Spoken Words

The last time I arrived at City Hall on a bicycle, there was a man waiting with tulips. I took it as an exquisite picture of how Madiba had woo'ed the nation and how Freedom was his bride.

I was quietly expectant today as I rode to the steps of City Hall once again. Surely a second poignant moment of reflection on the legacy of Madiba and the bicycle was too much to ask for. Yet there he was.

Siyabulela (isiXhosa: Thank You) and his bicycle.

We spoke briefly while he taped images to the walls and door of the City Hall facade. To the authorites it would be viewed as a palpable act of defiance, but to Siya it is an invitation. He is a film maker and was busy pasting a stage background onto the walls of this architectural grand dame. The crude pop silhouettes unraveled from his backpack beckoning actors and artists to visit his self-made urban stage.

The unofficial Freedom Ride contingent arrived in his informal theater as he arranged the last of his props and occupied this most contested space. Neither of us had permission to be there, to ride, to display, to invite disarray. Yet there we were - in the shadow of the balcony where Madiba stood 20 years ago to give his first speech as a free man.

Today's unofficial Freedom Ride saw a growing number of riders join us as we moved from the leafy suburbs of Cape Town into and across a range of urban landscapes that we feel reflect the city we live in. The agility of the bicycle makes it possible to connect across physical infrastructural divides that hem in these enclaves of poverty and difference. We literally rode over and through these divisions that were too expansive to walk and are too expensive to reconsider.
The bicycle is becoming for me a vehicle of ecological as well as social sustainability.

My longing is to somehow overcome the devastation of apartheid spatial planning. Working on the Freedom Ride as an event to take thousands of wheels on this journey gives me such hope. To change a perspective is to change a landscape.

When my curious anarchist heart is weary, I have to ask: given that I am just one person, one designer on a bicycle, is this even possible. Is it worth trying?
Siyabulela was a gift to me today. When I asked him what his mission is, he replied: "I ride until my legs get tired to make a stage for others. The people will fill this place with what it needs."

Thank you Madiba that I could hear that in the shadow of your legacy.

Make a Stage: Tape and Plastic

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Why the Bicycle

For someone who tries to steer away from operating in an aura of linguistic aloofness to justify and present my design methods, I have to confess. I have found a profoundly complex description, which I will be using regularly.

Doxastic Commitment. That is a class of beliefs that go beyond talk and to which we are committed enough to take personal risks.

It is this commitment that converts objection into protest and opinions into advocacy. Its usage appears to be rare as its application in practice.  A comment made to me recently, “It is great to have an activist here..” is a reflection that policy is being guided by bureaucratic dogma rather than an understanding of life on the street. People who care because they risk what it is to know are in the minority.

I was offered this as a secondhand encouragement after a recent heated forum discussion on cycling and non-motorised transport infrastructure.

Translation: “Wow, you actually ride your bicycle on the road?”

Yes. I do.

It is precisely this methodology of Doxastic Commitment that has endeared me to the life and words of Nelson Mandela. The legacy he has left the design community (of which I am a part) is one that calls forth authenticity and commitment in action. The personal risk of saying no to high paying clients and environmental destruction. The personal risk of saying yes to pro-bono work and defending an unpopular opinion. And critically, the personal risk of being proven to be wrong either by allowing personal conviction or ones peers to do so. 

Adding cycling advocacy to my job description has proven in some ways to be a doxastic commitment (I used it again!). It’s a heated debate regarding one of the most contested of spaces. Mobility. The intensity of this debate is fueled by the realization that we have very limited choices of movement routes and so to share those routes, it is wrongly assumed, then that our decisions will then be further constrained. Gloves on.

The first major cycling advocacy project I am working on is confronting every obstacle and preconceived idea I’m likely to address in my burgeoning career in disruption and advocacy. All conveniently wrapped in one initiative. The 27km Cape Town Freedom Ride.

This social ride is a celebration of the legacy of Nelson Mandela. His choice to pursue freedom and reconciliation speak powerfully to the forward thinking strategic mobility decisions required to overcome our apartheid spatial legacy. One kilometer of cycling freedom for every year of Madiba’s incarceration is poetic as we plan to move (albeit it somewhat conceptually) from places of captivity to City Hall where Madiba spoke his first words as a free man. 

The route traverses neighborhoods in the city that are divided by infrastructure but have cycling lanes either established or planned, working perpendicular to that divisive heritage. It’s powerful moving both perception and bicycle. The trigger button for advocacy.

Ironically, the Freedom Ride experience has also given me the reason why my doxastic commitment will be worth it. Tireless discussions with authorities, revised management plans, revised dates, debating helmet laws, and the gathering of every conceivable hitch and snag have made clear in urban design terms why cycling matters. The Freedom Ride encapsulates the desire of people to move despite of, not because of what is before them.

And, as with the pursuit of freedom, the bicycle has proven itself to be antifragile.

My Curious Anarchy

Designers and planners really try an orchestrate the world around them more than they ought to.
When we shout criticism at others we are often whispering it to ourselves.
We cannot control time, chance meetings or intersection of events. They are the canvas on which we draw. They simply are.

This week is incredibly significant for me. 6 months ago almost to the day, I rode a bicycle on Cape Town's streets for the first time. A 6 month personal challenge to change the way I think. The way I design. Today I am presenting the fruit of this adventure at TedXCapeTown. A pitch to talk at the August event. Tonight's 2 minutes are equally important to me as August's potential 18 minutes.

Its all about timing, apparently. 

Here is my pitch.
[Pepper this written word with the bubbly enthusiasm and the full intensity of the intoxicating freedom to be found when you do what it is you are hardwired for..]

I'm Kirsten. I am an urban designer. I always have been.
At my first public participation meeting (gesture:many years ago) I presented a slick, glossy design to a community hall of 300 people on the government housing waiting list.
A 175 unit low income housing pilot project filled to the brim with innovative solutions and supportive jargon. Portfolio grade presentation. 
At the end of the meeting, an elderly lady slowly made her way toward me from the back of the hall. In a softly spoken voice she said to me that she hadnt understood what I had said or the pictures I had drawn. She wanted to know if they meant she would no longer be sleeping in a bathtub at night. Turns out she had been renting out the cramped bathroom of a nearby house. She was looking for hope.

I don't design like that anymore.

The question I asked myself was how can the majority of the inhabitants of this city participate in a system where the language of change is spoken by so few? This unapproachable democracy of city making.
This was the beginning of Open Source Urban Design.

Open Source method briefly is the breaking open of closed systems to reveal the design code. An invitation to collaborate and collectively improve it. Binary Marxism perhaps?
What if we applied this at the scale of the City? Really invited people in? Spoke a shared language?

Briefly, Open Source Urban Design is 3 things:
-Participants become collaborators in this shared language
-Designers move from 'creators' to translators of experience and empathy
-Local authorities move from the strangle hold of red tape and policy making to receivers of words, sentences and paragraphs of this spatial language.

In real terms it looks like this. 6 months ago I got on a bicycle for the first time. I simply could not design spaces for cyclists without understanding their world. I immersed myself in what it meant to commute, to race, to deliver. My incessant 'newbie' questions translated into advocacy..which in turn translated into a collaborative task team after I pitched the idea to City officials that perhaps mobility is not a line but a series of interconnected public spaces which cyclists pass through.
This is my happy space.
This is Open Source Urban Design

Tell me your story and let me help you to decode the city.

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