Inspirational Urban Space: Main Street Mall, Marshalltown Johannesburg

Contemporary South African architects and planners seem obsessed with over regulated ready made plastic spaces. We create instant cities in the suburbs – fabricating high streets, linking no place to no destination. This trend has spurned developments like Melrose Arch, which stretch from access control boom to electric perimeter fence. There would seem to be reason for this obsession. One has only to look at the urban disaster along Bree or Joubert Street in the CBD. Suddenly over regulation seems a sensible solution for “public space” in Johannesburg. Downtown, Bree and Joubert Street and many others, portray a city on the brink of collapse, strangling itself through lack of management, regulation or design. Sidewalks choked with informal traders and litter, push pedestrians into the street and rob the city of vital public space.

Cities are not solely created through built density, but rather through the creation of sustainable, safe public space.  The great American urbanist Jane Jacobs noted, “Think of a city and what comes to mind - Its streets!” A city is not simply a collection of buildings created in a void, with streets as a left over space between. The city is a living organism and streets, as its main public spaces, are the arteries that sustain the citie’s life.

The rebirth of the city has to start on the street! When people say that a city is dangerous – perceived or real - they mean that they don’t feel safe on their own pavement; they don’t feel safe on heir own street.

Downtown, streets like the redeveloped Main Street Mall, have brought life back to the city. Streets in the CBD are not sterile and faux. Unlike Sandton, where roads were designed only for cars, downtown streets are social spaces, community nodes, and explosions of colour, energy and daily interaction. Rather than trying to control and regulate the urban environment with security boom gates and razor wire, arteries like Main Street have become safe through encouraging activity.

The upgrade of Main Street in 2005, reduced motor traffic to a single lane, creating wide New York style pavements. The widened pavements provide space for pedestrians, coffee shops and urban greenery. Main Street Mall has spurned the re emergence of downtown café culture. Office workers desk bound for decades, once too afraid to explore the city beyond their access controlled office blocks, have ventured back on to the street. Secretaries on smoke breaks, coffee shops, convenience stores, shoppers and scores of pedestrians, have created a city node alive with activity and interaction. Along Main Street the city becomes an urban interactive theatre!

It is important to remember that people cannot be forced to use streets, if they have no reason to be there. Main Street is a strategic artery - linking Gandhi Square Transport Terminus in the center of the city to the banks, mining houses, courts and the Newtown Cultural area. These diverse functions along the street ensure pedestrian activity and movement, creating a sustainable node, made safe through use and activity, rather than through access controlled booms, razor wire and electric fencing.

Main Street Mall is a case study in the development of regenerated, sustainable South African cities. The rebirth of urban areas starts on the street!