TITLE:
Urban Planning in Post-Apartheid South African Cities: The Case of Johannesburg
AUTHORS:
Simona Totaforti
KEYWORDS:
Urban Policies, South Africa, African Cities, Johannesburg, Poverty
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.10 No.3,
July
10,
2020
ABSTRACT: This paper reflects on the question of urban growth in South Africa to
understand the consequences that new urban dynamics have on the effective
rights to the city and on quality of life; and, in the context of urban
studies, on the southern turn and on the effective possibility of applying the
paradigms produced by the Global North to the countries of the Global South and
emerging economies. There is a growing interest in analyzing the
reasons behind the cultural and organizational differences that typify African
cities. In this scenario, the contribution of urban studies is crucial to
understand how cities work, the needs of their residents and the changes that
take place, especially in cities like Johannesburg whose urban fabric still
shows traces of racial segregation and class division stemming from apartheid.
By considering Johannesburg as a case in point, this paper sets out to
investigate whether the diversity and differentiation of the urban spaces that characterize
South African cities as seemingly unreadable, chaotic and difficult to
understand and govern reflect on the one hand the role of the social forces
that shape the built environment and urban planning, and on the other hand
social and racial inequalities, the actual enjoyment of the right to the city,
the identity-defining features of urban space. In other words, the article
intends to investigate the outcomes of the interaction between the superficial
layers of the urban landscape (for example, the transformations of the built
environment) and the deep structural forms that are rooted in the local history
and memory.