Creating a better Bellville for all

An urban management partnership is delivering some truly remarkable results. By Bridget Hilton-Barber

- Bridget Hilton-Barber

Warren Hewitt, chief executive of the Greater Tygerberg Partnership, and I meet in Marshalltown in the Jozi inner city, of all places.

The partnership is a collaboration between businesses and the City of Cape Town that has spruced up the Bellville CBD, some 20km north of Cape Town, and Hewitt is in town for a series of meetings. He's fresh from talks with Jozi My Jozi, a similar urban revitalisation initiative, to discuss innovative waste management solutions.

We take a brisk walk through Marshalltown, down the pedestrianised Main Street to Gandhi Square, City Hall, Library Gardens, the Rand Club and back to 44 Main.

It's fascinating to walk with Hewitt because his eyes are sensitively attuned to urban renewal indicators. He notices the clever use of water reticulation in a sidewalk garden, new CCTV cameras, a heritage plaque here, a missing drain cover there. He's impressed by the cleanliness of Marshalltown, how secure and safe it feels.

Compared with the Jozi inner city, Bellville is significantly bigger. It's a huge pan-African hub, Cape Town's busiest transport interchange where 300,000 daily commuters use buses, taxis and trains. It hosts multinational company headquarters, well-established medical and educational centres, and people living in a mixture of houses, apartments and housing estates.