The idea of inner-city living with a city that is walkable and has ample green urban spaces is closer to reality than most of us think. With new and innovative design, we can transform our current cityscapes into the utopias we desire and circumnavigate the problems that past city planning has bestowed upon us.
Inner City Living, Walkable Cities and Green Urban Spaces
Photo credit: Mark Mac Hattie
The trickle of people back to inner-city living, which started in the last decade, has become a steady stream and shows no signs of abatement. This is in complete contrast with the exodus of residents to the suburbs in the ‘70s. At that time, the suburbs became ‘home’ whilst the city became ‘work’.
This is because the city planners of yesteryear created metropoles built around vehicles instead of people.
Either way, people are taking back the city, one high rise building at a time. Previously derelict buildings now house retail, commercial and residential functions all in one. Each square meter of a city can no longer have a singular function – in the age of adaptation, versatility is key to survival.
The idea of what constitutes a public space, or even a landscape, is being challenged. Gone are the days of wanting to put trees everywhere and having clipped hedges or annual flower baskets. The vertical has become a canvas as important as the ground plane, street art decorates barren walls, public art sculptures occupy squares, and alleyways are fair game for vertical gardens.
On the other side of the coin, individuals have decided to adopt ‘70s décor trends; indoor plants have exploded back onto the scene. Small plant-curio stores where one can purchase beautiful specimens have sprouted up and almost everyone with an Instagram account has at least one plant in their home.
Establishments such as coffee houses, antique stores and nurseries have bound together to become single retail entities. The Cape Town store, “Our Local” is a case in point. Here you can enjoy a delicious breakfast, surrounded by antiques and plants – and most of them are for sale.
The culture of indoor plants has resulted in some varieties being in such high demand that growers are struggling to keep up with the demand.
I am personally grateful for this trend; we can now talk in public about plants without being looked at as if we are weirdos because the love for “plant babies” (pets) is real.
If this is just a trend until someone publishes an article on how toxic indoor plants are, will we have a massacre of philodendron and pothos vines? Hopefully not.
As indoor plants become accepted ‘residents’, owning a car is becoming more of a liability. The movement towards compact living will have a knock-on effect on landscaping and public spaces. As the intrinsic value of outdoor spaces increases, public gardens are more highly valued, trees that already occupy space in the city are cherished, and balconies and other tiny spaces become opportunities for greening. Acquiring more space in our overflowing cities becomes a challenge.
A conceptual project ,Cartwright’s Corner by Square One landscape architects, aims to address this by utilising rooftop gardens to allow the residents of a building to explore a green space on the building, instead of at the ground level.
With new innovations in the growing industry it is easier to grow large trees and various shrubs on different levels of buildings essentially greening up the footprint of the building. Architects and developers have become more ecologically aware and buildings are constructed sustainably with built-in solutions for retaining and storing water.
With people returning to the city centre to live and work, we hope to see our city streets re-engineered for greater bi-pedal activity. Walk down Loop street and it’s easy to see the amount of parking in buildings, usually taking up multiple levels. These could be turned into housing or other solutions. Imagine if we closed off streets and turned them into walkable avenues, occupied by foot traffic, trees and street furniture? St George’s Mall, historically a road, has already demonstrated this successfully, but in 1992 the idea was quite novel in Cape Town. Residents in the city need to be able to move around freely without having to negotiate space with unnecessary vehicular traffic.
Curitiba in Bolivia is a city that changed its entire movement route to cater for pedestrians and a public transport system. One of the poorest cities in South America became one of the most desirable cities in which to live. Imagine what would happen if we engineered a city that catered for people first. The amount of space we could open up for greening the city and the density of residents we could achieve in Cape Town would rival most first-world cities.
The idea of inner-city living with a city that is walkable and has ample green urban spaces is closer to reality than most of us think. With new and innovative design, we can transform our current cityscapes into the utopias we desire and circumnavigate the problems that past city planning has bestowed upon us.
So, get out your pens and paper, draw up your ideas and talk to as many people as you can. Create an awareness that we need to change our public transport systems, our urban green spaces and cities to people-centred metropoles.
Mark Mac Hattie – Contours Design Studio
