Green Point Common, Remainder Erf 1056 in Cape Town, as depicted in Annexure A.
Historically, the location and the development of the Green Point Common from an open coastal plain, used as pasturage, to informal sporting and/or recreation activities in the late 18th century to the present Green Point Urban Park, contributes to the site being one of the most important established public open space locales in the City of Cape Town.
Currently the Green Point Urban Park is a designed landscape, intentionally created by man. The design of the Urban Park responded to various environmental and heritage requirements particularly its visual spatial relationship to the Table Mountain World Heritage Site.
For more than 100 years the Green Point Common has been dedicated to recreation and sporting activities. It was the home ground of some of the oldest sporting clubs in Cape Town. Existing intrinsic historical features relating to this early sporting history have been retained within the design of the Green Point Urban Park.
The Green Point Common has elements of an associative cultural landscape and is strongly associated with the movement towards nonracially segregated sports. In 1951 the Track was allocated to the ‘‘Coloured’’ community by the City of Cape Town in compliance with apartheid-period ideology of separate racial facilities. Prior to this, however, non-racial sport had always been present on the Green Point Common and the proud traditions and memories of the heydays is a strong motive for the re-emergence of active sporting events and sporting heroes.
Over the years, the Green Point Common has always been a public open space and a place of congregation for various purposes, ranging from military mustering points and parades, a Prisoner of War camp during the Anglo-Boer War, cultural events and protest marches. Most importantly, as a public spatial landmark, it has organically evolved, and is intrinsically linked to the cultural landscape and adjacent urban scape.
