Do you think Cape Town should spread out as far as possible? Or that new buildings should be at least three stories high, to help prevent urban sprawl?

How do you think the City’s planning department can achieve a balance between city growth and the protection of our natural and cultural heritage? How can we make the existing areas within Cape Town work better?

And how are we going to connect Capetonians with each other, and with economic opportunities? Through better public, or private, transport?

Over the last 3-4 years the City Space – Planning Cape Town project has been aimed at gathering your views, as a resident of Cape Town, to inform the City of cape Town’s plan for how and where Cape Town should develop and grow in the future.

Planning for Future Cape Town is a project managed by the Spatial Planning & Urban Design department of the Strategy & Planning Directorate.

Its goal is to operationalise a plan, known as the Cape Town Spatial Development Framework, or SDF, that sets guidelines about how and where Cape Town should grow in the future. 

Following an extensive public participation process, a final Cape Town Spatial Development Framework is in place and has been endorsed by Council and will be submitted to the Provincial Government: Western Cape for approval.

This framework is supported by integrated spatial development plans and environmental management frameworks for each of the eight planning districts in the City, which provide a further level of detail to the Cape Town Spatial Development Framework. These ‘District Plans’ are also in their final draft stage and are now available for a further and final round of public scrutiny.

As part of the process of approving a new plan for Cape Town, the City will request the Provincial Government: Western Cape to remove old plans governing development in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area.

We can’t avoid change, growth and development. But we believe that the best possible Cape Town of the future is one where the city grows and develops, while at the same time protecting and making the most of its key economic, social and environmental assets.

Such a Cape Town is certainly possible – if we have a plan about how to manage Cape Town’s growth and development.

The Cape Town SDF contains a vision for the future shape of Cape Town as a whole and includes city-wide strategies and policies. 

The eight district integrated Spatial Development Plans (SDPs) and Environmental Management Frameworks (EMFs) apply these strategies and policies at a district scale, and identify:

• a spatial vision for the district
• what should inform development in that district
• what should be protected
• where new development should go
• where there should be change to the existing urban environment and what this change should be.