Young Urbanists | March Update 2023
Now as this is our first news update, we have packed this email with a lot of content from advocacy wins, updates, events, new programmes, competitions, chapter news, and much, much more.
Young Urbanists and our programmes is taking a significant step forward as we embark on a journey to professionalize for the first time. This exciting development will help us build a stronger, more capable organisation that is better equipped to make a meaningful impact on urban planning and design in South Africa.
This will be the first news update of many. By now you will have figured out we are using Substack to be our home to release all our articles, updates and our future Magazine Re-envisioning South African Cities and Town.
When we launch the magazine, its sole aim will be to aid and empower young built professionals and animate the issues and solutions to generate social currency for our ideas as a movement. The magazine will be open to you and others to have a foundation to share your ideas and solutions on how the built environment can solve our many problems.
March Update - first of many
Now as this is our first news update, we have packed this email with a lot of content from advocacy wins, updates, events, new programmes, competitions, chapter news, and much, much more.
Advocacy. Where to begin, there is so much to report on. Let’s start with the wins first.
While the first win might be small, it is really big in the bigger scheme of things when it comes to roads and infrastructure. Young Urbanists was critical in the removal off the demarcated parking bays on sidewalks in Fish Hoek. Essentially what it means is we still have outdated engineers and engineering guidelines that makes small but big (impacts) decisions in our cities like Cape Town and across the country. This affirms our call to reform the red book - if you are a young engineer and want to help with this, please contact us.
The Reclaim Cycling Lanes Initiative Phase 01 is a month or so away to be completed (120 days assessment 🙃) for us to see if we can start placing tactical bollards along the Bree and Albert Cycling lane ‘paint’. Please note this is merely the first pilot, once done, we are looking to scale it to other areas like Langa, etc. We were also on the radio where we talked about cycling, you can listen to the Cape Talk between Roland Postma and Lester Kiewit or read our op-ed in the Mail and Guardian on how the Cape Town Cycling Tour: the most successful failure we’ve ever had. This leaves us with one more thing, please buy the Daily Maverick newspaper. We are featured in the Environmental section by journalists Velani Ludidi who partook in our last critical mass cycling event. He spoke about the missing cycling connection between Langa and the CBD and how our current infrastructure is nothing short of a ‘death trap’ due to unsafe and disjointed cycling lanes and selfish drivers. Small hint we are working with the Langa Bicycle Hub and our friends at Green Riders to formulate a plan to fix this missing and needed connection.
Muizenberg: The Once in a lifetime Beachfront Upgrade is back, with round 2 kicking off now. What do you think of the new version? Interestingly to note in the webpage they released they mentioned “it must be noted that the development proposal has changed extensively since inception and the initial public engagement held in August/September 2022, due largely to public comment”. So well done if you partook and commented. The new deadline is the 03 of May, 2023 and we are planning a polished template to share with you but in the interim we want to hear from you what we should include in our template that we will release soon to the public? If don’t know what this is, we penned an op-ed in the Daily Maverick on this exciting development and why it should not be another car-park in between the train station and the beach.
New Minister for Mobility, Ricardo Mackenzie in the Western Cape. In last two months has been very busy for us around active mobility and we have had the privilege of the new Minister for Mobility joining us at two separate events:
The Learn2Cycle Classes - part of the Active Mobility we are looking to launch and scale these classes to be a catalyst to make cycling safe, fun and accessible to all. The classes are aimed at those who cannot cycle.
The Langa Mobility and Public Space where we met with the Minister and other stakeholders to start the project part of the Active Mobility Forum in key partnership with the Langa Bicycle Hub. Read more on this here.
Partnerships. This is a key strategy of Young Urbanists and we are excited to share a lot of news that we will embark in the up-coming month but first we are excited to share the following:
Langa Bicycle Hub. This is our most exciting partnership as we look to help reimagine Langa, township in Cape Town, South Africa, that has the potential to be a role model for reinventing and supporting a community through urban mobility and public spaces. The Langa Mobility and Public Space will formally launch soon with the most urgent and ambitious projects to look at how we can build a safe cycling lanes between Langa and the CBD and see how we can make it safer to walk and cycle to nearby places of employment like Epping.
Other partnerships we are pursuing are with PRASA, Neighbourgood and the Spatial Planning in the City of Cape Town around back-yarding and placemaking. We will share more information once there is more clarity. And of-course the *Urban Design and Mobility Forum is going strong with its first review coming up with the Mayor's office this month. The last Forum was one on safer streets and you can comment and participate on the briefing from the last Forum.
Once we have a date and theme for the next forum, we will share and invite all of you to partake.
*The Urban Design and Mobility Forum is a public interface partnership between civil society and the Office of the Mayor of Cape Town aimed at bringing government, academia and private sector practitioners and stakeholders together to discuss and explore the challenges of urban development and governance in the spirit of creating a more inclusive, just and climate-friendly city.
Community News. Our community is rapidly growing and as such we have re-looked at how we welcome you as a member whether you are part of Young Urbanists or our other distinct programmes like the Active Mobility Forum and the new planning Forum.
Please note we have limited resources but we can happily share that we have started processing your membership (this consist of a complete orientation to our work and how you can be part of it). We promise something will land in your inbox soon.
