Design Indaba 2012 is upon us! From 29 February to 4 March, Cape Town will again host one of the world’s premier design events at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC). Made up of a core programme that includes the much anticipated conference, expo and film fest, this year’s event is expected to be better than ever with the addition of COMMON Pitch to the roster. And don’t forget about Design Indaba’s Emerging Creatives programme – those shortlisted represent the freshest talent South Africa has to offer.

Here’s what a run down of what to expect for 2012:

COMMON Pitch South Africa (29 February)

Design Indaba 2012 will kick off on 29 February with COMMON Pitch at Cape Town City Hall. Design Indaba and COMMON have partnered to bring “a party to fix the world” to Cape Town for the event’s international debut. Eight selected finalist teams will compete by presenting live, timed pitches on stage in front of celebrity judges, while being broadcast around the world. Business and design will fuse during the inaugural event as R200 000 is up for grabs, and will be awarded to the most socially-innovative business idea to help fund the winning concept.

“COMMON Pitch is all about shining a light on the incredible people using creativity to find new solutions to the world’s toughest challenges,” said Alex Bogusky, COMMON co-founder and an Adweek creative director of the decade. “It only makes sense to bring this event to Africa, where creativity and enterprise are colliding in the most brilliant ways.”

The conference and simulcast (29 February to 2 March)

With a powerful line up of speakers, billed as some of the globe’s top creative minds, including the likes of innovator Clive Van Heerden and social activist John Bielenberg, the conference promises to be “three days of inspiration and design overload to get your creative juices flowing”. The conference will also be broadcast to the University of Johannesburg’s arts centre, as well as a location (still to be confirmed) in Durban as part of Young Designers Simulcast. The full roster of speakers will be confirmed closer to the event, so check out www.designindaba.com for more info.

The expo (2 to 4 March)

The Design Indaba expo is a design destination with a uniquely South African aesthetic. The CTICC will be bursting with the best of the nation’s creative industries, with everything from new media, to photography, to architecture on show. This curated collection of all design disciplines attracts an extensive international and local audience. Be sure to stop by Cape Town’s World Design Capital 2014 stand to say hello (watch this space!).

The film festival (19 February to 4 March)

The Design Indaba Film Festival will take place at the Labia on Orange, and feature a variety of films focused on the creative industries. The keystone of this year’s film fest is the African premiere of Urbanised, the last part of the Gary Hustwit’s design trilogy.

Emerging creatives

The top young talent in South Africa has been named! South Africa’s creative future will be showcased As part of the Emerging Creatives programme, in partnership with the Department of Arts and Culture, South Africa’s creative future will be showcased. All finalists have the opportunity to show at the expo, which will expose the up-and-comers to an international audience. In addition, the talented group will have the opportunity to attend the Young Designers Simulcast of the Design Indaba Conference.

Check out images here on the Creative Cape Town Facebook page from last year’s event.

For the latest, follow @DesignIndaba on Twitter, or join the community on Facebook.

Photo credits:
Dror Benshetrit speaking at the Design Indaba Conference. Photo by Jonx Pillemer (The Imaginarium)
Inside the Design Indaba Expo. Photo by Sydelle Willow Smith (The Imaginarium)

Design for development

Local designers are excited to be involved in the initiative. “Science and technology are crucial to inform effective design. In return, designers convert science into everyday products and tools, some of which are then used by scientists for their research. This collaboration is natural for us,” says Michael Wolf of the Cape Town Design Network.

“Good design helps scientists visualise and understand results emerging from very large sets of data such as those expected from the MeerKAT telescope or the Square Kilometre Array, which we hope to host in Africa,” adds Carolina Ödman-Govender.

Open Knowledge meet-up

The Science Hack Day is preceded by an Open Knowledge meet-up hosted by Siyavula, an organisation creating open education resources for technology-powered learning in South African schools. “Openness is critical as it makes knowledge available and engages people in the creation of empowering resources,” says Mark Horner, Shuttleworth Foundation fellow and head of the Siyavula project.

As science, programming, education and design come together this week, the community of good hackers for development hopes to grow its ranks.

The fine print: Don’t forget your laptop

The Science Hack Day is supported by Popular Mechanics and takes place at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg on 28-29 January. The event is free but tickets must be booked in advance at scihackct.eventbrite.com. (Don’t forget your laptop.)

