As Cape Town's secondary city, Bellville is rich in potential. However, the Bellville CBD has experienced a decline in fortunes over the past few decades as capital flight has led to neglect and degradation. Our client, the Greater Tygerberg Partnership, appointed us to help unlock the area’s prospects using urban design principles as a lever to stimulate investment, create jobs, drive inclusive growth and boost resilience in this important economic urban node.

Working with the City of Cape Town, we conceived the Bellville Public Realm Strategy as a framework to transform the streets and public spaces for pedestrians and informal traders, and to promote public and non-motorised transport. The overarching objective of the strategy is to catalyse the process of regeneration and development set out in the Bellville Future City masterplan (BFC),launched in 2021 and approved in December 2023. The BFC masterplan aims to guide the regeneration of the Bellville CBD as the city’s second metropolitan node.

The public realm strategy establishes a series of improvement projects that can be implemented to promote both immediate and incremental change and regeneration in the Bellville CBD. It outlines a vision for the public realm including streets, squares, parks and other public spaces. It also identifies several complementary projects that involve spatial upgrades, improvements in management structures and activations or events in public spaces. The proposals are designed to support the City of Cape Town’s goals for socio-economic development, inwards investment and ultimately inclusive urban regeneration.

In March 2025 the City of Cape Town concluded the public participation process on the proposed pedestrianisation of South Street in the Bellville CBD, a key intervention identified in our strategy.

The consultation asked the public’s views on proposals to transform a section of South Street, a busy, commercial street in the heart of the CBD. The proposals present a vision for a quality public environment that will accommodate better informal trading facilities and improve access for pedestrians to move through and pause within the space. This aligns with the Local Spatial Development Framework (LSDF) for the BFC masterplan. The public realm strategy is a key component within the LSDF.