We have an event tomorrow for those who are Cape Town based - it is called CITY Dialogue that looks to see how we can bring all the built form professionals together. It is free to join in-person tomorrow and there will be a diverse group of professionals from the Institute for Landscape Architecture in South Africa (ILASA), Cape Institute of Architecture (CIFA), Urban Design Institute of South Africa (UDISA), South African, Planning Institute (SAPI), Young Urbanists South Africa (YU), Active Mobility Forum (AMF), South African Council for Planners (SACPLAN), South Africa Landscapers Institute (SALI) and more.
Memberships. If you haven't signed up, it is free and the best thing you can today to change our cities and towns. Note, we are doing our very best to process all of your memberships and yes, it is open all ages.
Other memberships. For those who have gotten to know YU through our programmes, there are membership options available only for specific programmes:
*please note if you are a YU member, you do not need to sign those forms as your YU membership gives you automatic access.
While you wait for the welcome email, please see here all our latest projects and what we are thinking as an organization. Any questions or ideas, please ping us.
Programme News. A strategy of YU is to launch programmes with its own distinct identity and mandate. The programmes can be seen as an ‘organization within an organization’ - please note that these organizations are not bound by YU and might form their own legal status. YU just serves to be the founding member in partnership with stakeholders like the Bicycle Mayor that served to found the Active Mobility Forum.
We have launched a new planning arm movement. Read more on our work where we seek to rekindle the lost era for our cities and towns. If you want to be more involved, join the WhatsApp group here.
Active Mobility Forum. There is a lot happening in this space as you can read in our advocacy and partnership tab. Please join the WhatsApp group here and put the 3rd of June aside as we are planning something really, really big.
Chapter News. Whilst Young Urbanists is historically from Cape Town, we have embarked on a strategy to roll out to other cities and towns contingent on resources and demand. We are excited to share that we have softly launched two chapters outside of the Western Cape in the last few weeks.
Jozi Chapter. To kick things off in South Africa’s biggest city, Ruth Manda and Danika Prinsloo launched the chapter with a big article in the Mail and Guardian around the importance of urban waterways looking at the Jukskei. The Gauteng YU duo commented: urban waterways contain our greatest resource but accessibility has become lost because of uncontrolled urbanisation. Spatial planning has restricted or completely severed the environmental and social benefits of urban waterways from urban residents, namely how rivers can improve their quality of life, community health, and sense of community. What do you think? Please join the WhatsApp group here and also fill in this form to tender your interest to become part of the chapter.
Durban Chapter. We have been setting our eyes on Durban, South Africa’s second largest coastal city for a while. Durban has so much potential albeit the many barriers it face, especially around implementation. We have in the past commented on the disconnect with its climate change plans and what it approves on the ground (a phenomena faced by most cities which makes us ponder whether we need to come up with a name or phrase for this unique activity…any suggestions, please ping us). We can finally share that we have launched the chapter. Please fill this form in to tender your interest and join the WhatsApp group.
Competitions. Our competitions are back, we are even working on a project for next year to highlight the best practices and projects when it comes to urbanism and advocacy for 2024 in Southern Africa.
Restoring Rivers for Resilient Communities: A Call to Action. Continuing from our previous hackathon, Waste Management, Recycling and Recovery sponsored by philanthropist & YU member, Joshua Palfreman, we are launching another hackathon in 2023 to build on the success of the last programme with a particular focus to protect our urban rivers. Please tender your interest here and you can read about the winners of the last hackathon.
Resources. Part of our newsletters is to share inspiring projects, precedents and resources.
One example is AI and the intersection of urbanism. We used Bing Free’s AI Image Creator tool to bring back trams to Cape Town - what do you think and please share with us if you reimagine any space on social media or on our WhatsApp channels.
Guerilla Urbanism. We are introducing this section to highlight the need for legal, positive and guerilla urbanism/advocacy whether it is in-person or digitally. One recent example is that we have trolled the Waterfront and reignited our campaign to advocate for the reinstatement of the pedestrian first crossing.
It was one of its kind showcasing the best example of a 🦓 first crossing in terms of design and location. What we wrote to the CEO of the Waterfront:
Dear David Green, walking is the most common mode of transport used in South Africa, with about 17.4 million of us walking to their destination. Thousands walk between the V&A Waterfront and the CBD, and the removal of the people-first pedestrian crossing goes against your own plans that called for Dock road to be reconfigured for a space safe for pedestrians and where we should go as a country.
We urge you to release the findings that led to this decision and consult with the public who use this space on a daily basis
If you want to tell David the same, please consider signing and sharing our petition.
We will be talking again to Lester Kiewit on Cape Talk Tuesday, the 4th of April at 6:30 am (SAST) on this developing issue. Our first call will be to ask for the traffic robot crossing to be changed to ban left and right turning when pedestrians have right of way - currently it is a deathtrap as cars do not yield to pedestrians despite them having right of way.
Thanks for your continuous support
We hope this update helps to give you an idea how hard we have been working and also how you can participate going forward to reshape our cites and towns.
Young Urbanists is a non-for-profit and we really appreciate the love and support. Again, any ideas or questions please reach out to us. Together we can save our country and it starts with our cities and towns.
Yours sincerely,
Roland Postma and Team
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Great newsletter thank you!
Viva to more long form discussions. Young Urbanists is leading the way when it comes to representing these types of conversations. Their openness to the voices that would otherwise deem themselves ignorant is impressive. The cross pollination of relentless advocacy and humanity is inspiring. Well done to the team who puts their passion before anything.