The Open Knowledge meet-up takes place at the Open Innovation Studio, 27 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town on 25 January. Tickets are R30 to be paid upon arrival, but must be booked at OpenKnowledgeFoundation/Cape-Town.

• Check out the Cape Town Science Hack Day website  and the event poster to find out more details, and see what solutions are found after the event.
• See what happened in London and San Francisco on their Science Hack Day.
• Follow the progress of Science Hack Day on Twitter @Sciencehackday

Photos by Matt Biddulph at Science Hack Day San Francisco

“Come together”

Y Tsai, an architect living in the Mother City, says: “My new year’s resolution is to be able to be involved with projects … where we can make a positive social change. My wish for World Design Capital 2014 is for all the players – the design community, the city officials and the other stakeholders – to come together to make use of this opportunity, working as a group, to make that positive social change.”

Follow Tsai on Twitter: @TsaiDesign

“Embrace opportunity”

Chloe Townsend, designer of the accessory label Missibaba, says: “My new year’s resolution is to work on my tendency to procrastinate – by doing this I am robbing myself of precious time which is totally ridiculous! My wish for Cape Town as World Design Capital 2014 is for us to embrace this incredible opportunity with open hearts and minds, pooling all of our knowledge, ideas and skills in order to maximise the benefits for our whole community.”

Follow Chloe on Twitter: @Missibaba

“Embed design”

Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana, managing director of Cape Town Partnership, says: “I have great wishes for 2012 for myself and for Cape Town. I want it to be a vibrant city, an innovative city and a creative city. My wish is that Cape Town finds a way to embed design in its city development strategies in 2014, and that the “Find Your Yellow” campaign that we started during the bidding process continues to grow. This year, 2012, must be the year that design and city development are intertwined so that the city development strategy has design at the centre of it.”

Follow Bulelwa on Twitter: @Darksjokolade

“Connect the continent”

Mugendi M’Rithaa, a design educator from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, says: “My new year’s resolution is to see Cape Town designers connect more with designers on the continent. My wish for Cape Town, World Design Capital 2014, is to see the lives of people in this city transformed from the grassroots up so that everyone understands the power of design and how design can actually contribute to quality of life.”

Follow Mugendi on Twitter: @MugendiM

“Create a community”

Mokena Makeka, an architect, designer, urbanist, and founder of Makeka Design Lab says: “My particular new year’s wish is that … we’ll be able to create a museum of of design, innovation, leadership and art which will be a meeting place for local and global excellence. My wish for World Design Capital 2014 in Cape Town is that we create a culture where people recognise that design can transform life, where designers see themselves as being an active part of society and really taking a leadership role in our development … and really to create a better type of community in which designers interact, are connected with Africa, connected to the world, and connected to community.”

Follow Mokena on Twitter: @MakekaDesignLab

What’s your wish for 2012, for yourself and for your city? Let us know by leaving us a note below, dropping us a line on Facebook, or connecting via Twitter (use the hashtag #wdc2014).

The Loeries recognises the best in South African brand communication, and attracts about 5 000 industry names from all levels of the nations’ creative sector during the two-day awards ceremony.

Besides the creative gravitas the Loeries brings to bear on the nation, spurring competitive growth within the creative sector, it links into the World Design Capital theme of transforming life through design by promoting creativity and innovation as primary business tools.

Loeries aligned with World Design Capital

The decision to continue to hold the awards in the city was based on a number of factors, including continuity and strategic alignment in building a national design capital: “The Loeries are a microcosm of our positioning as a city. It is a reward for an industry that relies on innovation, excellence in design and finding new ways of bringing people together,” comments Cape Town Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille.

“This is exactly the kind of image we want to associate with Cape Town: a cutting-edge driver of bringing people together, fuelled by an unmatched dynamism and energy built by visionary design.”

Creative Week expands programme

Hosting the extended Loerie programme in Cape Town will enable judging to take place during Creative Week – a diverse series of design, music and arts events held throughout the city each year – in the days leading up to the award ceremony. Creative Week, a crowdsourced initiative, opens up the creative industries to the public and in 2011 alone tripled in size to 100 events.

