Share This Article
As South Africa observes Women’s Month, the Mission for Inner City Cape Town is highlighting a practical intervention helping to make the city feel safer and more welcoming after dark: over a kilometre of new festoon lighting installed above six busy Inner City pedestrian routes.
Women often experience public spaces differently, particularly after dark, and decisions about where to walk can come down to a simple, practical question: is the route well lit? Poor lighting can limit freedom of movement and shape everything from the route someone takes home to the time they leave work. While this is especially relevant during Women’s Month, better-lit streets benefit everyone who lives, works, visits or travels through the Inner City. The Mission’s festoon lighting programme responds to this shared need by improving visibility and helping public spaces feel safer, more accessible and more inviting after dark.
Since the programme’s launch on Church Lane, installations have expanded across six key sites in the Inner City:
-
Church Lane – 230m
-
St George’s / Reserve Bank Block – 230m
-
Upper Shortmarket Street – 230m
-
Lower Shortmarket Street (Café Santé) – 150m
-
Clock Tower – 60m
-
Hout Street – 220m
Together, the six listed installations amount to approximately 1120 metres of festoon lighting and around 940 LED bulbs – roughly one bulb for every metre strung above the city’s streets.
The lighting is as efficient as it is effective. Each LED bulb draws just 1.4 watts, meaning a typical 230m installation runs on around 320 watts in total – less power than a hairdryer. Even running around the clock, seven days a week, a 230m stretch costs the city and its partners less than R500 a month to keep lit.
That efficiency has made it possible to keep the lights on every night, without exception – a relatively small monthly cost for a meaningful improvement in how these streets are experienced after dark.
The programme has been made possible through a donation of high-quality festoon lighting equipment from Litehouse, one of South Africa’s most respected lighting suppliers, with installation delivered on the ground by contractor Light League. Property owners and businesses along each route have also played a role by hosting power connections and supporting the installations that light the pavements outside their doors.
Brad Armitage, co-founder of the Mission for Inner City CT, commented on the significance of the milestone during Women’s Month: “Good lighting is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to help people feel safer walking through a city after dark. This matters particularly for women, whose experience of public space is too often shaped by concerns about personal safety, but the benefit extends to everyone. What we’ve seen on Church Lane and now across five more sites is that when a street is properly lit, people use it differently. They linger, they walk together and they choose that route instead of avoiding it. That’s exactly what we want more of in the Inner City.”
Mike Van Der Velde, co-founder of Litehouse, added: “Light is never just about illumination, it changes how people experience a space. At Litehouse, we believe thoughtful lighting can make places feel warmer, more welcoming and more connected. Supporting this project gave us the opportunity to put that belief into action, using our products to help create safer, more inviting streets for the Inner City community. We’re proud to have donated the lighting to an initiative that helps women move through the city with greater confidence after dark, and ultimately creates a better, brighter experience for everyone.”
The Mission says the lessons from this rollout – from efficient LED technology to the value of stakeholder-supported power connections – will help inform a more standardised and scalable approach to lighting upgrades across the Inner City. Women’s Month provides a timely opportunity to focus attention on women’s experiences of safety in public spaces, while reinforcing the broader goal of creating well-lit, walkable streets that everyone can use with greater confidence.
To learn more about the Mission for Inner City Cape Town visit www.missionforinnercity.org or follow @missionforinnercityct on Instagram and LinkedIn.