This is the closest I can find in colour to the icecream Mike and I ate after our walk from the corner of the Seapoint promenade near CPUT Hotel School almost to the end of the paved walk and back. Glorious afternoon out, with so many people making use of the space. A cluster of kids were shouting into the backsides of Kevin Brand's White Horses public sculpture. I look with nostalgia at the the new wonderland play park, complete with a mini-road with lanes for learner toddler cyclists. About fifteen years too late for our boys.
Now if only the City could get going on improving the public open spaces in places that really need it, not just flagship venues.
At a recent workshop in Mitchell's Plain, organized by the Cape Craft and Design Institute and WDC 2014, we met in teams of designers and local residents to develop proposals for the improvement of five parks in Mitchell's Plain. It's dry, windy, vandalized gangland- and it needs some clever solutions to get community participation in the ongoing care of these spaces- but first it needs investment into hardware- swings, roundabouts, sports facilities, trees, hard no-grassy surfaces, so gangsters cannot bury drugs there, and planning so it is constantly used by a variety of user groups, making it safer at all times.
Some participants had intriguing ideas, such as finding ways to harness gangster pride into the care of the parks, or making parks venues for recycling which become employment or entrepreneurship opportunities.
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