In 2012 it will expand to include an industry-focused expo, seminars with international marketers and creative leaders, the Loeries Student Portfolio Day and the Creative Future Scholarship. Loeries finalists will also be announced throughout the week.

Cape Town, an able host

Ballito in KwaZulu-Natal, Johannesburg and Sun City all competed for the opportunity to host the Loeries Festival Weekend.

The return of the Loeries to Cape Town for the fourth year in a row is something to celebrate, says Western Cape Premier Helen Zille: “It’s proof that the city is one that attracts investment and makes an attractive offering to the creative industry. In light of Cape Town’s recent successful bid for the title of World Design Capital 2014, it is becoming clear to more and more people that the City of Cape Town is a choice destination and hub of increasing innovation and growing prosperity,” she explains.

“The expanded Loeries in 2012 will no doubt inspire new talent and stimulate new energy, which the city and indeed the province will thrive on, as we endeavour to build on the strong foundation that helps make the Western Cape the best place to live, work and relax.”

Other reasons behind the committee’s decision to move all the events to Cape Town include the venue – the Cape Town International Convention Centre provides a world class rated auditorium seating for 2 100 people – and surrounding infrastructure, including an international airport, public transport and a high density of hotel accommodation near the CTICC.

“The Loerie Awards started in 1978 as a vehicle to promote the usage of television as a medium. Thirty-four years later, the Loeries has evolved and grown to be South Africa’s, if not Africa’s, premier creative awards ceremony recognising a multitude of disciplines within the brand communication industry,” says Loeries Chairperson Boniswa Pezisa.

“This includes areas such as digital media, outdoor, print, direct and PR communication, live events, alternative media, architecture, interior design, and many more. Our future focus is to build a compelling and industry engaging Creative Week with a strong accent on industry and people development.”

So now what?

Creative Week will continue to grow as a platform for the city’s creative sector and, with the Loeries’ judges in town, reach a larger, more influential audience.

“We’ve got the buy-in of the city’s creative: In 2012 and beyond we need to connect these creatives up with other entities – commercial enterprises, urban planners, government officials. Creativity is vital to the development of this city and its communities – in positioning us for a more prosperous and sustainable future. We’ll be looking for better synergies with what’s happening more broadly in Cape Town over that time,” says Creative Cape Town coordinator Zayd Minty.

Follow Creative Cape Town on Twitter, find them on Facebook and subscribe to the newsletter to keep tabs on the city’s creative industry, as well as its plans for Creative Week 2012. And watch the press for details on entering your design for a Loerie Award.

Image: The red carpet at The Loeries 2011, by photographer Sarah Scott

What could we possibly mean? Imagine the building you’re in right now functioned like a tree. This tree would harvest the energy of the people living, breathing and moving in it to run the air-conditioning and lights. It would compost the waste you produce to help grow the food you’ll eat for lunch.

Now imagine Cape Town filled with living, breathing buildings forming a forest at the foot of the mountain. And this forest is alive, and not just with people, but with plants, animals and insects. In 2011, Cape Town, South Africa, this kind of imagining isn’t just a flight of fantasy; it’s the work of leading scientists, chemical engineers, architects, urban planners, biologists and industrial designers. And the Cape Peninsula University of Technology – which sits adjacent to the design and innovation district known as The Fringe – is leading the way.

CPUT’s faculty of informatics and design – the largest design faculty in the country with fourteen departments – is the first in South Africa to formally integrate biomimicry into its curriculum. Biomimicry – taken from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate – can be defined as innovation inspired by nature, the conscious emulation of nature’s genius.

Creating sustainability through design

“Essentially what we are doing in integrating biomimicry into our curriculum is inspiring our design students to understand and emulate more than 3.8-billion years of research and development done by nature,” says Bruce Snaddon, one of four lecturers who piloted a biomimicry module at the university. “In so doing we aim to not only promote innovative thinking and solutions, but to create conditions conducive to all life wherever design is done.”

“Design is a fundamentally human activity, something we all do. Whether we know it or not, we are constantly designing our world. But through the lens of biomimicry we can design a far smarter world that ensures the longevity, the livelihood of all organisms – including us – on this planet,” says Andrea Grant-Broom, another of the four design lecturers involved.

