Kestell Serfontein is a consulting city planning specialist with more than 23 years of experience in local government and the private sector. For the last 11 years, he has been the owner/head of Urban IQ, generally regarded as a reference point for meaningful insights, enlightening ideas and tactical outcomes. He recently joined Cadre Plan as an associate responsible for the Western Cape. He has extensive experience in local government where he, amongst others held the position of Manager: Metropolitan Planning and Deputy Manager of Industry & Technology Development of the City of Tshwane.

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He has become known as a critical urban strategist with a particular interest in city strategy, urban regeneration, metropolitan restructuring, spatial planning, economic development and development facilitation of various forms/scales of urban development initiatives. During his career, he has championed various City Development Strategies, Metropolitan Spatial Development Frameworks, and major catalytic/spatial interventions. Kestell has also been extensively involved in the overlap of mainstream planning methodologies with more commercialised practices around complementary fields such as economic development, property development, city branding and marketing and public art.

 

In the last decade, he has also specialised as a niche planning professional in the outdoor advertising industry with core competencies around site development, negotiation, brokering, applications, policy & regulatory compliance and typology innovations. From time to time, he acts as an expert witness in land-use tribunal hearings / legal proceedings and often joins professional planning teams/consortiums in conducting urban research and developing spatial and economic strategies.