building on decolonization

Cape Town is suffering from an extreme example of a syndrome that's plaguing the entire world, a syndrome that is caused by infrastructure that is geared towards supporting populations in the mid-20th century and that is woefully inadequate and inappropriate given current demands, let alone near and distant future demands. These infrastructure deficiencies - and inefficiencies - directly contribute to the extreme inequality of opportunity that plagues our nation, and while apartheid policies did have a role in determining which races are more disadvantaged the underlying mechanisms in play today are no different that in any other country where populations living in urban centres have more access to opportunity than those in the periphery. A reduction in relative poverty will also go a long way towards reducing the frightening levels of crime we face.

This is an outline of steps we need to take as a society if we're to uplift communities and move towards a reduction of poverty and general improvement of living conditions for all.

First, it must be noted that most of our economic issues can be attributed to government interference with the free market. All of our governments are plagued with selfishness, greed, ignorance and corruption, what we need is to wean ourselves off technologically as fast as possible. That's obviously easier said than done, but there are some things in the interim that our governments can do to ease burdens on both sides of the equation. The first thing is to let us solve our own problems without fining us, as we've seen in the Western Cape where we've been penalized for reducing our water use and for private solar power installations.

Second, we desperately need to let go of our ideas of “heritage"; if we're going to talk about decolonizing things, we should start with this. We don't need cities that look the way our parents remember them as much as we need cities that service its citizens. We simply do not have the resources available for people to live in houses in the middle of densely populated areas, urban areas must expand vertically and the wealthier citizens who can afford the construction and the commute costs can build their mansions in the peripheries.

Gentrification is not actually a problem, but a lack of affordable housing is. The less high-density construction we allow the less options lower income brackets will have, and we're forcing lower earners out of city centres and into expensive cars and commutes. That's an enormous unofficial tax in addition to everything else.

Any new construction in urban centres should have a minimum legal density, and as much communal gardening space must be provided as is practical, in particular rooftops and around the circumference of each level. Urban farming is an extremely important concept that must be encouraged as much as possible. It's also recommended that every large apartment complex have its own safe play areas for families; we used to play in the streets and know our neighbours, which was important for fostering healthy communities.

Low cost housing in urban centres is as counter-productive as any other kind of affirmative action, instead of equalizing populations it simply repositions inequalities along different axes. You might help a few families with low-cost housing, but at the cost of pushing higher-income families out and it doesn't make the slightest difference to the rest of the low-income families. If you're not making a positive difference for the majority of people, there's a good chance your solution is actually a part of the problem.

Government housing should be as dense as possible, and should be positioned as close to the city as possible. In Cape Town, we are very lucky to have two problems that can be solved together - that of available land close to urban centres, and that of exposed and unprotected train tracks. If we were to construct tunnels over the tracks and build large residential and commercial complexes over and around those tunnels we could not only have a defensible underground* transport network, but we could significantly reduce the load on that network by bringing people closer to their employment opportunities and infrastructure.

Third, we must embrace the remote work revolution. There are many sectors that can and should make a remote work option available, and companies should receive economic incentives to do so. There should also be incentives for companies to make products and services available online. This is not just to reduce traffic, fossil fuel waste and expenses all-round, but will go a long way to levelling the playing field for all income groups.

Finally, we need to completely rethink education. Most of our population lacks resources and facilities to learn and up-skill, and that makes it nigh-impossible to improve their station in life. Poor people don't need charity, they need to be empowered. Even if they could afford the time and money to learn, they wouldn't be empowered by sitting in classrooms learning theory; we need mentorship programs, available in their areas because people with no money or earning potential can't be expected to travel. Companies should be incentivized to send missions, mobile offices, into the poorer areas, to provide on-the-job training in practical skills. We need to subsidize mobile coverage for areas that telecommunications don't find lucrative, with free data available for educational websites and applications.

In conclusion, we, the people, need to effect change and create real solutions to real problems, without waiting on our government bodies to do it for us. We all deserve better, rich or poor, black or white, this is our country - and we're all in this together.

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* artificially underground, of course.