Drawing on a cross-section of graphic, industrial and surface design students, the five-week module saw 72 students apply their minds – and nature’s R&D legacy – to key challenges in their immediate urban environment: the removal of waste, the provision of shelter, the need for better navigation systems and the supply of clean drinking water. Design solutions had to take into account finite resources and the long-term sustainability of the project.

Students’ design solutions

The design solutions generated by students were both surprising and inspiring – a bicycle-based refuse removal system and community garden modelled on dung beetles; a hub for creativity in Buitenkant Street which uses clean graffiti, achieved by removing dirt from walls; a way-finding system inspired by plasmodial slime mould.

Says Yehuda Raff, coordinator of The Fringe, “CPUT not only embraced biomimicry and its design potential but applied it to The Fringe; they set their students a series of briefs responding directly to the real-life challenges we face in the district. Not all of the student projects were feasible, but all of them had a little spark of genius of how something could change in The Fringe or in the urban environment in general.”

Integrating biomimicry into the curriculum has meant not only innovation in design outputs, but also in education: “Universities have been operating in very much the same way for the last 800 years, and have a bad reputation for being ivory towers, removed from the communities in which they sit, and knowledge transfer was strictly one way – lecturer to student. We’re trying to change that, allow for a more porous system that takes into account our context in time and in this urban environment. Lectures are now workshopped and facilitated, not taught, and the subject matter evolved with the students’ own thinking and experience,” says Andrea.

“Redefining the way we teach through the biomimicry module means that our students are now creating their own future, not just recycling what we’ve taught them. They are creating their own knowledge within the knowledge economy.”

Cape Town at the cutting edge

Claire Janisch, South Africa’s foremost biomimicry authority, explains why and how Cape Town is playing such a key part in a growing global movement.

“Cape Town is the leading hub of biomimicry in South Africa – and of all the regional biomimicry hubs outside of the US, biomimicry South Africa has progressed the furthest so far. So I guess you could say that Cape Town is a leading hub of biomimicry globally.

“Why Cape Town? Because there’s a very, very active community of people trained and interested in biomimicry here who meet at least once a month. It’s also a function of the type of creative design thinking that happens here – Capetonians are more inclined to seek out more sustainable solutions, are more interested in going green, and many of South Africa’s top tech incubators and design firms are here. As for learning environments, there’s no doubt that CPUT is the leading university in South Africa when it comes to biomimicry, being the first to formally integrate it into their curriculum. And finally, CPUT has an urban laboratory on its doorstep, The Fringe, a district that can become the physical example of all biomimicry has to offer. It’s exciting!” 

If you’d like to know more about biomimicry in South Africa, watch Claire’s TEDxCapeTown presentation on the genius of water, then visit www.biomimicrysa.co.za. To find out more about studying biomimicry at CPUT and getting involved with the faculty’s work in The Fringe, mail snaddonb@cput.co.za.

Main photo by Sydelle Willow Smith, second image supplied by CPUT

This article originally appeared in the November 2011 edition of City Views, focused on Cape Town as an innovative design city.

Why? It’s being used to have direct (and private) conversations with youth about HIV prevention and AIDS education. Here’s an example of the kinds of messages one organisation on MXit, Cell-life, receives:

• U guys helpd me 2 protect the wman i lv. I neva had 2 much information abt the viruse bt u guys tought me alot. I jst nid 2 go 4 test knw. Bth of us.
• redchatzone is de 1 if u nd advse or hlp dz is de bst way dnt wry abt prvcy ur cht wth de councelr wl b cnfidentl

This December 2, one day after World AIDS Day, we take a look at what local organisations are doing to reach those at risk, particularly young people, through a piece of technology that is in almost everyone’s pocket – their cellphone.

From the series Living (+) Positive - David Chancellor

Taking your medicine
Cell-Life, who run RedChatZone on MXit, understand the opportunity that a 93% mobile subscription rate in South Africa presents. The choice to communicate to the youth though MXit, which reportedly has 29.6-million local users, has been validated with widespread adoption of their services. It started with the understanding that the communication lines between unstaffed clinics and patients required assistance, and so a solution to help dispense ARVs and remind people to take their medication was developed. Today 20 clinics use it to help 45 000 patients.

