Doing something out of the ordinary can change our view

LAST week I gave a talk to a group gathered for the fifth Future Tyger Creative Session organised by the Greater Tygerberg Partnership. Actually it was part talk, part walk in collaboration with Open Streets Cape Town.

In preparation for Open Streets Days, or simply to explore and better understand how different neighbourhoods work, we hold what we call Talking Streets in different parts of Cape Town. We walk the streets as a group, looking and discussing and considering how the design of the streets affects what people do and how they interact; a sort of “research in motion” where we learn by observation rather than theory.

This one was in the streets surrounding Bellville station, an area a lot of Capetonians are unfamiliar with.

Right at the bottom of Durban Road (only 3km from Tyger Valley Centre, but a world away), this is a busy area that some people call Little Mogadishu, because it is a centre of activity for Somalis who have filled a gap left by businesses that have moved elsewhere.

It is where hundreds of traders come to buy the goods they sell across the city, and it is Cape Town’s second busiest transport hub, with tens of thousands of people passing through daily on their way to work. Many people would see this as a place in decline, but if you look beyond first impressions, it becomes clear that there is energy here, a dynamic that demonstrates a richness of experience and confidence felt by the people who use the place.

It is being regenerated, as one member of the group pointed out. It’s just not the sexy kind of regeneration we associate with places like Woodstock or Bree Street. It’s the kind that combines community and commerce. It regener- ates the human spirit rather than buildings. And because of that, it might hold some secrets for how the rest of Cape Town works – or could work.

And that was the point of our walk and talk: to see this hub with filters removed, to see what it might tell us. We all have preconceptions about a place, whether from personal experience or what we have heard, or even as professionals who have studied it. There is a time for analysis, but this was a time for feeling the place.

Before the walk, I asked everyone to treat this as an opportunity to immerse themselves in the experience. If we were going to discard our previous notions of what this area is about, we needed to observe in a way that we don’t normally do when we walk down a street, chatting to our friends or just focusing on getting to our destination.

This was a silent walk, because when we converse we are not really paying attention to our surroundings.

Philosopher Alan W Watts once said: “This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play.” And this was playful work, because we wanted to learn.

We were to do three things on the walk.

First, be aware of ourselves and our feelings as we navigated the space or dealt with people approaching us, or as we noticed the sounds and smells around us. What things made us uncom- fortable? Were there areas that made us want to stop and enjoy them? Second, stop and pay attention to what other people were doing. Were they sure of themselves, or hesitant or anxious? Why were they there? Third, be aware of interactions between people. Did they greet each other as they passed in the street? Did they stop to ask directions? Were they walking in groups or singly?

What was the point of this? Simply to do something different as a way to break our habits of thinking and being. Habits are a way for us to short-circuit the need to really observe and think, and can result in distorted ideas about a place, and inappropriate responses to “fix” it. If we operate on autopilot, not being really present, we won’t understand what is a problem and what is not. By doing something out of the ordinary, even feeling a bit uncomfortable, we see things differently.

What we found was… well, maybe you should try it yourself.

Habits are a way for us to short-circuit the need to really observe and think, resulting in distortion