The ‘Silent’ Closure of Urban Public Space in Cape Town: 1975 to 2004

Abstract

This study seeks to show that the closure of urban public space by residents in a South African context is not a recent phenomenon and that successful citizen-driven urban public space closures have been a feature of the urban landscape before the rise of gated communities and monitored urban public space. The primary objective of the study was to analyse and investigate spatio-temporal tendencies relating to the citizen-driven privatisation of urban public space in Cape Town. This objective would be driven by the creation of a comprehensive database of provincially gazetted urban land closures dating from 7 February 1975 to 17 December 2004 within one of the six municipal substructure regions of Cape Town. The secondary objective, but by no means less important, is an identification and analysis of the reasons forwarded, practices employed and techniques utilised by individual citizen-driven applications in two distinctly diverse residential suburbs within the study area.

Everyday human (in)securities in protected urban nature – Collaborative conservation at Macassar/Wolfgat dunes nature reserves, Cape Town, South Africa

“…In theory at least, it is in public spaces that ''interaction across social divides can occur, and where a sense of safety from crime and violence can be secured'' (Watson, 2012: 13). Nonetheless, public spaces are marked by exclusion in Cape Town (Spocter, 2007;Dawson, 2005). The city's green spaces are indicative, with intense spatial inequalities apparent between previously White and non-White suburbs in access to urban parks (Willemse and Donaldson, 2012) and conservation areas (Goodness and Anderson, 2013).…”

A spatial analysis of gating in Bloemfontein, South Africa

“…Although gating has, for the most part, been interpreted as a relatively recent urban process, Spocter (2004) has shown that in places such as Cape Town this practice can be traced to at least the mid-1970s. Nevertheless, the gating discourse has mainly been framed by the notion that the post-Apartheid era in South Africa presented a special relationship between modernism, colonialism, and Apartheid (Ramoroka, Tsheola, 2014).…”

“…Development of enclosed neighbourhoods has become increasingly popular, gaining widespread support for their utopic lifestyle and safety features (Landman, 2004). On the whole, high levels of crime and fear of crime have led to the construction of defensible space, namely gated developments, resulting in elevated levels of segregation which has resulted in elevated levels of class segregation (Landman, 2002;Spocter, 2004;.…”

Community as Utopia: Reflections on De Waterkant

“…Utopian experiments have often centred around religious or political ideology (Baeten 2002) and, in more recent times, have taken on new forms including gated communities, security parks and other forms of monitored public space in the South African context (Hook and Vrdoljak 2002;Spocter 2007). In its many forms and expressions, the "utopian dream" can be characterised by "...notions of abundance, healthiness, rurality, nostalgia, community and social order(ing)..." (Kraftl 2007, p.123).…”