Cape Town bids for design kudos

The award promotes design's solution-finding, transformative potential, rather than primarily design aesthetics.

In addition to promoting Cape Town's design and creative industries and assets, the broad theme of the bid will be connection and reconnection, with a strong focus on the way Cape Town has been using design to reconnect people. The bid will look at the IRT, the public spaces programme, the dark fibre network, among others. It will look at public architecture, art and memorialisation, through the lens of their contribution to place making. The bid allows the City to leverage the gains made during the 2010 World Cup, which demonstrated the positive impact of people-centred design.

The city will use the bid process to promote its design assets and designers and put design and the City's design-led projects in the public domain, so that everyone can understand the impact design can have on city development; how important designers are; and how critical design education is to its future.

The city has a strong story to tell, 20 years post-democracy, of how design is being used to begin to undo how it was historically designed to divide people. Icsid is understood to be looking for a City from a developing country. Previous recipients of the award are Torino (inaugural 2008), Seoul (2010) and Helsinki (2012).

To get involved or show your support for the bid go to www.capetown2014.co.za.