Transforming the City of Cape Town from an Apartheid City to an Inclusive Smart City: The Long March to a Sustainable, Inclusive and Prosperous City

Abstract

A smart city is viewed as a sustainable, inclusive and prosperous city that promotes a people-centric approach based on three core components and seven dimensions. The three core components are Smart City Foundation, Smart ICT and Smart Institutions and Laws, which in turn are the pillars of the seven dimensions of a smart city: infrastructure development, environmental sustainability, social development, social inclusion, disasters exposure, resilience, and peace and security. The three components together with the seven dimensions make a smart economy. Infrastructure development has several elements across various social, economic and environmental dimensions. Cape Town’s historical apartheid growth has been characteristic of social, income and city foundation inequalities which have created uniquely distinct human settlements—rich suburbs with adequate services and opportunities, and poor and informal neighbourhoods with acute shortages in core urban services. Since the end of apartheid, Cape Town has however made deliberate and directed efforts to promote social inclusion through policy incentives, physical public and social space development, and promoting equitable access to basic services. The city has also invested heavily in smart growth alternatives which began with the formulation of a smart city strategy in 2000, and which has over the years entrenched smart growth aspects into most sectors of growth, and greatly enhanced efficiency and productivity of the urban system. Today, Cape Town is reaping on its massive investment in information and communication technologies, which have made it Africa’s premier international city supplying goods to many cities in the west and offering global business process outsourcing services. The city’s deliberate progression towards smart growth has opened huge economic activities for its residents, which will continue to reinforce its position as the Western Cape region’s economic powerhouse. This chapter discusses Cape Town’s growth as an apartheid city, its city foundation during and post-apartheid and the various targeted smart growth approaches adopted in the city over the last two decades as well as their outcome in creating an equitable and productive urban system.