Camps Bay’s changing face

Camps Bay and environs, in their modern form, really started in the first quarter of the last century. However, it was only in about the beginning of the ‘80’s that the world started to realise that Camps Bay was more than a windy backwater with ice cold sea water which one hurried through to somewhere else. In the beginning, Camps Bay was mainly single-storied and the occasional double-storey with one house per erf. As the area developed and the hunt for seaside properties accelerated, the land value increased exponentially and the older houses became a luxury for such valuable real estate.

This is why you will see all round you, now that nearly all the vacant sites have been sold, demolitions of houses to make way for bigger single dwellings or double dwellings, usually three storeys high and sometimes with more floor levels (as basements and mezzanine floors are not defined as storeys in the Council’s zoning Scheme).

Whereas Camps Bay has doubled in population since say the 1960’s, it will double again in the next twenty years or so due to the frenzied pace of the current construction work which will last for a considerable time into the future. The houses of the future here will most certainly be at least three-storied, as a height of 10 metres is currently permitted from (finished) ground level to eaves plus a pitched roof if desired.

So the landscape and the built environment around you is going to alter considerably in the foreseeable future.