Cell-Life’s SMS motivation programme also helps remind HIV-positive mothers to return for follow-up appointments and get their babies tested. Read more on Cell-Life.

Getting tested
HIV-911 makes it easier to get the information you need on the organisations who can help you: An HIV/AIDS-specific directory, available through a mobisite, a cellphone directory, online and through a call centre, means people can find out within minutes where the closest testing centre is to them, or where they can receive medication close by. These services help ensure that people are empowered to help themselves.

Mobile queries are answered with the details of location-based suppliers. All providers in the directory also receive hard copies of the database to ensure that a lack of internet access or cellphone signal doesn’t prevent information from being made available.

HIV-911 call centre: 0860 HIV 911 (0860 448 911) and cellphone directory: *120*448#

Staying informed
How do you educate not just the public on health issues in a way that makes them take note and look after themselves, but more specifically young people? Especially when you’re wanting to talk to them about responsible sexual behaviour.

loveLife launched MYMsta to do just that. MYMsta is a mobile based social network that offers SMS messaging and a direct link to an online community through blogs, forums, information and quizzes, where kids can ask and answer frank questions about their development. loveLife has found that risky decisions are easier to make if there’s no hope for the future, so MYMsta also offers job advertisements, personality tests and competitions to pique the interest of those involved.

Browse their mobisite: www.mymsta.mobi

Seeking out counselling and support
Anonymous, readily available counselling and support is vital in the prevention of HIV transmission, and so another Cape Town-based company, RLabs – a non-profit organisation that aims to “reconstruct communities – through innovation”, provides mobile counselling services to youth at risk. RLabs’ services through JamiiX.com, MXit and Angel have benefitted 500 000 individuals who otherwise would have not have had easy and cheap access to advice and support.

In this video by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, RLabs counsellors talk about their work

RLabs luo sosiaalisia innovaatioita Kapkaupungissa from global.finland.fi on Vimeo.

Top image: Table Mountain turns red to commemorate World AIDS Day on 1 December 2011. Photo by Bruce Sutherland, City of Cape Town

Central image: From the Living (+) Positive series by David Chancellor

How to densify our urban landscape
“There’s little doubt that we need to densify in order to accommodate our growing population while limiting the city’s footprint. We must also do it in a way that’s more inclusive. Inclusive is tough: the inequalities are great, and the design challenges are difficult in creating a city that accommodates both rich and poor. But the city cannot shy away from it. There must be a distinctive path to balance and integrate these agendas because the challenges are so exceptional. And it’s really important to note that what works in London or Jo’burg won’t necessarily work here. There needs to be some hard thinking about what will work in Cape Town.”

How to create a city for all
“We need to ask who the Central City is for, and what its role is in relation to the rest of the city. There needs to be some rigorous debate how the city centre can become more inclusive, and what a genuinely inclusive city is. The Central City’s great strength is that it has survived the political transition. However, it’s not that relevant to large parts of Cape Town, particularly our poorer communities. We need to adapt better to our shifting context. We cannot stay unchanged, stay the way we were 20 years ago, without risking our future.”

How to improve existing infrastructure
“The BRT and the city’s new public transport lanes have received a lot of support and profiling of late. But why aren’t we also focusing attention on our rail system? The rail network is more extensive than any other in South Africa, and we need to give it exposure – so that we might also show where service is poor and needs to get better. At the moment there are frequent delays and cancellations, overcrowding at rush-hour, there’s trash piled up on the tracks, broken billboards, differing departure times displayed. As a regular rail commuter, I’d love to see things improve and get more people out of their cars.”

How to support under-celebrated, but highly innovative retailers
“Consumer services are very important, a specialised activity on the streets of the Central City. When you walk down Plein Street, look at the shops. They’re not conventional outlets owned by the big corporates, but are run by emerging entrepreneurs supplying a range of items that are very responsive to what consumers want: Cell phone repairs, internet cafés, haircuts, second-hand books. None of them advertise, but they’re entrepreneurial and profitable because rental in these areas is relatively high. There’s a dynamism out there that we need to understand better and build upon. We should be talking to these shop owners, finding out what they need, whether we can help them to grow and develop, whether that’s more space or more flexible leases. And do they want to live in the city centre?”

