Friday 2 February 2018

Anti-human suburbs

Cape Town is one of the most spectacular cities in the world, no doubt about it. If you live in the Southern Suburbs life can feel like a driving holiday in paradise. If you go north to the Northern Suburbs it's a place only relative to hell. I even lived there once. Now when I get there I literally feel like I have to hold my breath as I drive through in order to not take in all that bad energy. It makes me feel physically sick. I get headaches. I think I've been to soviet cities with more charisma, even the butcharised architecture of Bucharest is a nicer experience than this hell hole. What is most remarkable is that places like Bloubergstrand occupy some of the most spectacular coastline in the world. It has a panoramic view of Table Mountain and Cape Town itself as well as Robin Island. Two UNESCO world heritage sites in it's energy field and it's like finding yourself a crack den at a Ghandi conference. It's fucking dark. Slowly but surely the sky line is elevating and there is nothing but badly constructed flat roof bars for company. The built a high-rise with a pool in it that looks over the road, rather than out at the beach. It's just another epic example of poor South African planning and architecture. I swear Architects in South Africa have no concept of the relationship that a building has to the landscape around it or how that relationship has any ability to improves lives. It's remarkable deeply annoying and terrifying. Architects seem to have no soul and I like architects.

Its a massive bug bear of mine that we don't respect the land that we build on. That planners just sign waivers to building companies without having any idea of the impact on the land that is there. Nor the communities that end up occupying that land Blaubergstrand is know to Capetonians as divorce city.

I mean what's going on. It appears that these days we are building housing for robots. Even the high-rise disaster of 1960's britain are better than these with bars and shops built into the estates that housed them.  2018 come on.

Ok rant over.