The Mission for Inner City Cape Town (The Mission) has launched a high-impact, long-term initiative to transform the city’s historic core into a “thriving, inclusive, green urban hub—a City of Hope for All.” This collaborative effort, led by civic leaders, businesses, urban designers, and government partners, aims to revitalise public spaces, strengthen walkability, support independent retail, and restore public confidence in the heart of Cape Town.
As part of its ambitious 2025 program, The Mission has unveiled a suite of targeted placemaking interventions and introduced the Inner City Walking Routes map. This practical guide highlights safe, connected, walkable routes linking public art, retail clusters, greened spaces, and cultural anchors across the city centre, encouraging locals and visitors alike to slow down and explore.
Tim Harris, co-founder of The Mission for Inner City CT, emphasises the initiative’s goal: “Our work is about showing that Cape Town’s Inner City is not only walkable but welcoming, inspiring, and full of possibility. As we head into the festive session, these interventions… create a space where locals and visitors can explore and enjoy the Inner City safely. This is a practical investment in public life.”
Step Out and Explore: Boosting Walkability
The Mission is actively making it easier and more enjoyable to navigate the Inner City on foot.
The new Walking Routes map, launching this December, uses highlighted routes, intuitive wayfinding, and simple visual cues to support a more confident and enjoyable pedestrian experience, leading people beyond the familiar workday commute.
Public Art and Design: Anchoring the Streets
Targeted design and art projects are transforming previously underused spaces into civic anchors:
Bree Street Gallery: An old electrical substation has been reimagined as the Bree Street Gallery, featuring striking murals by leading South African artists, including Kirsten Sims, Yay Abe, and Danielle Clough. This colourful addition forms a key anchor in the growing network of public-art-linked walking routes.
Strand Street Crossing: To improve safety and visibility at this busy intersection, The Mission partnered with designer Heather Moore (Skinny laMinx) to create a bold, joyful ground artwork. This intervention increases driver awareness while injecting a sense of playfulness into an everyday moment.
Creating Places to Pause and Connect
Simple, thoughtful interventions are turning transitional areas into welcoming public spaces:
Seating and Greening: A blank stretch beneath the Bree Street Gallery murals has been transformed with concrete planters and integrated seating, offering shade and greenery to invite people to pause and activate the street. Similarly, new timber benches on Church Lane elevate the passage into a warm, human-scale public space.
Vibrant Evenings: Additional warm, human-scale lighting, including festoon lights from Litehouse, has transformed Church Lane from a dim passage into a lively evening environment. Local businesses have already reported increased activity after dark, highlighting the profound impact lighting has on safety and vibrancy.
Retail and Kiosks: Sparking Street-Level Energy
The Mission is focused on moving “from vacancy to purposeful tenancy,” connecting landlords with independent entrepreneurs to foster a diverse, design-led retail mix.
A prime example is Ultraviolet Gallery on Shortmarket Street, which transformed a vacant café into a gallery and framing space. This curated shift contributes directly to street-level energy, safety, and economic opportunity.
Additionally, two previously underused kiosks on St. George’s Mall have been refurbished. One, the Kiosk of Curiosity, features a series of whimsical dioramas crafted by local artists, while the other introduces a new food-and-beverage concept tailored to the busy pedestrian route, used by over 120,000 people daily.
Harris notes that these changes demonstrate that “meaningful change doesn’t always come from mega-projects. Sometimes it’s a bench, a light, a planter, an artwork, or a thoughtfully chosen retailer that reshapes how people feel about their city.”
The Mission for Inner City CT’s program demonstrates how targeted, collaborative investment, funded by private capital, can restore confidence, spark economic activity, and reconnect people with the heart of Cape Town, building a city centre that is safe, vibrant, and accessible to all.
