Change Thinking

The Street Store is an example of Tactical Urbanism. A beautiful example of how urban spaces can be transformed to accommodate interventions that give rise to a shift in strategic thinking about urban issues.

In my next post I'll address Tactical Urbanism more fully by publishing the keynote address I delivered on this topic this week. Suffice to say the creation of guerrilla gardens and pop-up parks with free wi-fi are a more sanitized and 'creative class' outworking of the concept. Cape Town and the cities of the Global South are clawing forward through a legacy of stifling policy that demands a more robust and even disheveled urban outcry. The Street Store is the beginning of something new.

When I asked one of the organizers of today's Street Store what he thought of the idea of Tactical Urbanism, he had never heard of it, yet resonated with its claims. As an urban designer with a passion for public engagement, I see the Street Store as strongly supported public comment submitted via discarded fashion.

Citizens who have are being invited into an admittedly still awkward place of relationship with citizens who have not. This place is the street. The best place for these renewed discussions to take place. As a coat covers an new owner, so the street lays bare an opportunity for a new friendship.

The next step is to translate these interactions and occurrences into usable and transformed local government policy. Hopefully a collaboration is possible where research into the outworking of the multiple iterations of this concept can inform thinking on inner city poverty and need. A fascinating space where I love to maneuver and for me must be informed largely by empathetic experience.

So here are are a few observations from my morning at The Street Store in Greenpoint today.

I asked one of the assistants what clothing items seemed to be the most popular. "First to go are always the jerseys," she said "and then belts". Belts, because most of the clothes donated are too large to fit the malnourished frames of those who receive them. To imagine myself to be clothed in a way that underscores my hunger. I cried.

One of the recipients of a new pair of athletic shoes was ecstatic. In a gutteral Afrikaans he told me the story of The Strollers. It's the name he uses to refer to himself and the groups of the city's homeless who are moved numerous times every night by police and security guards. As soon as they rest somewhere, the cops chase them away again. As a result, they walk the city for kilometers on end every night. I'm sure Nike didn't have that in mind when they designed his newly acquired shoes.

After frankly too much emotion, I decided to take a stroll up to a nearby coffee shop. Cognisant of what a financial splurge an artisan roasted coffee and bagel would be considering the poverty and need I had just witnessed, I did it anyway.
There is always a way to justify habit.
While my coffee was being prepared, I grovelled in my back pocket for a R50 note I thought was there. Despite checking and rechecking, it became clear to the manager serving me that I had no money. He looked at me compassionately amidst the clinkity laughter and conversations of the privileged and handed me my refreshments with a wink.
"It's OK" he said.

I was overwhelmed for the second time. I had witnessed such unexpected favor. I too had stood in a queue and received, yet  I can only think that somehow it had something to do with how I was dressed.