cities

The overall goal was to use WDC2014 as an opportunity to embed design and design-led thinking into the city’s
administration. Following the conclusion of WDC2014, the City of Cape Town identified three broad legacy areas:
• Organisational self-perception: understanding strengths and capacities, and improving the city’s use of
the language of design.
• Systems and processes: reinventing selected systems and processes, making certain red tape redundant,
and opening up the city to new opportunities. The Ikwezi Clinic intervention is one example.
• Objects and infrastructure: developing co-creation projects that are driven by design.
Reflections
The City of Cape Town’s WDC2014 close-out report offers some reflections on the non-monetary impacts of
the WDC2014: 1
• Conversations about design became more deeply ingrained, particularly through the city’s co-creation
workshops, which brought together public servants, designers and community residents to use design
thinking to address neighbourhood challenges.
• Design was a unifying focus that enabled international and local collaborations between the public and
private sector. These included the Dutch Government’s #cocreateSA initiative and African Centre for
Cities, the Nordic trade delegation and Stellenbosch Innovation District/Shift Stellenbosch, a new
collaboration between FNB and Bicycle Empowerment Network, and the Groote Schuur Innovation
Challenge, involving academia, provincial government, multinational corporates and designers.
City of
CApe Town
Not all impacts can be quantified, and the WDC2014 was a trigger for many projects to either start or
accelerate their activities; for collaborations to be born; new networks to be developed; and for the public
sector to adopt new ways of working.
Looking forward
The following are the recommendations made by the City of Cape Town’s internal WDC department in order
to help maintain the momentum created from 2014.
• Build an innovation platform to make the city innovation-friendly, and to facilitate new ways of working
with citizens in efforts to co-create the city’s future.
• Develop and adopt a clear strategy on design, to support the design and innovation ecosystems in
strengthening ties with business, academia and communities.
• Adopt co-creation as a platform for citizen engagement, to optimise ward allocation budgets, develop
citizen-centric services and build internal capacity.
• Adopt service design in social service structures, to help alleviate endemic problems and improve service
for citizens accessing services in, for example, the health sector.
• Maintain the momentum of design thinking training to drive innovation and new outcomes into the
public sector.
• Communicate the importance of creating value and honouring excellent throughout the city, with a
focus on recognition and reward.
References
Design Policy Conference Report, 17-18 Oct 2014
Urban-Econ. 2015. Evaluation of the WDC2014. Cape Town: Urban Econ.
WDC2014 Design Policy Conference Concept Note
World Design Capital Cape Town 2014, http://www.wdccapetown2014.com/
1. http://www.ccdi.org.za/news/237987/The-impact-of-World-Design-Capital-2014.htm
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