Vice-Chancellors and Board of Directors of the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC)

Representatives from the provincial government of the Western Cape

President Wolfe, from the University of Missouri

Professor Dehaene from the University of Ghent

Representatives from the City of Cape Town

Academics, Researchers and Delegates of the Cities on the Move conference

Distinguished guests, Students

Good Morning 

It’s a pleasure to be here this morning. 

I was pleased to accept this invitation, because it is part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Cape Higher Education Consortium, commonly known as CHEC.  

Twenty years ago the four universities in the Western Cape (the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Western Cape and the former Cape and Peninsula Technikons) signed a Memorandum of Understanding committing the respective institutions to collaborate on specific issues.  

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of the respective Vice-Chancellor, Board of Directors and CEO to sustain the collaborative agreement.  

In this workshop the focus is on the university as placemaker within the City. 

I want to approach the idea of the university as a placemaker from three (ad)vantage points. 

The first vantage point is the value of higher education to the regional economy, through its contribution to GDP, and in its role as a producer of new knowledge.  

I often get the impression that universities sell themselves short and that they don’t tell municipalities and provinces about the value of what they do.  

All universities occupy a special place in regional economies. In addition to being landowners, employers and procurers of services, they also attract scientists and scholars to their regions. 

Before I blow the Western Cape’s trumpet, it’s worth remembering that Gauteng accounts for half of our national R&D and that half is equal to 1.45% of Gauteng’s GDP.  

Most of South Africa’s R&D infrastructure is located in Gauteng and its R&D per capita spend is double the national average and well ahead of the Western Cape. 

In Gauteng most of R&D is for business services (including engineering), followed by computer and related services and then followed by financial services. 

Nonetheless, measured through multiple indices, HEIs in the Western Cape rank among the most productive in the country and are able to attract and retain a significant proportion of leading researchers in a diverse range of disciplines. 

However its four universities are located in very different places in the regional economy. A noticeable difference between the four regional universities is their locational settings.  

They range from those in prime urban settings like parts of CPUT and UCT’s Michaelis Campus to the model of the university town (in the case of the University of Stellenbosch), to the suburban setting of UCT and the Groote Schuur area, and then to CPUT and UWC’s deliberately dislocated campuses in the balkanised dumping ground of the Cape Flats.  

The desolate placenessness of UWC and CPUT’s surroundings is an urban-planning aberration. The neighbouring Transnet container depot separates the two universities from communities they should serve.  

Universities and the City need to grapple with the legacy of apartheid spacial planning. 

What I would particularly like to emphasise is the element of collaboration, particularly in pursuit of the broader development challenges of our country.  

I urge the leadership of universities to pay closer attention to the nature of local businesses with a view to instil innovation and entrepreneurial activities and to help transfer knowledge.  

Similarly, local regions need to acknowledge and appreciate universities as strategic intellectual assets associated with a knowledge economy if we truly wish to make our regions special places. 

We also need to recognise that universities are also national assets required to respond to areas of critical need for South Africa such as water scarcity; alternative fuel; new materials; climate change; biodiversity and space science, to name a few. Proximity is not the only factor as universities serve both local and global interests and pursue research collaboration regardless of they are located. 

My second vantage point about universities as placemakers concerns the impact of infrastructure on learning.  

A key concern for universities is the living and learning experience of their students and their ability to succeed. 

Universities annually attract thousands of new local and international students, but UWC and CPUT find it difficult to facilitate the social integration of students. They travel long distances every day. Students are car dependent, while the high cost and long travel time associated public transport often result in declining student attendance rates and increased attrition and failure rates.  

Students who succeed to find on-campus accommodation at these isolated sites find themselves physically cut off from neighbouring communities and nearby amenities.  

What can be done to overcome this form of placelessness? 

Some universities have capitalised on falling house prices to increase their land holdings. Others have argued for more porous boundaries and development sites between campus facilities, streetscapes and surrounding communities. Unfortunately incompatible City developments that reinforce perceptions of unwelcoming spaces, overcrowding and criminality make any ideal of friendlier surroundings a distant dream. 

We are challenged to forge new partnerships, listen to each other, respect each other’s opinions and build these into a common implementation strategy.  

There is much more work still to be done across all four campuses in the region. We need to build strong networks beyond campuses to create new forms of university / suburb / City relations. In the urban cases of CPUT in the east city of Cape Town, in the university town of Stellenbosch, and at UCT through initiatives such as the Greater Groote Schuur CID, much has already been achieved and we are already seeing more liveable, safer spaces emerging.  

Planning for public space in which a sense of identity and belonging might be developed will also require equitable approaches to urban development.  

Too often new forms of private development are not mindful of often traumatic memories and histories in a city such as Cape Town.  

What we should be working towards are forms of development that do not simply gentrify or commercialise space but enable the inclusion of existing and poorer citizens.  

Collective efforts of provincial, City, commercial, public and institutional collaboration across urban planning paradigms will be required if we are to shape significant new processes of urban development. 

My third and last vantage point on placemaking relates to the challenges of urbanisation for universities and cities.  

Migration to cities accelerates from decade to decade. Most South African citizens (over 50%) now live in cities or on the edge of cities.  

It’s worth remembering that all great cities began to expand as shanty towns. Urban planning is very recent; urban sprawl has been far more common.  

But there is an essential difference between the old and the new, between the north and the south.  

Lagos, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Jakarta, Delhi, Shanghai, Karachi, Teheran are now growing three times faster and three times bigger than London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. 

This growth means a great number of things, but in particular it means that cities now have many more young people looking for work. 

There is a need for cities to develop in more thoughtful ways.  

We need to generate a new discourse around concepts of place and sense-making. This re-imagination has to be open to multiple images of the UniverCity. 

We need to halt the sprawl and deterioration of the university surroundings in ways that celebrate diverse traditions and histories and discover new needs and aspirations.  

We need to build inclusive and synergistic relationship between the four universities, regional authorities and the City and strengthen alliances with the respective role-players.  

Universities are good strategic partners for cities, as they are anchors in the urban landscape, and bound to remain as long term role players in any development.  

In some instances, universities are well placed to lead urban renewal and in others to give shape to transformative development.  

Think for instance of the mutual synergies presented by recent projects for science parks and student housing where commercial and academic interests have joined up.  

Regional innovation policy was in its infancy when I was Minister of Science and Technology. I understand much of the running in regional innovation policy has been made at the local rather than the national level.  

Perhaps that is as it should be? But the point is that provincial systems of innovation are undeveloped and inadequately integrated with the national system of innovation. 

I look forward to hearing that today’s discussions are continuing and that their impact becomes tangible. I hope that our deliberations lead us to ask ourselves some of the tough questions that the transformation and reconstruction of our society inevitably generates, and we do not shy away from the challenges that might lie ahead.  

I would like us to carefully consider how we begin to think about both urban renewal and the redress of apartheid planning and how these might intersect and present particular challenges for the post-apartheid city, that in many ways remain as divided as ever.  

As we enter 2014 and Cape Town is highlighted as the World Design Capital, we might bear in mind that thinking of universities and cities together instead of apart may provide an important and lasting legacy to how a World Design Capital is recognised and against which progress is benchmarked.