LAND4PEOPLENOT4PARKING

How can the parking of government cars for part of the day be more important than providing roofs over people’s heads? Could the storage of immobile government vehicles on prime land be a higher priority than addressing the housing and segregation crisis? On Saturday 27 April, Freedom Day, we will launch this campaign by touring each of these four underutilised sites.?

There are four pieces of public land in the city centre that are used to store government vehicles and we are putting forward an alternative vision with concrete design and financial proposals. The four sites are:

• Parliament parking lot (owned by National Government)
• Top Yard (owned by the Western Cape Government)
• Two government garages on Hope Street (owned by the Western Cape Government)

Our proposals reveal that a precinct level development of these four state-owned parking lots could create a racially and economically diverse neighbourhood by providing

• 969 social housing apartments,
• 969 market related apartments
• homes for 732 people in transitional housing
• The same amount of parking for Parliament (in a multi-storey parking)
• new communal and public space to improve the urban realm
• encourage economic stimulation by accommodating shops and informal traders

We challenge Parliament and the Western Cape Provincial Government to put policy into practice by seizing the opportunity to transform the face of Cape Town and address its violent history of spatial injustice.?

Recognising the sheer inefficiency of needlessly using prime land for vehicle storage as far back as 2014, the Province spent R73 million to build a new parking facility for its cars in Maitland. However, it has yet to follow through on its plans to move the cars currently stored at Top Yard and the two Government Garage sites to this new facility.

The cost of prioritising parking over housing people is evident in the long commute most workers and learners undertake everyday- spending over 40% of household income on transport alone. In terms of the environment, 86% of emissions in Cape Town comes from private cars, 7% from minibus taxis, 4% from buses and 1% from motorcycles. This dependence on private cars is clearly bad for the environment and for our public transport systems.

The delay in rationalising vehicle storage has wasted both the potential of these prime sites and the millions spent to build the new facility. It is taking time and money from households that could potentially live near work and school.

Cape Town’s existing infrastructure favours private car use. The structure of our city means that public transport options are costly and inefficient as the lack of density severely hinders the economic viability of public transport services. Prime pieces of well-located public land in Cape Town are being wasted as parking for government cars.

#Land4PeopleNot4Parking #DesegregateCT