The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa

by Smith,David M.; Smith,David M.

• ISBN13: 9780415076029
• ISBN10: 0415076021
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1992-04-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Apartheid, as legislated racial separation, brought dramatic change to the South African urban scene. Race "group areas" remodelled South African cities, while the creation of "homelands," mini-states, and the "pass laws" controlling population migration constrained the process of urbanization itself. In the mid 1980s, the old system was replaced by a new policy of "orderly urbanization," intended to accelerate the process of industrialization and cultural change by relaxing the constraints on urbanization imposed by state planning. The result was hardly an improvement: political instability rose, and a quarter of the black population were being housed in shanty towns. Today, negotiations between the nationalist government and the African National Congress are working to dissolve the old apartheid system. Yet the end of apartheid will only be the beginning of the creation of a new society. The Apartheid City and Beyondcontains a series of original contributions onapartheid as it affected housing, community life, settlement forms, and the servicing of the cities. Ranging from broad overviews of particular issues to local case studies, the contributors turn away from a past that is best forgotten, explaining how the cities of South Africa came to be as they are: the locus of people's present lives and a major constraint on urban forms. Looking ahead to the post-apartheid city, they show that if the cities of South Africa are to serve the people as a whole, the accelerating process of urbanization must be brought under control and harnessed to a new purpose.

Table of Contents

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Preface
Introduction	p. 1
Background	p. 11
Dispossession, exploitation and struggle: an historical overview of South African urbanization	p. 13
Local and regional government: from rigidity to crisis to flux	p. 25
Housing and community under apartheid	p. 37
The apartheid state and Black housing struggles	p. 39
State intervention in housing provision in the 1980s	p. 53
Class struggle over the built environment in Johannesburg's coloured areas	p. 65
The 'spatial impress' of the central and local states: the Group Areas Act in Durban	p. 74
The destruction of Clairwood: a case study on the transformation of communal living space	p. 87
Urban (mis)management? A case study of the effects of orderly urbanization on Duncan Uillage	p. 99
Informal settlement	p. 111
Winterveld: an urban interface settlement on the Pretoria metropolitan fringe	p. 113
Khayelitsha: new settlement forms in the Cape Peninsula	p. 125
The road to 'Egoli': urbanization histories from a Johannesburg squatter settlement	p. 136
Informal settlement: theory versus practice in KwaZulu/Natal	p. 147
Servicing the cities	p. 159
The absorptive capacity of the informal sector in the South African city	p. 161
Travelling under apartheid	p. 172
Changing state policy and the Black taxi industry in Soweto	p. 182
The Regional Services Council debacle in Durban	p. 193
Tourism and development needs in the Durban region	p. 205
Urbanization and health: evidence from Cape Town	p. 216
Towards a post-apartheid city	p. 229
The post-apartheid city: hopes, possibilities, and harsh realities	p. 231
Urbanization and the South African city: a manifesto for change	p. 243
Post-apartheid housing policy	p. 255
Contradictions in the transition from urban apartheid: barriers to gentrification in Johannesburg	p. 266
'Turning grey': how Westville was won	p. 279
Power, space and the city: historical reflections on apartheid and post-apartheid urban orders	p. 292
Lessons from the Harare, Zimbabwe, experience	p. 303
Conclusion	p. 314
Index	p. 318
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.