What should become of the unfinished bridges at the edge of the Cape Town CBD, which splice between the ocean and the city centre? This question has occupied the minds of city planners for decades as they seek solutions to create long-term value for the surrounding precinct and the city in general.
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We formulated our answer to this question in 2016, when we worked in a coalition with nine other companies to submit an entry for a City of Cape Town competition to reimagine the Foreshore freeways. The CITYLIFT submission was an innovative masterplan that proposed dropping the elevated freeways to the ground and elevating the city over them. This scheme was intended to expand the Cape Town CBD and provide a new mixed-use neighbourhood with commercial, residential and cultural facilities, supported by the services and infrastructure to feed the new developments.
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The plan had three components: extending the city to the harbour on the upper levels, creating strategic sub-surface underground mobility systems and developing a new linear park. The first step entailed demolishing the foreshore freeway bridge. The next step would be to lower the working freeway to the ground, and finally, to gradually elevate the city up over the underground freeway, raising and extending the city grid to about seven to ten metres above the existing ground level, which would lift the city above the moving public transport and cars below.
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The competition project was cancelled by the City of Cape Town’s administration at the time.