Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa Real Estate Investor Magazine - June 2017 | Page 44

URBAN RENEWAL
Creating a Resilient Downtown
Lessons from a Journey of 17 Years
BY BRENT SMITH
T
he Cape Town Central City is not exceptional
in a global sense, believes Carola Koblitz –
editor and chief author of the Cape Town
Central City Improvement District’s (CCID) annual
investment guide, The State of Cape Town Central
City Report. The latest edition, reflecting on the
economic climate of the city’s traditional downtown
in 2016, has just recently been released by the
organisation.
What she means is this: “The Cape Town CBD
has spent 17 years getting to the level it is at today,
and it is now established as a successful downtown
in its own right, in the same way other downtowns
such as Central London, Sydney CBD or downtown
Tokyo are viewed. These are resilient downtowns that
are here to stay, and their desirability as a location
is recognised across various economic sectors from
business and residential development to tourism.
“And, like them, we also now believe that Cape
Town’s Central City is here to stay. While it will
no doubt weather economic highs and lows even as
any vibrant downtown will encounter, it is highly
unlikely that it will ever again see the urban flight
that it experienced during the 1990s, particularly as
international trends are showing a return to strong
downtowns. It speaks to matters such as long-term
sustainability, the rise of smart cities and the need to
densify.”
Urban flight has, in fact, been a phenomenon
experienced by all major traditional downtowns
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JUNE 2017 SA Real Estate Investor
across South Africa, notes CCID chairperson Rob
Kane: “And several of them are still struggling to
right themselves in the rise of alternative ‘downtowns’
some distance away – such as Sandton City in
Johannesburg, or the rise of Umhlanga as Durban’s
own CBD declined.
“We believe there are a couple of major reasons for
the success of the Cape Town CBD today and, with
the correct planning and long-term thinking, these
form guidelines for any CBD to follow.”
Four reasons for a successful Cape Town
CBD
Firstly, Kane notes, is that concerned property owners
and civil servants reacted to the decline as it started
to happen and took a decision early on to stop it in its
tracks in the late 1990s. With the establishment of the
CCID in 2000 to render additional top-up services in
safety and urban management (to start), people began
to see an immediate improvement.
“It took until the mid-2000s to really establish
a level of confidence back into the CBD,” says
Kane. “But even that did not yet make us resilient,
because along with the rest of the world, came the
impact of the global financial crisis in the late 2000s.
However, because of what we had already achieved
via the CCID and our City of Cape Town and SAPS
partners, property and business owners continued to
‘keep the faith’, so to speak, in the CBD.”
The fact that the City of Cape Town has established
www.reimag.co.za