Street Experiments Cape Town
Confronting the Legacy of Segregation
Type Street Experiments
Date April 2025
Client Funded by the Stimuleringsfonds of the creative industries
Location Langa Cape Town, South Africa
Collaborators Roland Postma, Hayden Malan, Phano Liphoto, Maria Duda, Weitao Ke
Images Solly King
Phase Constructed
Materials tape, wooden planter boxes, plants, bollards
Summary
In 2024–2025, our multidisciplinary team—urban designers Roland Postma and Phano Liphoto, landscape architect Hayden Malan, and architect Quita Schabracq—worked closely with residents of Langa, Cape Town to successfully execute the first three guerrilla street experiments.
These experiments test real-life alternatives to car-dominated streets, exploring how public space can shift from streets for traffic to streets for people. By activating pedestrian and cyclist mobility, we aim to create safer, more democratic, and more dignified public spaces.
Throughout planning, implementation, and evaluation, we are documenting what we learn. This knowledge will be shared in a short documentary for residents, designers, planners, and policymakers in both South Africa and the Netherlands.
Confronting the Legacy of Segregation
Langa’s urban form is inseparable from Cape Town’s Apartheid planning, which displaced non-white residents to the townships and separated communities with massive road infrastructures. Although Apartheid ended in 1991, the mobility system that upheld segregation remains largely intact. Most residents do not own cars, yet the city’s streets are still designed around them—restricting movement instead of enabling it.
Both in South Africa and the Netherlands, mobility planning has long relied on top-down processes: slow, bureaucratic, and often disconnected from the lived realities of communities. Today, change is emerging. Policymakers in both countries are testing new approaches, opening space for bottom-up experimentation. The mayor of Cape Town’s support for street experiments creates fertile ground for innovation, community participation, and learning-by-doing.
Experimenting to (Re)connect
Langa faces daily mobility challenges: long travel times, expensive commutes, and unsafe routes for people walking or cycling. We identified three key sites with significant barriers and transformed them through low-cost, tactical interventions. These first street experiments have made it possible to observe how small changes can strengthen connections within Langa and improve links to economic hubs—positioning Langa as both part of the city and a center in its own right.
The project also challenges a deeply rooted car-centric culture, shaped by decades of spatial and social segregation. Many residents have grown accustomed to streets dominated by vehicles, making it difficult to imagine alternatives. Through temporary, visible interventions, we show that public space can be reclaimed—and that change is not only possible, but already happening.
Street experiments serve as participatory tools: a way to spark conversations, invite curiosity, and learn directly from how people interact with redesigned spaces. By observing behavior, gathering community insights, and adjusting designs on site, we explore both the social and spatial dynamics that emerge when streets are reconfigured for people rather than cars.
Street Experiments Cape Town
Confronting the Legacy of Segregation
Type Street Experiments
Date April 2025
Client Funded by the Stimuleringsfonds of the creative industries
Location Langa Cape Town, South Africa
Collaborators Roland Postma, Hayden Malan, Phano Liphoto, Maria Duda, Weitao Ke
Images Solly King
Phase Constructed
Materials tape, wooden planter boxes, plants, bollards
Type Street Experiments
Date April 2025
Client Funded by the Stimuleringsfonds of the creative industries
Location Langa Cape Town, South Africa
Collaborators Roland Postma, Hayden Malan, Phano Liphoto, Maria Duda, Weitao Ke
Images Solly King
Phase Constructed
Materials tape, wooden planter boxes, plants, bollards
Summary
In 2024–2025, our multidisciplinary team—urban designers Roland Postma and Phano Liphoto, landscape architect Hayden Malan, and architect Quita Schabracq—worked closely with residents of Langa, Cape Town to successfully execute the first three guerrilla street experiments.
These experiments test real-life alternatives to car-dominated streets, exploring how public space can shift from streets for traffic to streets for people. By activating pedestrian and cyclist mobility, we aim to create safer, more democratic, and more dignified public spaces.
Throughout planning, implementation, and evaluation, we are documenting what we learn. This knowledge will be shared in a short documentary for residents, designers, planners, and policymakers in both South Africa and the Netherlands.
