Making Liveable Cities
"First life, then spaces, then buildings – the other way around never works.” Jan Gehl “the fundamental purpose of urban design is to provide a framework (spatial, functional, circulatory, economic, legal etc.) to best guide the development of the citizen as well as the city or urban area. It is about the interdependencies and mutual development to fulfil the latent potentials of citizen and city by elaborating as richly and coherently as possible the many different places of the city and so also of the lived experience of its inhabitants. It is an art of space, time and change or maturation.” – Peter Rich
Reinvigorating the Lower Baakens
South African cities are experiencing rapid social and economic changes. While retaining some of the pre-apartheid spatial systems, many cities are showing growth towards integrated spatial systems. On a local scale, Port Elizabeth is yet to show signs of a new integrated emergent growth pattern. Many parts of the city are still showing decay and underdeveloped urban precincts that require catalytic initiatives to enliven them.
The Baakens Valley has been identified as a strategic development area due to its location. The intention is to develop a mixed-use precinct that will encourage equitable growth in business, social housing, and diverse cultural and tourism outlets that will act as both a catalyst for the valley and connect it into the existing urban fabric of the city.
Research suggests that encouraging greater pedestrian movement in urban areas is not merely a matter of improving the quality of the physical connections (footways, bridges, greenways, and sidewalks). Instead, to generate a more pedestrian orientated neighbourhood more walking and cycling must happen in open public space, and these network paths must be first and foremost accessible.
This is done on a much greater scale although the image above does solve connectivity from the city to the valley, and provides solutions to mixed-use buildings which accommodates retail and residential/housing, there are more pressing issues which we have found and resolved within Baakens Valley
