Kirsten is an Urban Designer and Experience Architect with over 15 years of experience in forwarding social justice in spaces of mobility and spatial design through the work as founder of ContestedSpaces. In her recent appointment as Managing Director of Open Streets Cape Town, she is tasked with pairing the imperative of overcoming spatial and social divisions with reimagining South Africa’s streets as public space for gathering and connection. Through her work, she researching practical tools to bring together constructs of social cohesion, conflict resolution and placemaking in response to post-apartheid spatial planning legacy in the context of a dissipating neoliberal democracy.