PILOT PROCESS FOR TRANSITION
Focusing on the Cape Town city-region, the Germany-based non-profit organization has teamed up with the African Center for Cities and the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership. Under the lead of Bauhaus Earth, the organizations are designing and piloting a multi-stakeholder process for accelerating the transition towards a regenerative built environment in the region. While many complexities in the transition are location-specific, such as construction material availability and social fabric, the overall process itself can provide valuable learnings for other regions. This will help to translate the experience from the pilot process into a guide for systemic change in the built environment to empower other cities.
CHANGING HOW CITIES ARE BUILT IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH
The majority of construction will happen in the Global South, especially in Africa. Given the current carbon footprint of buildings, we need to address this issue adequately in order to keep our climate goals attainable. Cape Town was chosen due to its readiness for transitioning into a climate resilient city because of extreme weather events in recent years. This pilot project offers more sustainable solutions for change in other Sub-Saharan African cities.
Bauhaus Earth, an organization consisting of architects, city planners and experts in other relevant fields, is already a partner of the Toni Piëch Foundation. The first project, which resulted in a series of information guides and factsheets on aspects of sustainable construction, was successfully completed with very satisfactory results. The role of the building sector in climate change has received increasing attention, but the lack of easily accessible information from reliable sources has kept the public, professionals and changemakers at bay from the discussion. The objectives of this new project also align perfectly with the foundation’s interest in the future of cities, in innovative solutions to conquer climate change and in its strong belief in the power of communication.
TPF is providing a grant of €99,600 for this project.