How to design affordable housing into our centre
“How could Cape Town’s creativity be used to restructure how we think about housing? The design of affordable housing is vital: we don’t want cheap and nasty high-rise buildings that get stigmatised and become white elephants. We need clever design to blend together different segments of the market and create mixed-income areas. We should also be looking at related services: If young working people bring kids, we should have good day care and schools, social services, community centres, associated facilities. And public space – areas that are attractive to socialising and relaxing – is a priority if people are living in small flats.”

What role the creative industries should play in shaping the city of the future
“Creativity is not just about what people practically do, but is also about the general approach or mindset we adopt – a questioning and thoughtful approach to how the city is developed and managed. Creativity means challenging others and ourselves on how we do things in order to improve. We need to shift our city thinking, planning and design to meet all the new challenges we face. We must do things differently and avoid getting locked into old habits and patterns which are no longer fit for purpose. And we may not get it right the first time, but we have to take a risk and push back the boundaries. It would be great to see more of this in Cape Town.”

To find out more about the state of our city, and how Cape Town compares in a national context, read the 2011 state of South African cities report, commissioned by the South African Cities Network.

This article first appeared in the November issue of City Views:
Cape Town as an innovative design city.

Climate Smart Cape Town’s stand was announced the best outdoor and best overall stand in the COP17 Climate Change Response Expo in Durban on Tuesday 28 November. (Read more about this award-winning stand made of 1 884 milk crates and 22 000 plastic bottles)

The stand: what you see

The stand, made out of 1 884 plastic milk crates and over 22 000 plastic milk bottles supplied by Polyoak Packaging, is a temporary structure that will be dismantled after the conference and all materials re-used, lowering its impact on the environment.

It was designed by Stephen Lamb of Touching the Earth Lightly in collaboration with Andre Rademeyer of ST&AR Architects.

Using different coloured crates to create the Cape Town skyline, the Pavilion showcases the vision and projects that will enable Cape Town to become a lower carbon city that adapts well to the impacts of climate change, protects its most vulnerable citizens and builds an economic future based on clean development, localisation and jobs for all.

Inside the Climate Smart Cape Town Pavilion

Inside the Pavilion, large format posters tackle the increasing impact of climate change, and how it relates to urban spaces and growing urbanisation. Rainwater collected off the roof of the Pavilion is also stored and filtered and served to delegates at COP along with flavoured buchu and mint leaves. Organic lettuces, planted into 250 of the milk crates, are served to delegates as fresh salads.

How Cape Town plans to go green

“The Cape Town Climate Change Coalition is offsetting the carbon footprint associated with attending and participating in COP17 by implementing energy efficiency projects in the City’s operations,” says Stephen Granger, who heads up the major programmes and projects, environmental resource management department and is the spokesperson for the coalition.

“These projects will be subject to monitoring and verification to validate the carbon offset. By creating this Pavilion, the Coalition aims to gain insight from the expertise of others on issues pertaining specifically to cities and climate change, to share our own lessons learned, and to form wider partnerships. We welcome the space for an increased focus on the needs and challenges faced by cities to become more resilient to climate change impacts.”

Currently South Africa and Cape Town rely heavily on fossil fuels – our electricity comes from coal-burning power stations and our cars are fueled by petrol. As part of the City’s aim to achieve an ‘optimal energy future’ the three areas – of renewable energy energy efficiency and transport efficiency – are a particular focus to reduce our carbon footprint.

An optimum energy future is one in which the City builds an energy sector that serves social, economic and environmental goals. This will mean adequate safe energy for low-income households, efficient energy supply and use by all, energy services that maintain competitiveness for city businesses, and an energy sector that provides jobs in the city and surrounds that help introduce a low-carbon future.

What the city is doing now

The City prepared an energy and climate change strategy in 2005, and has created a energy and climate action plan and climate adaptation plan of action that aim to compile and coordinate projects, and ensure that the City reduces its carbon footprint while planning for a future in a changed climate. Authorities set a target of 10% cleaner or renewable energy by 2020, and a 10% reduction in electricity consumption by 2012.

