#Peoplenotparking

Yolandi Vorster
Aug 9, 2017 · 4 min read

Our cities act as physical manifestations of our culture and priorities. Unfortunately, there are many examples in South Africa (and I’m sure other countries) where power and greed dominate our urban fabric and have left millions of people displaced.

My name is Yolandi and I currently reside in Cape Town, on the South West coast of Africa. As an architect by profession, and an idealist by heart, I hope to contribute alongside 999 participants from across the globe in an attempt to address the Sustainable Development Goals at Unleash 2017 in Denmark this month, particularly Urban Sustainability.

Unleash is an innovation Lab that brings together top talent from all over the world to work on disruptive solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals. (SDG’s)

In South Africa, we live in a highly segregated urban environment. The scars of Apartheid (Separatist) Urban Planning lie deeply carved in our urban fabric and has played a big part in creating the urban sprawl that continues to grow rapidly. Current urban design solutions do not adequately address this problem.

Because of the sprawl and the resultant density of cities in South Africa, most people rely on some form of automobile to get around. Even the most prevalent and widely used form of public transport is an automobile, the minibus taxi, that carries approximately 15 people at a time. Compared to the majority of our population, I’ve always been privileged enough to have the use of a private car.

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to move from a very sub-urban area in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, where parking spaces are almost considered a “human right”, to Cape Town’s inner city.

I was appalled to learn that in contrast, the City of Cape Town is less generous in offering free and safe parking. I reluctantly started to explore alternative options whilst questioning my ingrained commuting habits. What I had discovered was troubling and freeing in various ways. It was only a few months until I decided to sell my car and pledged to depend on public transport. This might not sound like a leap when you live in a city with sufficient public transport infrastructure but was, and still is, relatively challenging, and more so, as owning a car, from my privileged upbringing, was a given.

Thousands of people commute to the inner city for work every day. This is not a Cape Town specific phenomenon. The “one man, one car” culture has inspired multi-story parking lots, occupied by thousands of cars for a period of approximately 8hours a day, leaving the 2.5 x 6 meter parking bay empty for the majority of its existence. More troubling than the 16 hours of useless 15 square meter space, most settlements on the outskirts of Cape Town offer less than this in livable space for most displaced families.

It is unfortunate that the architectural profession, as we practice it, does not address these problems as part of a greater potential urban narrative, and there is little expectation from a legislative position to enforce future innovation for city planning. City Planning, Urban Design and Architecture should encourage an environment that promotes the need for infrastructure, particularly public transport, in order to demote personal car use and general automobile dependence. One of the troubling observations was that the people in position of these decisions, are too comfortable in their corner office with its privileged parking.

To be frank, by not accommodating cars in the city, or elsewhere for that matter, alternatives will have to be explored and infrastructure will definitely follow. It does not always work the “right” way around.

A possible, and futuristic, alternative to the constant widening of roads and expanding urban sprawl could come from new technologies of driverless cars and the idea that cars will no longer be privately owned but rather summoned when needed from a fleet of vehicles continuously on the road. A massive reduction in required parking space will be the result if cars are not intended to park, creating potential space on a massive scale to offer accommodation to those currently commuting from the outskirts of the city on a day to day basis.

The ideal future problem statement could read as follow: “The driver-less city has produced thousands of square meters of abandoned parking lots in the heart of the inner-city”.

My vision is to explore avenues to encourage a possible future for these anticipated abandoned parking lots. While exploring a viable and profitable housing solution to replace parking lots and change the urban landscape as we know it.

The combination of exchanging parking bays for low cost housing, optimizing public transport and so reducing the need for ever expanding infrastructure aimed at the automobile could result in more people living in the city, creating a more vibrant urban environment and greatly reducing the automobile footprint of daily commuters. Legislation currently determines the exact minimum requirements for parking for any new building or development. What if the requirement included a minimum requirement for access to public transport and minimum required low-cost housing per square meter development?

In order to change the urban landscape as we know it, disruptive solutions will be required. We will re-prioritize our values to choose people over parking to create a sustainable urban environment with efficient infrastructure and enhanced quality of life, to benefit its inhabitants, not their automobiles.

UNLEASH Lab

Global innovation lab creating disruptive solutions for the UN's SDGs

Yolandi Vorster

Written by

UNLEASH Lab

Global innovation lab creating disruptive solutions for the UN's SDGs

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