South African Cities: Perspectives from the Ivory Tower of Urban Studies

Abstract

perspectives from the ivory tower of urban studies IntroductionThe assertion that the South African city provides a fascinating laboratory for the study of urban culture and form is not new. 1 As a caricature of the social divisions that now plague cities across the "Western" and "non-Western" worlds, the apartheid city experience served as a worst-case scenario of persistent social and economic inequality, perversely making it one of the most interesting and illuminating places to be an urban scholar 2 .One aspect of this fascination is that the schizophrenic "northern" street realities of Mike Davies 1 City of Quartz, of Deyan Sudjic's 100 Mile City or Elizabeth Wilson's Sphinx in the City resonate as readily with the pace of pavement life in South Africa as do "southern" descriptions from Tony O'Conner's African City or Alan Gilbert's Latin American City*.In Cape Town or Durban, for example, you find chic "cafe society", up-market waterfront redevelopment, gracious colonial living, gentrified Victorian housing and, of course, miles of suburban development alongside street hawkers, overcrowded run-down tenements, brash new public housing and the abject poverty of informal settlements.While clearly fashioned by local histories and geographies, not least of which was (and is) apartheid, South African urban realities reflect the characteristics of cities elsewhere in the "First" and Third" worlds.Short of understanding the apartheid city as a unique urban form with enforced racial segregation as not only the dominant, but the sole force shaping the built environment and the urban experience, more general frameworks of interpretation must be sought by South African urbanists.Which are the most appropriate concepts for