communiTgrow is a joint venture between Bellandia, ARG Design, Ariya Projects and Pact Developers, whose collective efforts are focused on redefining urban design for a new Africa and beyond....
Africa is a continent of rich cultural diversity, valuable natural resources, beautiful landscapes, distinct wildlife and biodiversity. This natural beauty, however, is in stark contrast to the abject poverty that many Africans live in.
The communiTgrow team’s common purpose is to provide holistic whole systems urban solutions, ensuring that ‘communities of neighborhoods’ will sustain themselves and cultivate a philosophy of ‘understanding for all’.
Over 71% of urban Africans are slum residents. Cities sprawl, with little or no planning, creating unsustainable communities that cause the destruction of ecosystems and surrounding environments. Unemployment is rife, resulting in many poverty-stricken families that do not have access to adequate housing, education, food, water and basic healthcare.
Cape Town faces similar challenges to other cities on the continent and can serve as a gateway to the rest of Africa. communiTgrow‘s Wescape project in Cape Town, offers a prototype, showcasing what ‘whole-system community development’ can accomplish and thus, establish communiTgrow initiatives throughout Africa and the developing world, in order to stimulate economic activity and sustainability while uplifting communities: illuminating the ‘dark continent’ and beyond, one city at a time.
Traditionally, low-cost and affordable housing projects churn out rows and rows of dwellings, but without employment, education and much-needed amenities - failing to create thriving communities and simply deteriorating into slums.
Most African countries share these challenges to varying degrees and have inspired communiTgrow to view the continent as a place of opportunity, where simply addressing people’s basic needs in projects of scale, can change the lives of millions.