Main Street Sundays comes to Marshalltown and puts people before cars

“Imagine if we could transform city streets from being transit corridors for cars, buses and taxis into vibrant shared public spaces?” asks Phano Liphoto, an urban planner and passionate cyclist.

“Imagine places in the inner city where people can walk and play and connect, where they can cycle and skate?”

Liphoto has an MPhil in civil engineering focusing on transport studies from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and works for a community advocacy group called Young Urbanists, which believes the roads should be equally shared. It promotes cities for people rather than cars, and champions active mobility – walking, rollerblading, cycling, skateboarding – as well as safe cycling infrastructure and better public transport.

“If we want Jozi to work, we must start with its streets. Because once you change the street, you change the city. And once you change the city, you change the country.”

Now Liphoto and Young Urbanists are partnering with Jozi My Jozi and the City of Joburg to do Main Street Sundays – a car-free community day in Marshalltown when Main Street will be closed to traffic and open to people.

“I grew up in Jozi and remember always being fascinated by how cities worked and grew and fitted together,” Liphoto says.

“One of my aunts was an urban planner in the [UN] and that sparked my interest, especially how apartheid spatial planning influenced the way Jozi grew and developed… How can we redress the imbalances and spatial injustices through sustainable transport and community empowerment?”

Liphoto started cycling during the Covid lockdown, often with his dad, and that’s how his passion for urban planning intersected with his passion for cycling.

Exploring a Joburg for all

“I’d cycled a lot as a kid and I was often aware the roads were unsafe, but this time I fell in love with cycling and cycled just about everywhere in Jozi. I got to know the roads and areas that were safe and those that were­n’t. I became fascinated with the history of cycling in South Africa – and the different types of cyclists.”

There are three kinds of cyclists, says Liphoto: people who can only afford a bike as a form of transport, those who are social cyclists and those he calls the Lycra crowd, who see it as a sport. “We need to take all of them into account.”

Liphoto’s UCT research looked at “a century of barriers and catalysts to commuter cycling in Cape Town”. This was after his honours degree in urban and regional planning at Wits. His thesis was titled “Planning for Bikeability: The Case of Soweto, Johannesburg”. Bikeability is a measure of how easily and safely a person can navigate their environment on a bicycle.

Young Urbanists worked with the City of Cape Town on the popular Bree Street Sundays, a weekly open-street experiment where a section of Bree and Shortmarket streets was closed to vehicles and turned into a pedestrian-friendly space.

Now Liphoto and his crew and partners are turning to Joburg, where Marshall Street will have its first open-street pilot experiment on 12 April.

“This is a day when residents can reimagine the inner city as a place designed for people, not just cars,” he says, “allowing residents to walk, cycle, skate and explore the city centre in a safe, relaxed environment…”

Liphoto has been trending recently for documenting and organising coffee raves – early morning social gatherings that combine caffeine, DJs and dancing before the working day begins. He also has an initiative called the Youth Pedal Project, which provides bicycles for children in Lesotho, aiming to improve mobility for young people who lack basic transportation. DM

Bridget Hilton-Barber is a freelance writer who writes for Jozi My Jozi.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.