A giant ballot box has been set up where Capetonians can vote for what they want their city to look like in the future.
As part of preparation for World Design Capital 2014, some local designers will be testing out ideas with the help of your vote.
The ballot box has been placed at The Bank, a design hub in Harrington Street in the CDB, or people to cast their vote on ideas like what to do with the unfinished highways at the Foreshore, housing and infrastructure.
As part of the international Spaza Urban Intervention Festival, designers also turned a dingy corner next to the building into a bright space where people can relax.
These ideas were the brainchild of urban consultancy Future Cape Town, which commissioned the giant ballot box.
Rashiq Fataar, founder of Future Cape Town, said the idea of the ballot box was to give people a vote on urban issues, like the design of housing and infrastructure.
The concept is called the “Your City Idea” ballot box.
In one example, people were given four options for what should happen to the unfinished bridges on the foreshore. One option was to break it up and connect buildings with pedestrian lanes; another was to build a museum over it, another ideas suggested markets and public spaces.
Another question asked voters to cast their ballot on what housing in Cape Town of the of future should look like, in suburbs or blocks of flats.
Fataar said the ballot box was a temporary urban intervention. “The Spaza Festival will focus on the use of temporary interventions in changing cities,” he said.
He said the box could be transported around the city to areas like Dunoon, Khayelitsha or a train station to get people’s ideas and participation.
Fataar said in places like Gugulethu or Athlone, for example, where people sometimes have to walk in potentially unsafe spaces to get to transport “a transformed and vibrant intervention can positively contribute to the safety of those spaces”.
Fataar said some of the ideas would require a significant investment, “but allowing citizens to think 20 years ahead meant that they would not need to constrain their imagination”.
Cape Argus