Towards the achievement of sustainable built environment: The role of community-based facilities management of urban public spaces in Cape Town

Rapid and often unsustainable urban growth is a challenge that cities of the world face. Challenges faced include rapid population growth, urbanisation, which leaves municipalities playing catchup with the provision of infrastructure and services, as well as accessible public spaces. These challenges tend to foster the development of slums, selective access to economic opportunities, social exclusion, and urban poverty. Arguably, the development of informal socio-economic systems occurs at various levels in response to the lack of access to formal socio-economic activities and jobs and ultimately threaten the sustainability of the built environment (BE). The City of Cape Town, South Africa, provides public spaces that facilitate socio-economic opportunities for the urban vulnerable in the form of informal trading. The management of these public spaces is pertinent to avoid spontaneous development that these challenges and threaten the sustainability of the built environment. It is argued that community-based facilities management (CbFM) has the potential to provide municipalities and local governments with solutions to these challenges to urban spatial management. Based on three case studies of public spaces that host informal socio-economic opportunities in Cape Town, this paper explores the concept of sustainable BE and assesses how CbFM could be used in managing public spaces towards achieving a socially sustainable built environment. The findings indicate that although CbFM has the potential to provide appropriate solutions to public spaces, towards achieving sustainable BE, CbFM does not play a role in the current spatial management praxis in the study areas, which do not reflect CbFM principles.