A ‘Paradox of the Commons’? The Planning and Everyday Management of Green Point Park

Abstract

Cape Town’s Green Point Park is a legacy of the 2010 Football World Cup, built on the former, dilapidated Green Point Common. Initially heavily contested and situated in an area marked by issues of public access and land use, it is a beautiful, popular, and well-used public space. Drawing on archival data and park observations, as well as qualitative interviews with city planners, park management, service providers and the public, the paper first reflects on the park’s conflictual period of planning. It further reflects on the daily operation that is, today, key to the park’s success and maintenance. The paper observes what could be considered the city’s planning ‘by exception’ and ‘governance by spectacle’ that has resulted in a public-private management vehicle central to what keeps this park running. It is proposed that this neoliberally planned and managed park produces a paradox: it has turned the once unsafe and unused space in Green Point into a privately maintained and expensive, yet usable and accessible, free public resource. This research challenges a literature that assumes neoliberal forms of planning and management limit or destroys public space, resulting in a type of tragedy or end. It suggests a need to rethink parks and their planning and regulation in contemporary urban and neoliberal South Africa.