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| View towards the site |
The land we are developing is located
in West Beach, a middle class Atlantic coastal suburb about 20km
north of central Cape Town. The area is fairly recently developed,
being laid out in the late 1980's/early 1990's. The site is about
1km from the sea. Surrounding houses are mostly single storey brick
built, fairly nondescript and devoid of architectural interest. This
is so typical of recent suburban development in SA, where home
builders nowadays seem to be either aesthetically challenged, or just
don't give a damn how it looks....
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| View from park bridge to site |
The site itself is 680sq.m [7320sq.f
for all the non metric Philistines out there!]. That's 20m street
frontage, and 34m deep. To the rear of the site is what seems to
pass in the area as a “park”. In reality it is a totally unloved
and neglected strip of land which traverses much of the length of the
suburb, but seems to receive only cursory maintenance once every few
months from the City Council. It is devoid of any landscaping or
deliberate planting, being basically just left to its own devices in
this regard. Why do we seem to hate our urban green spaces so much
in SA? One bright spot to the “park” aspect is that directly
behind our site is a little river course with tall reeds, and a
little wooden bridge crossing the river at this point. It adds some character to an otherwise dreary landscape. Perhaps we will
be civic minded, and plant a few trees in the park beyond our
boundary in order to beautify it a tad?
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