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Capetonians driving to work this yesterday morning may have heard John Maytham chatting with urban planner Marco Morgan about the city’s intentions to turn Bellville into a second CBD.

Morgan said that transforming Bellville into Cape Town’s second CBD might ‘decentralise corporate activity, decrease congestion, and provide much-needed innovation’.

He cited instances of successful urban reimagining in other towns and believes Bellville’s revitalisation would improve economic and social conditions.

It’s a fresh idea to deal with traffic, and apparently, the city has already approved plans to devote resources and funds to developing Bellville into a second CBD.

“It’s a lot more than a notion or plan, it has gone through council and plans were approved, so that’s quite a big step in advancing the notion that Bellville will be a second economic node.””That approval means across the City there’s policy integration, funding and resource integration… The initial steps are focused on regeneration and getting the grounds ready for investments which are in place.”

There’s likely more to it than just moving money, and Morgan noted that the plan is not to make Bellville ‘a copy and paste of Cape Town City’s CBD’. The City of Cape Town’s main objectives include transit, road expansions, and moving people and cars in and out of the region safely and efficiently.

“There’s a big focus on transit orientated development… it’s a mechanism of bringing people closer to this CBD and economic opportunities with less reliance on a private vehicle to move from one place to the next… so it brings people closer and clusters everything together, so there’s a lot of movement towards this and a reason to be optimistic.”

Well, the City of Cape Town tends to move at a steady clip these days, so hopefully this works out for folks who have to brave the hour-long crawl every morning. Incentives to invest in another CBD can only be a good thing in the long run.

Cape Talk listeners might also have heard yesterday that Cape Town now has 5 million residents, so things are getting tight. We need to make like an amoeba and split if we want to grow.

You can listen to the complete discussion here.

[source:capetalk]