets. And it is an ongoing struggle to capitalise on the potential.

So it could have been done differently?

Yes. I don’t think we maximised it at all. You can do so many things with a World Cup or an Olympic event, you know; you can use it to generate housing; you can use it to galvanise a particular sector of the economy…

I get the sense that there was this euphoria about the event and a relief that it went well, but I think a lot of people struggled to imagine “what next?”. And now we face the same question with the 2014 World Design Capital.

The WDC was really meant to say there is another story about what Cape Town has to offer. The city is not just a fantastic venue, but actually we have creative and intellectual capital.

And to be honest I think the WDC really struggled to meet its expectations. I think the way it was structured and its mandate and how it was internally imagined could have been far more interesting and perhaps long lasting.

So from that perspective I think the enthusiasm that one had in 2010 compared to now… not that one is jaded or pessimistic… I think it is just the realisation that what we had started was in fact quite a long process, and that it would probably take maybe 10 years to reach what we thought could have been achieved in five.

The municipal government, under the hand of Richard Perez and his WDC team, has been trying to make design thinking a part of their everyday work. That would be a powerful legacy, but the human capital within the institution needs to be unlocked just as much as citizen capital does.

Absolutely. I think it’s an issue of time, and we’ll see how long it takes for people like Richard to chip away at the infrastructure. You can imagine it takes a different kind of social capital to make a thriving city. And I think it’s critical; Cape Town will never be the financial hub of the country. It has to rely on its ability to participate in the service industry and the creative sectors.

As much as there is fruit production and the things that make the local economy strong and vibrant, I would like to see a more resilient Cape Town moving more towards a knowledge-based economy. Creativity is not a “nice to have”, it is a critical thing to have.

More next week…