Cape Town, South Africa

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Introduction
Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa, was well-known as a multi-cultural and multi-racial port city. With the complexity in races, there has been a long history of racial segregation starting from the 19th century. Provided with a colonial history started by the Dutch from 1652 and ended with the British in 1910, the urban form of this ex-colonial city deserves careful analysis. In the following essay, the urban form of Cape Town will be analyzed starting from different perspectives. This essay aims at providing grounds for further studies on the urban forms of not only Cape Town, but also other colonial cities.
General information about Cape Town
Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. The city is located on the northern end of the Cape Peninsula. It claims the crown of the second most populated city in South Africa with 3.5 million people living in. The city was officially founded in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company as a supply station for Dutch ships, which has gradually turned into an economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony from 1806 to 1910 (Cape Town Tourism, 2014).
As a multi-racial colonial city, Cape Town has 4 main population group, including Coloured, Black African, White and Indian or Asian (Frith, 2011).
Colored 42.4%
Black African 38.6%
White 15.7%
Indian/Asian 1.4%
Other 1.9%
With White mainly refers to people originating in Holland,Britain and other European countries and Coloured refers to the population descended from slaves, white and indigenous African people,as a mixed race (Phillips, 1957).

Figure 1. The racial makeup of Cape Town in 2011
The urban form of Cape Town
The urban form of cape town is related to its multi-racial environment....

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Frith, A. (2011). City of Cape Town. Retrieved from South Africa's Census 2011: http://census2011.adrianfrith.com/place/199
Phillips, H. T. (1957). An Inter-Racial Study in Social Conditions and Infant Mortality in Cape Town. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 7-28.
Scott, P. (1955). Cape Town: A Multi-Racial City. The Geographical Journal, pp. 149-157.
South End Museum. (n.d.). The Group Areas Act. Retrieved from South End Museum: http://www.southendmuseum.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=6
Statistics South Africa. (2001). Census 2001. Western Cape.
Yiu, E. C. (2014). 3 City Plans and Patterns (Lecture Notes). Hong Kong.

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