Housing, Parking and Elections 24
How can the parking of government cars for part of the day be more important than addressing the housing and segregation crisis?
Prime pieces of well-located public land in Cape Town are being wasted as parking for government cars. This land should be used to benefit the people of Cape Town, but instead is used to store cars for a limited number of hours each day. There is no reason that potentially transformative pieces of public land in the heart of our city should be used in such an unjust, inefficient and illogical way.
Allowing our highly valuable, most well-located public land to be squandered as car storage is an injustice to the majority of residents of this city who are without access to land and decent housing, and directly contributes to the spatial dysfunction, segregation and un-sustainability of Cape Town’s urban form.
Cape Town is spatially unjust
Cape Town is built on racial dispossession, segregation and exclusion.
Commuting from Khayelitsha to town costs roughly R16,8K per year. If someone does this commute from 19-65 years old, they would spend about 5 years of their life in traffic!
While 76% of Cape Town’s population earn below R22 000 per month, only 34% of all formal homes cater to households in this income range. There is clearly a significant mismatch between what people earn and how much homes cost. This mismatch means that 53% of homes (334 242 in total) built between 2020 and 2040 will be informal unless there is a drastic change in approach
The average rent of R9 730 in the Western Cape remains the highest in the country. In the area around Parliament Parking lot, the two Government Garage sites and Top Yard, just a one bedroom apartment costs between R12 000 and R18 000 to rent per month. This is three to four times the current national minimum wage of R4 182.61 per month.
Not a single affordable home built in Cape Town inner city since 1994.
Mismatch between where most people live and where most jobs are
Why are we using our most well-located public land for parking?
Cape Town’s existing infrastructure favours private car use. The structure of our city means that public transport options are costly and inefficient as the lack of density severely hinders the economic viability of public transport services. For example, Cape Town’s MyCiti bus system runs roughly the same distance as the bus system of Bogotá in Colombia, but Cape Town only has about one rider for every 50 riders in Bogotá. With fewer riders in well-located areas (because of the lack of density), the costs cannot be shared effectively and in turn the MyCiti remains unaffordable to many working class residents of the city. On top of costs, our public transport options are often unreliable and unsafe.
The over-provision of parking also disincentivises the use of public transport by making driving comparatively easy and cheap. In contrast to cities around the world, we continue to effectively subsidise private car use and urban sprawl. In Cape Town, 86% of emissions came from private cars, 7% from minibus taxis, 4% from buses and 1% from motorcycles. This dependence on private cars is clearly bad for the environment and for our public transport systems.
There is a clear solution - it is time to prioritise homes over parking spaces, and communities over private vehicles. Let Cape Town’s public land serve its people.
There are four pieces of public land in the city centre that are used to store government vehicles and we put forward an alternative vision with concrete design and financial proposals. The four sites are:
Parliament parking lot (owned by National Government)
Top Yard (owned by the Western Cape Government)
Two government garages on Hope Street (owned by the Western Cape Government).
The four sites are right next to each other and provide compelling examples to demonstrate how well-located public land that is currently being wasted can be reimagined to build a more inclusive and just city by providing homes to hundreds of families.
Our proposals reveal that a precinct level development of these four state-owned parking lots could create a racially and economically diverse neighbourhood by providing:
969 social housing apartments
969 market related apartments
homes for 732 people in transitional housing
The same amount of parking for Parliament (in a multi-storey parking)
new communal and public space to improve the urban realm
encourage economic stimulation by accommodating shops and informal traders
What Parliament Parking could be
We challenge Parliament and the Western Cape Provincial Government to put policy into practice by seizing the opportunity to transform the face of Cape Town and address its violent history of spatial injustice.
Recognising the sheer inefficiency of needlessly using prime land for vehicle storage as far back as 2014, the Province spent R73 million to build a new parking facility for its cars in Maitland. However, it has yet to follow through on its plans to move the cars currently stored at Top Yard and the two Government Garage sites to this new facility. The delay in rationalising vehicle storage has wasted both the potential of these prime sites and the millions spent to build the new facility.
Communities over private cars! Homes over parking spaces!
#Land4PeopleNot4Parking #DesegregateCT
Campaign Launch!
Join us for a walking tour of 4 pieces of public land currently wasted for storing and parking gov. cars that could be used for 2000+ homes! See the sites for yourself and learn about what else is possible on this land!
Date: Saturday 27 April
Time: 10am
Place: Meet @ Ndifuna Ukwazi offices, 18 Roeland Street, Gardens
All welcome, free
Publication launch!
Join the dialogue to learn more about the proposals for how these 4 sites could be used for 2000+ homes, including social and transitional housing! Get a free copy of the publication.
Date: Tuesday 7 May
Time: 5-7pm
Place: Ndifuna Ukwazi, 18 Roeland St, Gardens
All welcome, free
Young Urbanists Monthly Meetup
Anyone is welcome to join an evening with young people interested in urban issues as we dig deeper into the vision for these 4 sites and how we can all get involved with making this vision a reality!
Date: Wednesday 8 May
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
Place: Urban Think Tank Empower office, 76 Church Street, CBD
All welcome, free
Additional resources:
Explore our People’s Land Map that exposed 128km2 of public land lying vacant and underutilised in Cape Town, the size of the entire city of Barcelona. The City owns the most vacant and underutilised public land in Cape Town - roughly 9 500 soccer fields! The Western Cape Provincial Government and national government each own roughly 1 300 Grand Parades worth of vacant and underutilised public land in Cape Town!
Read our Spatial Justice Delayed report to learn more about the obstacles to the delivery of social and transitional housing on 11 sites of public land in Woodstock, Salt River and the Inner City.
This piece was written by Young Urbanists member Robyn Parkross who works at Nudifani Ukwazi as a Researcher. You can read more about our manifesto here. It is our role to support all work that is aligned with the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and is evidence-based.
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Thank you so much. Yours in greener, saver and people-first streets,
Roland Postma, Sindile Mavundla and Friends
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