Practices of representation

The 1996 Technical Report could be called a ‘classic statement in the urban design tradition’ (Mandelbaum 1990, 350). It is 107 pages long, carefully argued and illustrated, and culminates in a coloured map of Cape Town indicating the desired spatial vision of the city twenty years hence (Figure 7.1). It is a heroic, modernist plan, but not uncommon in large cities, both in South Africa and elsewhere.1