As part of the 2025 Master’s Programme in Sustainable Cities, the Norman Foster Institute has selected Freetown, Cape Town, and Melilla as three African urban contexts for on-site research. These cities serve as case studies for students to engage critically with local urban challenges through fieldwork, comparative analysis, and dialogue with civic leaders, experts, and municipal departments. For the Cape Town iteration, A4 is the lab and classroom for the cohort, together with their facilitators, as they visit the city to research the provision of public open space in the CBD. 

Focusing on Cape Town as both a key economic hub within South Africa (and Africa) and a significant biodiversity hotspot, the students aim  to develop a baseline study of interconnected challenges that the city faces, while being cognisant of climate, landscape and historic inequality. 

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The Norman Foster Institute On Sustainable Cities is a MA programme, established in partnership with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Aimed at graduate and postgraduate students who have an interest in city management and design, the course is grounded in real-life case studies and encourages the development of practical solutions through the implementation of critical theory, data collection and curiosity.