“Cities are the most powerful way for people to self-actualise; to become better human beings. Better cities can produce better lifestyles. If you care about people, you have to care about your city.” Mokena Makeka, newly appointed board member of the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID).
Post the pandemic, there will be an opportunity to reflect on how cities should be redesigned to better withstand shock. Mokena Makeka – award-winning architect, urbanist, Principal at Dalberg Advisors and CCID board member – says cities need to constantly be reinvented or they will stagnate. Right now, we need to inject vibrancy into inner cities like the Cape Town CBD. To do so, he says a radical refocusing on inclusivity is imperative. If we can get it right, we can secure a better future for everybody.
Makeka is uniquely qualified to comment on South Africa’s cities. A longstanding cross-thread in his impressive career is his passion for making spaces inclusive, dynamic places. Urban planning and architecture inform his lens – a powerful duality that gives equal weight to form, function and advocacy. The World Economic Forum Young Global Leader’s career started as a student. He entered an architecture competition while studying – his first exposure to competing with professionals.
Off the back of that, he started his practice while completing his city planning and urban design degree – one of many qualifications he holds, including a B.Arch Dist. Hons from the University of Cape Town, and leadership qualifications from Harvard Kennedy School, Oxford University among others.
REVIVING URBAN SPACES
He began to pivot to public work – a reflection of the economy and country at the time. “Simplistically, even though I’d interned with some of the world’s best architects, in South Africa, black architects were associated with public and community buildings, not necessarily private residential buildings.” Makeka maximised the opportunities he had in the space, using his urban design thinking to be involved in large-scale projects like the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC). His work went international, to China, Madagascar, Tanzania, and other regions. Much of it was advocacy-oriented.
His work in the Cape Town city centre makes him a perfect champion for this area’s continued revival. As well as the CTICC, Makeka spent many years designing police stations and worked closely with PRASA to rejuvenate the Cape Town Train Station. He also devised tourism strategies, arts and culture strategies, and innovation hubs. Additionally, he was the Precinct planner for the Silo District in the V&A Waterfront, (working alongside Thomas Heatherwick and VDMMA) and one of the co-architects for Silo 3, the mixed-use residential block in the same district.
Makeka has sat on myriad boards, recognising these as a way to serve, to demonstrate that architecture goes beyond building pretty houses and to demonstrate the competency of architects of colour. His contribution has been extensive. Previously, he has sat on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Design, served on the South African Creative Industries Federation, and as the chairperson of Isandla institute and Cape Town Heritage Trust, to name a few. All of this experience makes him the ideal board member for the CCID.
STRATEGIC CONSULTING
He says his career has been an evolution from pure design consultancy to strategic consulting where design has a big role. “Now, sometimes the design isn’t a physical building but rather a process or outcome – such as a horticulture strategy for Lesotho.”
Right now, he’s looking forward to having a greater impact with Dalberg. He’s doing a lot of work on post-Covid-19 economic recovery strategies. His service on the CCID board is linked to his determination to rejuvenate cities and give back, “I’ve decided the next 10 years of my life are about broadscale impact, where I can look back and say, 'I made a difference'.”
This background has given Makeka a strong understanding of what enables cities to withstand shocks and reinject economic energy. Here is how he believes the Cape Town CBD needs to rebuild post the pandemic:
GOOD INFRASTRUCTURE
In the last year, Covid-19 has shown that cities that have good infrastructure – an efficient density of clinics and hospitals and good electrical infrastructure – are more resilient to shocks. However, many cities and states "outsource" the issue of infrastructure to developers, limiting their own investment. Additionally, digital commerce especially is often in the hands of the formal sector and must be expanded to the informal sector. It is critical that informal communities are perceived as a key part of the city. Businesses dependent on day-to-day interactions at the lower end – like SMMEs, cash-based and transport businesses – need to be able to engage in digital commerce to survive.
EMBRACING CHANGE
Before the Foreshore reclamation of 1948, Cape Town was a fishing town. Imagine asking someone from back then what they think of our city today. They’d probably be horrified by the density, tall buildings, and traffic. The same thing is happening right now. We are unable to project forward what the city needs to be in 20 years’ time to inform our current decision-making.
There’s what I call a "picturesque cabal" – people and institutions fearful of losing their "view". I support access to nature, but I am an urbanist; I understand how cities live and die. We have to reinvent the city or it will stagnate. We have two amazing assets – the mountain and the sea. As long as these constraints are preserved, the city should be an engine for new things. We can afford to be more adventurous with our architecture.
INCLUSIVE PUBLIC SPACES
We have a quasi-Calvinist idea that commerce and public spaces should not interact. If you go to Central Park in New York, there are buskers and traders everywhere. Why don’t we see the same in our Company’s Garden, or other public spaces for example? We know how to make spaces that look pretty on magazine covers, but we struggle to make these places inclusive. Our spaces don’t currently reflect our cultural practices – rather, they reflect conservative and culturally antiquated ideas of what some think a public space should be.
LEADING BEYOND YOUR AUTHORITY
In my capacity as a CCID board member, I hope to lead by example on this front. I believe real leadership happens when you lead beyond your authority. Currently, much of our expertise is concentrated in the CBD. I would like to see this having an impact in Mitchell’s Plain, Khayelitsha, Langa, and so on. Not in a condescending way, but to really allow for a transformation of the quality of life for all citizens of the city. We all need to operate in a way that is cognisant of the entire ecosystem we’re touching.
This means stepping out and actively offering our expertise to others. The CCID acts as the convening voice between the public and private sector. Through its social and urban development work, it’s often also the voice of the "voiceless" who are not always in the room. In that capacity, we have a massive role to play in convening other actors together to build a better city for all.
IMAGES: Google