Hybrid gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across southern and northern cities

Abstract

This paper reveals how urban theories traditionally rooted in northern cities and academies are challenged and redeveloped by southern perspectives. Critiques of urban theory as narrowly northern (or Anglo-American) have recently emerged, spawning the comparative urbanism movement that calls for urban theories to be open to the experiences of all cities. Using the example of the sale of state-subsidised houses in South Africa, this research uses two parallel concepts, gentrification and downward raiding, to challenge the northern empirical focus of urban theory. Despite describing similar processes of urban class-based change, the concepts are rarely considered analogous, entrenched in divergent empirical contexts and academic literatures. While gentrification debates largely reference the northern central city, downward raiding is reserved for the southern 'slum'. In contrast, this research develops 'hybrid gentrification' as a concept and methodological approach that demonstrates how non-northern urban experiences can and should create and refine urban theory.

La gentrificación en los estudios urbanos: una exploración sobre la producción académica de las ciudades

“…Esto se puede evidenciar en las distintas formas que toma la gentrificación, identificando procesos de renovación urbana (esto implica la extracción de renta) sin expulsión y en la periferia (Sabatini et al, 2012), renovación urbana con expulsión y en el centro / pericentro (Contreras, 2011;Swanson, 2007) (Maloutas, 2011;Lemanski, 2014), es precisamente la utilización de trabajos comparados entre distintas ciudades de países diversos.…”

“…Entre los cuestionamientos que se mencionan, destaca que su uso es altamente contextual al espacio urbano que se observa, por lo que las generalizaciones que muchas veces se utilizan son producto del trabajo en torno a las teorías urbanas tradicionalmente arraigadas en espacios anglosajones (Maloutas, 2011;Lemanski, 2014). A raíz de lo anterior, la noción de gentrificación operaría con una aparente diversidad analítica no aclarando con ello, por ejemplo, el recambio generacional de clase en los centro/pericentros de las ciudades, las particularidades de las distintas dinámicas de desplazamiento o la convivencia en un mismo espacio de procesos de tugurización y gentrificación.…”

Urban Impacts of Resource Booms: the Emergence of Oil-Led Gentrification in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana

“…Gentrification, the subject of considerable academic inquiry and a highly contested issue in many developed countries, has been less studied in the developing world. For instance, of the 40 classic texts listed in Lees et al 2010 Gentrification Reader, none are based in a developing world context (Lemanski 2014). Lees (2012: 156) herself documents that geographies of global gentrification, including her own, have 'all but omitted the Global South'.…”

“…State support for third-wave gentrification is particularly seen in efforts to transform cities into global or world cities (Lees 2007;Visser and Kotze 2008) Scholars, policymakers and activists in the Global South are increasingly grappling with the issue of gentrification. While most work on gentrification has been focused on the Global North, there is a 'recently emerging interest in gentrification in the South' (Lemanski 2014(Lemanski : 2944. Notwithstanding the relatively recent development of interest in this area, a number of studies have examined processes of gentrification in the developing world.…”

Cities within cities: intra-urban comparison of infrastructure in Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town

“…Mbembe and Nuttal (2004) write of their 'rendition' of the city as "unfinished" urging scholars to pay attention to the multiple spatialities that exist across different parts of the city. In a somewhat different vein of comparison, Lemanski (2014) shows how comparing two theoretical models of housing transformations in Cape Town reveals what she calls "hybrid gentrification." This work demonstrates that a theoretical comparative approach can be put to work to illuminate a diversity of intra-settlement processes and lived experiences.…”