District Six: A Case Study in Unsustainable Development

Historically speaking, District Six - an area established as the sixth official ward of the city of Cape Town in 1867 - was home to a vibrant mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, laborers, and immigrants. Located close to the city center and the port, this neighborhood was dramatically impacted by apartheid politics. A series of ensuing policy decisions have left the area with a disturbing legacy that complicates discussions about sustainable [re]development of the area today.

As early as 1901, there is evidence of forcible removals of District Six's non-white inhabitants. Over the next 50 years, as a result of some seriously unsustainable development policies including systematic ethnic marginalization, the physical infrastructure of District Six was neglected by the city government and the area fell into disrepair. Under the Group Areas Act of 1950 - a piece of apartheid legislation that attempted to inscribe ethnic segregation policies into the urban landscape - District Six was deemed a "While Group Area." This meant that the white apartheid government began a process of legally supported forced removals of the nearly 60,000 remaining "colored" residents of District Six. Some of these former residents were officially resettled to townships located outside of the city center; others were left to their own devices to make due. In 1982 District Six was bulldozed, removing all physical evidence of the community that once lived there.

Today, a few buildings have been rebuilt, but most of the area remains eerily vacant - a vacuous hole in the middle of Cape Town and an uncanny reminder of what is no longer there.

A debate about how to move forward.

I think many people would probably agree that that the Group Areas Act and other legal instruments of the apartheid government fostered a type of development [or in this case, un-development] that violates just about every notion falling under the heading of "Sustainability." Decisions about the built environment were certainly not made with the intention of sustaining the ways of living of the people who resided there, nor were they grounded in ideas of social justice, equality, or community.

The more pressing question is, of course, what should be done with the area now?

Now that Cape Town's urban policies are no longer dictated by apartheid politics, how can the (re)development of District Six be guided by a more sustainable type of development, offering restitution for past wrongs as well as the vision of hopeful future?

I am, obviously, not the first to pose such a question. There is already quite a lively debate surrounding the (re)development of District Six, spearheaded by the District Six Museum Foundation, and crystallized in a proposed "Draft Development Framework" for the area. The DDF puts forth a number of urban sustainable design principles and relies on policy initiatives, such as the Restitution of Land Rights Act (1994) which provides the legal means for claimants from District Six to return to their former home area.

Tomorrow, with the help of South African architect Lucien Le Grange and Planner Nisa Mammon, I'll look at how the Draft Development Framework specifically does and does not address issues of Social Sustainability in District Six.