Pinelands is one of the few areas in Cape Town in which sale of alcohol to the public is prohibited, but some clubs have private liquor licenses.

The suburb is bisected from the north east to the south west by the Elsieskraal River, which has flowed through a large concrete drainage canal since the 1970s.

The layout of Pinelands is based on the then revolutionary Garden Cities methodology of town planning by the British town-planner, Sir Ebenezer Howard.

It was originally a Victorian era farm named Uitvlugt that had thousands of pine trees planted in it, and was later deemed an economic failure by the Department of Forestry.

In the aftermath of the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Cape Town in February 1901, the colonial health authorities invoked Public Health Act of 1897 and quickly established a location in Uitvlugt forest station (modern day Pinelands).

Black Africans living in District Six were rounded up under armed guard and taken to the location of Uitvlugt.

The trust brought in an overseas expert, Albert John Thompson, in 1920 to design the area.

Generally, the majority of voters in the Pinelands area of the Ward vote for the Democratic Alliance.

Curiously, despite the attitude displayed to the sale of alcohol in Pinelands, there is a section where all the roads are named after well known wine farms.

In 2008 Pinelands Hockey Club produced three Olympians – Marvin Bam, Paul Blake and Austin Smith.

In January 1949, the municipal council assumed a coat of arms, designed by F. de Beaumont Beech.