Noteworthy projects as part of the City’s response include:

• An ongoing electricity saving campaign
• Energy efficiency retrofits in government buildings
• Convening a forum for energy efficiency in commercial buildings
• The development of an integrated rapid transit system that contributes significantly to achieving an overall reduction in CO² emissions

Another step is a climate change think tank – a research group that creates an ongoing dialogue between academic institutions, researchers, specialists and local government officials to inform the implementation of effective local policies, programmes and interventions aimed at understanding and preparing for climate change.

What you can do in your day-to-day

• Residential electricity use is the largest contributor to CO² emissions in Cape Town. Have you taken the opportunity to save money and the environment by installing a solar water heater, low-flow shower heads and energy efficient light bulbs?
• Be more considerate in how you use water and electricity: shower instead of bathing and switch appliances and lights off when you’re not using them.
• Be aware of how much electricity your company uses, conduct an energy audit and take the advice offered.
• How do you travel around the city? Consider using public transport, or sharing private transport to work. Try to work and play close to where you live.
• Change your choice of car to one that is more fuel efficient
• Save water by reducing your water use and installing a rainwater tank for watering your garden – water pumping and purification take up precious energy.
• Encourage others to change too – climate change will affect us all. Hold your local authorities to account for their decisions on how to use the natural resources available to the community.
• Actively look after what remains of our natural environment: These ecosystems are critical as natural buffers to future climate shocks, climate change, and severe storms.

Interested in designing a climate smart city? Here’s how to start:

• Follow Climate Smart Cape Town’s blog posts from COP17 and Twitter account @ClimateSmartCT
• Read the City of Cape Town’s December 2011 Enviroworks newsletter
• Explore useful links on using electricity wisely

The night view of the Climate Smart Cape Town pavilion at COP17

The Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award recognises and celebrates creative solutions to the problems and opportunities that face more than half the world’s population now living in cities. Accordingly, the award focuses on projects that benefit communities and local residents by improving their urban environments. It seeks to encourage citizens, policy-makers, private business and non-governmental organisations to take a proactive role in creating shared responsibilities for the cities of the 21st century – mankind’s first truly urban age. In 2007, the award was presented jointly to two projects in Mumbai, and in 2008 to a project in São Paulo. It travelled to Istanbul in 2009 and most recently Mexico City in 2010.

Part of the Mumbai Waterfronts Centre

The award is associated with the Urban Age project, a worldwide investigation into the future of cities jointly initiated by Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, and LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science (see www.urban-age.net).

Wolfgang Nowak, Managing Director of the Alfred Herrhausen Society said: “Governing a city means managing contradictions. The Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award aims to encourage people to overcome contradictions and work together to take responsibility for their cities.”

The award will be judged by an independent jury of international and local members from a mix of disciplines. The three international jury members are Professor Ricky Burdett, director of LSE Cities; the former Mayor of Washington DC Tony Williams, and architect Enrique Norten (TEN Arquitetos, Mexico/NY). The jury is chaired by Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities at UCT, and the local jury members are Nomfundo Walaza, CEO of the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, poet, playwright and performer Malika Ndlovu, and CEO of the Cape Town Partnership, Andrew Boraine.

Asked why he agreed to chair the jury for this award, Edgar Pieterse said:

“It offers an opportunity to reinforce the momentum that has been established in Cape Town over the past few years, that sees design and public-community oriented urbanism as a key to unlocking many of the tough challenges confronting the city – this is most recently evidenced in the successful Word Design Capital 2014 bid. This award initiative explicitly seeks to recognise and validate organic initiatives from the grassroots, which is a vital complement to the efforts of the public sector to integrate the city and improve liveability in all areas, especially poor and working class areas. Through greater visibility of what people are doing for themselves, it becomes easier to promote social action across class, cultural and race lines to build genuine social coalitions for a more equitable, just and vibrant city.”

The Spaces for life project in Mexico City

Jury member Malika Ndlovu said she is honoured to be a part of this panel, and had this to say about the award:

“We are a country filled with many resilient, passionately resourceful and innovative people, often from particularly marginalised communities, who manifest the hope, beauty and victories over poverty rooted in their hearts and minds. They are the citizens who believe before they see and hence have access to inner resources of imagination, self-motivation and compassion allowing them to manifest what has not been seen or courageously harnessed before. Cape Town, the lucky and unquestionably worthy city chosen for the 2012 Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award, is a South African site where this very spirit of transformation and its amazing community-driven evidence is being identified and encouraged for the future.”

