Welcome to the “Bicycles for Makers Valley” Page 

Project Name: Bicycles for MV (BMV)

Programme: This project is part of the Design a Difference programme

Design Question: How might we use bicycles to increase the mobility of people living and working in the Makers Valley area?

Background: In many cities around the world, bicycles are employed as a key technology providing transportation to people (this is an assumption that requires testing in the research phase). Despite the City of Johannesburg having built a small network of bicycle lanes some years back, Joburg remains a city that makes relatively little use of bicycles as a mode of transport (assumption requiring testing). 

Makers Valley is an area to the east of the Joburg CBD, and is an interesting area in a number of ways. It straddles the suburbs of Bertrams, Bruma, Lorenzville. Having always been home to “makers” of some kind, in recent years the area has some renewed attention in an attempt to rejuvenate the “making” culture of the area.  The area is also very diverse. As in many parts of South Africa, there is a large economic disparity in the community, with it playing home to Nando’s South African head office, as well as many African nationals. 

Currently, a few individuals within the area make use of bicycles for their own transportation needs. However, this is (anecdotally) few and far between.  The idea behind this project is to explore the possibilities offered by bicycles to increase the community’s mobility options.

Together with Maker’s Valley Partnership, a non-profit based in MV, EWB-SA is hoping to bring our talented engineering  community together to work on this wicked problem.

Get Involved: There are many ways to volunteer on the project. There are tasks within the design process that require people to work on them. We also welcome funding for this project. To get involved or to donate, please contact Irshaad.vawda@ewbsa.org .

To see a list of tasks that require people, please click here.

Community Partner: Makers Valley Partnership

Project Team: This current EWB-SA project manager for this project is Irshaad Vawda. To view others working on this project, please click here.

Design Process: This page will document the design process being employed on the project. Stay tuned for more. Click here for more information.

Project Notebook: As project manager, I (Irshaad) am passionate about writing “diary type” entries for projects. On this page, we’ll be adding these notes soon.  (link to come)

Resource List: A collection of readings and other material used in the design process (different to physical resources on the project – we’ll be adding another page for that).