Confronting the Legacy of Segregation
Langa’s urban form is inseparable from Cape Town’s Apartheid planning, which displaced non-white residents to the townships and separated communities with massive road infrastructures. Although Apartheid ended in 1991, the mobility system that upheld segregation remains largely intact. Most residents do not own cars, yet the city’s streets are still designed around them—restricting movement instead of enabling it.
Both in South Africa and the Netherlands, mobility planning has long relied on top-down processes: slow, bureaucratic, and often disconnected from the lived realities of communities. Today, change is emerging. Policymakers in both countries are testing new approaches, opening space for bottom-up experimentation. The mayor of Cape Town’s support for street experiments creates fertile ground for innovation, community participation, and learning-by-doing.
Experimenting to (Re)connect
Langa faces daily mobility challenges: long travel times, expensive commutes, and unsafe routes for people walking or cycling. We identified three key sites with significant barriers and transformed them through low-cost, tactical interventions. These first street experiments have made it possible to observe how small changes can strengthen connections within Langa and improve links to economic hubs—positioning Langa as both part of the city and a center in its own right.
The project also challenges a deeply rooted car-centric culture, shaped by decades of spatial and social segregation. Many residents have grown accustomed to streets dominated by vehicles, making it difficult to imagine alternatives. Through temporary, visible interventions, we show that public space can be reclaimed—and that change is not only possible, but already happening.
Street experiments serve as participatory tools: a way to spark conversations, invite curiosity, and learn directly from how people interact with redesigned spaces. By observing behavior, gathering community insights, and adjusting designs on site, we explore both the social and spatial dynamics that emerge when streets are reconfigured for people rather than cars.
Type Street Experiments
Date April 2025
Client Funded by the Stimuleringsfonds of the creative industries
Location Langa Cape Town, South Africa
Collaborators Roland Postma, Hayden Malan, Phano Liphoto, Maria Duda, Weitao Ke
Images Solly King
Phase Constructed
Materials tape, wooden planter boxes, plants, bollards
Street Experiments
Confronting the Legacy of Segregation
Summary
In 2024–2025, our multidisciplinary team—urban designers Roland Postma and Phano Liphoto, landscape architect Hayden Malan, and architect Quita Schabracq—worked closely with residents of Langa, Cape Town to successfully execute the first three guerrilla street experiments.
These experiments test real-life alternatives to car-dominated streets, exploring how public space can shift from streets for traffic to streets for people. By activating pedestrian and cyclist mobility, we aim to create safer, more democratic, and more dignified public spaces.
Throughout planning, implementation, and evaluation, we are documenting what we learn. This knowledge will be shared in a short documentary for residents, designers, planners, and policymakers in both South Africa and the Netherlands.
Confronting the Legacy of Segregation
Langa’s urban form is inseparable from Cape Town’s Apartheid planning, which displaced non-white residents to the townships and separated communities with massive road infrastructures. Although Apartheid ended in 1991, the mobility system that upheld segregation remains largely intact. Most residents do not own cars, yet the city’s streets are still designed around them—restricting movement instead of enabling it.
Both in South Africa and the Netherlands, mobility planning has long relied on top-down processes: slow, bureaucratic, and often disconnected from the lived realities of communities. Today, change is emerging. Policymakers in both countries are testing new approaches, opening space for bottom-up experimentation. The mayor of Cape Town’s support for street experiments creates fertile ground for innovation, community participation, and learning-by-doing.
Experimenting to (Re)connect
Langa faces daily mobility challenges: long travel times, expensive commutes, and unsafe routes for people walking or cycling. We identified three key sites with significant barriers and transformed them through low-cost, tactical interventions. These first street experiments have made it possible to observe how small changes can strengthen connections within Langa and improve links to economic hubs—positioning Langa as both part of the city and a center in its own right.
The project also challenges a deeply rooted car-centric culture, shaped by decades of spatial and social segregation. Many residents have grown accustomed to streets dominated by vehicles, making it difficult to imagine alternatives. Through temporary, visible interventions, we show that public space can be reclaimed—and that change is not only possible, but already happening.
Street experiments serve as participatory tools: a way to spark conversations, invite curiosity, and learn directly from how people interact with redesigned spaces. By observing behavior, gathering community insights, and adjusting designs on site, we explore both the social and spatial dynamics that emerge when streets are reconfigured for people rather than cars.