Jury member Nomfundo Walaza also shared her thoughts about the award:

“I love this city, and feel there is incredible work being done by unsung heroes behind closed doors that deserves to be brought to light. Newspapers should focus more on the good stories – stories about the people who follow their passion, roll up their sleeves and do something meaningful for their community rather than waiting for someone else to do it. We seldom take the time to humble ourselves, to say ‘I don’t understand’, and ask communities what they actually need. They know exactly what is needed, and as such they should be the ones in control. Solutions to problems germinate in the communities themselves rather than in boardrooms. The paternalistic relationship inherent in the ‘culture of entitlement’ is challenged by grassroots initiatives that find ways of sustaining themselves from the ground up. The award sends a clear message: in the midst of all the bad stuff we see and hear about, the most important factors are still resilience and the pooling of resources. Ultimately it is people, passion and value sytems that sustain projects. The award is important because it recognises projects that demonstrate collaboration and partnership, buy-in from the community, and the leveraging of support and volunteerism. It turns cynicism and negativity on its head and builds on courage and resilience, the human spirit that is God-given and resides in all of us.”

CODECO was founded in 1990 by 30 gangs from Iztapalapa in order to fight against marginalization, drugs, crime, violence and discrimination against youth, women and the poor. More information.

How do you enter?

Entries are open as of today, 23 November 2011, and ends on 24 February 2012.

The award is open to individuals and organisations involved in projects that:

• Are located in the Cape Town metropolitan area
• Demonstrate evidence of cooperation between different stakeholders
• Are at least party realised and demonstrate measureable impacts for users and the wider community
• Do not discriminate on the basis of gender, age, religion or ethnicity

Projects may fall into one or more of the following categories:

• Housing and shelter
• Workplaces and commerce
• Transport and infrastructure
• Public space
• Sanitation and health
• Education
• Arts and culture
• Other relevant urban regeneration initiatives

To download the application form and find out more, visit www.DBUAaward.net

Cape Town, you’ve come of age. Now be inspired and let your inspiration change the world:

Main image: Cooks prepare for the midday meal at the Triratana Prerana Mandal in Mumbai

The TEDxStellenbosch 2011 event that took place in July considered Africa as one mega-city as its theme. Three speakers from the event – featured in the videos below – invited the audience to reconceptualise the African urban space and to think about how it can be transformed.

The power of quiet encroachment

Mark Swilling, the programme coordinator of the University of Stellenbosch’s Sustainable Development Planning and Management programme, looks at the prevalence of urban slums across Africa and how the people who inhabit these slums can become co-producers of the urban environment. Drawing on an example from Malawi, he shows how South Africa can rethink its approach to these spaces.

“My dream is that we have a TEDx in Stellenbosch in five years’ time, where we have people speaking here from 50 – maybe 100, maybe 500 – projects across the continent of Africa that have built a pan-African movement of co-producers of the urban environment.”

Developing a community economy

“The empty buildings of Africa’s cities provide the perfect platform for the creation of the new community-based economy.” Property developer Jonathan Liebermann, who created an artistic community – the Maboneng Precinct – within the city of Johannesburg, proposes that abandoned factories and buildings can be revitalised and reinvented to create new communities where the residents can “live, create, and collaborate”.

Lessons in owning a city
Providing a slightly different angle, author Jonny Steinberg tells a story of a tailor from Liberia who managed to break the shackles of his ‘street’ and forge a path of success for himself and members of his community. Steinberg goes on to relate this story to some of Cape Town’s more impoverished communities, before putting forward a solution that he believes will help South Africans move beyond the confines of their ‘streets’.

“You live on a street and the street is closed in around you … who you are doesn’t resonate anywhere else into the world. The sound just bounces back to you. I think that that’s one major, major reason for gangs. I think that if what you do, if the way you express yourself is locked up in your neighbourhood and finds no expression in the world, then the way you show yourself to the world is to be ugly.”

Find out more on the speakers and their interests

• Find out more about Mark Swilling and the work of the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch. Find them on Facebook
• See more on the Maboneng Precinct through their website and on Facebook
• Still want more? Watch the rest of the Stellenbosch TEDx talks and read our write-up here