[imagesource:pexels]
The City of Cape Town’s Urban Planning and Design Department has released their annual Spatial Trends Report providing the latest information about land use development trends/patterns and changes in Cape Town over time.
The report provides an overview of ‘changes in densification and mixed-use development, the size of the city’s built footprint, the size of natural and agricultural assets, changes in the property market, the adoption of new development and human settlement patterns, as well as public investment and projects aimed at restructuring and upgrading urban areas’.
While that may be a mouthful of urban planning-speak, the biggest takeaway from the latest report is that Cape Town’s urban footprint has increased by 13 million square metres in a little over the last decade.
That’s 3,608 hectares for plattelanders, and equates to an area the size of seventeen Century City developments between 2012 and 2022. Cape Town is growing like a fungus.
Excluding the large number of households living in informal houses (backyarders), informal settlements or unauthorised land occupancy sites, the number of formal residential dwellings rose from 783,000 in 2018 to 850,000 in 2022.
In the city, formal residential density has grown by 24% since 2012, reaching 11.7 dwellings per hectare in 2022. If you think that’s a tight squeeze, consider that the density of informal settlements and illegal occupancy sites varied between 200 and 250 dwellings per hectare in regions such as Dunoon, Khayelitsha, Wallacedene, and Nomzamo.
According to Property Wheel, the most significant rises in property value between 2012 and 2022 were however focused around the Southern Corridor, Atlantic Seaboard, and new development zones in Sunningdale, Kraaifontein, and Somerset West.
“Where and how we develop land determines how far people need to commute to get to work, and how much the City and its ratepayers need to spend on infrastructure for the provision of water, sanitation, and electricity, and a road network to support mobility, says the City’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews. ”
“This means we need to prevent urban sprawl which has a direct impact on economic growth, money and time spent on commuting, inclusivity, spatial justice, and Cape Town’s collective resilience to climate change and unforeseen shocks.”
