Our project takes place in Motherwell, a former township and suburb located 20
km from the city centre of Port Elizabeth in the metropolitan area that
constitute Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality. Motherwell Township was
planned and built during the 1980s as an isolated residential area for black
people. The location and the segregated physical structure within the area was
a result of apartheid politics. Today the area is flat and featureless with a
number of sites, for example school sites, which remain undeveloped resulting
in very low density. Density in the area must be increased to create a critical
mass and make it possible to provide public facilities and transportations. Our
main focus has been to develop proposals in order to increase density,improve
accessibility within the area and to surroundings,improve the conditions for
pedestrians and create well defined usable public spaces.
Information about the planning conditions was gathered
during our three months stay in Port Elizabeth, through
municipal documents and inventory of the project area. As a
theoretical background and analyse methods we used, the
City Structure analysis by Kevin Lynch, a Space syntax
analysis provided by the municipality and the book “Life
between buildings- Using Public Space” by Jan Gehl. Our
inventory and the theoretical background led to the
formulation of three guiding principles for our proposals;
densification, accessibility and public space for public use.
The proposal is made at two levels, an overall structure of land use and
detailed proposals of high density residential and development of nodes-local
centres.
In the overall structure we propose a grid structure on the
vacant land next to Motherwell Town Centre which will be a
dense area; primarily for residential purposes, but public
functions will also be integrated in the area. To densify the Neighbourhood
Units we propose; infill housing on
undeveloped school sites and public places, and multilevel
houses with mixed use in local centres- nodes. New
pedestrian links and design interventions on streets in the
existing residential area connected to the new part will lead to a higher
accessibility and a more pleasant street environment. Improvements in the
overall structure of public space are suggested through developing existing
spaces and adding several new ones within the new residential area. Some of
these will be connected to “Green links”, which are pedestrian
and bicycle lanes planned to function not only for
transportation, they also aim to fulfil recreational purposes. A structure of
high density blocks wi...
