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Are there cities or innovations that inspired you?
Samuel de Gersigny : The urban planner makes reference to neighbourhoods
of Berlin, Joburg or Durban. He also mentions small French cities. My personal reference is Las Ramblas in Barcelona. It’s a long pedestrian street lined with tall trees and populated with bars, restaurants and street artists. It’s full of life. This was roughly the model that we used to turn La Promenade into a linear park.
Gabrielle Brun : Mauritian cities also inspired us. Saint Jean Road or the market in Quatre Bornes are lively public spaces with an abundance of energy and vitality.
Our ambition in Moka is to give back street space to pedestrians. In Mauritius, walking in the city is not self-evident; everyone takes their car to travel a kilometre. This is a reflex that poses a real problem, including for health. Telfair will be a neighbourhood that will be best explored on foot.
Samuel de Gersigny : Port Louis is a good model, which inspired us. Except that the world has changed and public areas must be tailored to the challenges of our time, such as ecology and soft mobility.
Gabrielle Brun : Schematically speaking, there are two types of cities: those for cars and those for people. When you design a city for cars, it doesn’t work well for pedestrians. In Telfair, we are turning traffic streets into people streets. Pedestrians will not walk along parking lots but along shops and cafes. This entails creating walkable sidewalks..
Samuel de Gersigny : Some more patience is required to live the experience. We are making good progress, at the right pace. The foundations already exist: the hospital, the university, the PwC building and an open-air amphitheatre. In four years’ time, there will be eight new buildings, a city centre that is coming alive and maybe even a light rail transit system. These elements will gradually connect with each other and with the other parts of Moka. To use an analogy, we have the skeleton but the ligaments are still growing. We will start to experience the true sense of the city by 2025 – that’s basically tomorrow...
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Gabrielle Brun is an architect and urban planner. She ensures compliance with urban planning requirements and interaction between buildings and public spaces in Moka Smart City.
Samuel de Gersigny is the General Manager of Moka Smart City.
2021 / NO 3 / MOKAZINE 39