Bellville: A Great Showcase and Template for African Cities

Warren Hewitt is Chief Executive Officer at The Greater Tygerberg Partnership (GTP). We discuss the role of the GTP in unlocking Bellville’s potential as a sustainable and prosperous leading African city, Bellville’s culture and combined intellectual capital, attracting investment, working closely with the public sector, and many facts about Bellville.

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This episode is presented in partnership with The Greater Tygerberg Partnership (GTP).
- The role of the GTP as a development facilitation agency charged with a mandate to unlock Bellville’s potential as a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive leading African city.
- How the GTP is unlocking potential and attracting investment by connecting people, places and partners to the many possibilities that exist for the current and future success of Bellville.
- Unique features that enable Bellville to establish itself as an important economic hub and a secondary city to Cape Town.
- Working closely with public sector in City of Cape Town.
- How the partnership was built along the same lines as the Cape Town Partnership that was formulated to rejuvenate the Cape Town CBD around 25 years ago.
- Why there has been a shift away from development in Bellville in the early 2000’s and how there is now a renewed focus on development and rejuvenation.
- Social development programmes and partnering with NPO’s in the area.
- Investment as the GTP’s key vision for Bellville, Warren explains.
- The Future Bellville Masterplan.
- The challenges in the process of development applications and how the GTP is working with the City to streamline the process.
- How Warren would remove ‘Red Tape’ in making progress on an economic front if he had a Magic Wand.
- The critical role of partnerships in trying to drive change and how to improve engagement.
- Advice to other smaller towns and cities is that it is a hard road and funding is a massive challenge. Engage with the community and private sector as early as possible. Create a vision that the private sector buy into. Community buy-in is critical.
- Why Bellville is a great showcase and template for African cities through its African connection, multicultural environment and combined intellectual capital.
- Bellville’s vision of a Smart City as a city where you ‘see’ people.
- Visit the GTP website for more information on collaboration and projects.

More Facts about Bellville
- Busiest transport interchange in the Western Cape Metropole with 350 000 trips per day (pre-Covid).
- Some of the fastest internet connectivity lines in the Western Cape.
- Accessible as it sits between two national roads.
- Closer to Cape Town International Airport that the Cape Town CBD.
- Intermodal hub for the Port.
- 3 major universities.
- 150 schools in a 100 square kilometres area.
Africa’s 2nd busiest hospital: Tygerberg Hospital.

See all episodes here: https://futurecitiesafrica.com..../all-future-cities-a