Mother City makeover

More than a year after UCT students were challenged to re-imagine Cape Town's Foreshore, their ideas are on display to the public at an exhibition, which opened last night.

Vanessa Watson, the deputy dean of UCT's faculty of engineering and built environment, said 600 undergraduate and post-graduate students from various faculties had taken part in the project.

Their brief was to come up with design proposals which would better utilise the spaces around the Foreshore area, including plans for the elevated freeways and uses for Cape Town's infamous unfinished highway bridge, which was abandoned in the 1970s.

Cape Town's mayoral committee member for transport, roads and storm water, Brett Herron, said that the exhibition would run for two weeks during which time the public could discuss the ideas. Once the city has evaluated the students' ideas, official proposals will be sought.

"We hope to have a tender out by October," said Herron, adding that the time it would take for new developments to come to fruition would depend on their complexity.

Some of the student's ideas include:

• Demolishing elevated freeways and bringing the roads down to ground level, to free up land for housing and mixed social usage.
• Reconnecting the city with its harbour, linking Adderley Street directly to a new cruise liner terminal and constructing a new pier - similar to the one that existed before land was reclaimed.
• Attaching ramps to the unfinished highway to turn it into a skateboard rink.
• Establishing a vegetable garden on the unfinished bridge.

Student Chadernnay Brink said the project was challenging but allowed students to imagine a different city of the future.

"I see a move towards a more decentralised model, giving everyone access to the city.

"I want to see a more efficient public transport system," said Brink.

Watson said the exhibition would showcase the best of the student projects.

Personally, she said she wanted to see more mixed-use developments on Cape Town's Foreshore, which would expand the current CBD and possibly create a new waterfront area.