Vernacular Regeneration

293 Pages·2015·5.38 MB·English

by  Aidan Mosselson

Vernacular Regeneration

Low-income housing, private security and
urban transformation in inner-city
Johannesburg

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

University College London
by
Aidan Mosselson

Department of Geography
University College London
July 2015
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I, Aidan Mosselson, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where
information has been derived from other sources I confirm that this has been indicated in the
thesis.

Aidan Mosselson
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Abstract

The thesis examines the process of urban regeneration currently underway in inner-city
Johannesburg, paying particular attention to the roles social and private housing developers and
privatised security services are playing in shaping the area. It also examines the lived reality of
regeneration and focuses on the experiences of tenants living in newly-renovated residential
buildings. It is based on a qualitative study involving interviews with various actors involved in
regeneration and housing provision, including government officials, employees of agencies
financing housing projects, housing providers, security and urban management personnel and
tenants. It also draws on ethnographic accounts derived in the course of fieldwork. The thesis
demonstrates the duality of the goals and agendas which the regeneration process is attempting
to fulfil, and concludes that it is a contradictory, vernacular process. It shows how housing
providers attempt to meet the demands of a market-based approach to housing and regeneration
as well as respond to the social concerns and requirements which define the area. Drawing on
the work of Lefebvre and Bourdieu, the thesis expands on the concepts ‘spatial habitus’ and
‘spatial capital’ to give theoretical structure to the discussion and demonstrate the mutually-
determining relationship between habitus and space. Moving from the discursive realm to
everyday reality, the effects urban management and security practices are having on the area and
the ways people experience it are analysed. Urban management is also shown to be serving dual
purposes, making the area safer but resulting in differential access to security and new
boundaries of exclusion. Lastly, the significance of regeneration is analysed from tenants’
perspectives, accounting for the variety of ways it both facilitates as well as hinders their rights to
the city and experiences of urban citizenship, making it a transformative and developmental but
also exclusionary and restricted, and thus vernacular, process.
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Acknowledgments
This thesis would not have been possible without the generous financial support provided by the
Association of Commonwealth Universities, the British Council and the Oppenheimer Memorial
Trust. I am sincerely grateful for the faith these organisation placed in me and the opportunity I
was granted. I hope I have been a deserving recipient and will continue to endeavour to justify
and earn my privilege.
I would like to thank Maria Rodriguez, Suse Keay and Susan Hennessy in the UCL Geography
Department for all the assistance and logistic support they have provided. They were never too
busy to attend to my queries, problems and needs, and made my time in the Department as
smooth and comfortable as possible. Thanks also to Miles Irving for preparing the maps which
appear in this thesis.
The biggest debt of gratitude I owe is to my supervisors, Dr. Charlotte Lemanski and Professor
Jenny Robinson. Thank you, Charlotte, for all your perceptive, supportive and precise comments
and feedback and for never being too busy to read my long and convoluted drafts. Your
contribution is greatly appreciated and certainly made this a better piece of work. Jenny, thank
you for your constant support, guidance, encouragement and insistence that there was always
more work to be done. Your dedication to your students and passion and commitment to them,
not just intellectually but personally too, is truly admirable and makes working with you an
honour and pleasure. Thank you for always having time for me, believing in my abilities and
pushing me to produce the best work I am capable of. Most importantly, thank you for being the
kind of incisive, rigorous, challenging but also generous, warm, humble and supportive academic
that I aspire to be.
The Zulu phrase ‘Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu’ means ‘A Person is a Person because of People’. It
was first introduced to me by Paul Germond in first year sociology at Wits University. Paul, who
certainly has been a big influence on my life and is owed thanks in this moment, used it to
illustrate the social nature of identities. His point certainly hit home and aided in my intellectual
development. This phrase also resonates with me on a personal level. In the course of
completing this degree I have been privileged to go on a journey which has had a profound
effect on me. The opportunity to live in London and attend a fancy university (or at least one
with more money to share with PhD students than Wits) has allowed me to travel, experience
things and meet people from places I never thought possible before. These experiences have
been important on their own, but have taken their true significance from the people who have
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shared them with me. The kindness, support, friendship, wisdom and happiness they have all
shared with and shown to me have shaped the person who I am. It is hard to name individuals,
for fear of missing someone, but I will try to name a few. I am grateful (again) to Jenny
Robinson and Charlotte Lemanski. Even though most of this thesis has been completed far away
from them, my parents Max and Maureen, brothers Joseph and Matthew, sister-in-law Lucy and
new niece Lily Frances have all offered strength and support and helped in various ways. I am
fortunate to have many good and true friends and significant people in my life; particularly I
need to thank Simran Singh, Myfanwy Taylor, Luca Marazzi, Jinho Chung, Ruth Cheung-Judge,
Susana Neves-Alves, Ana Plyushteva, Astrid Wood, Regan Koch, Lance Schapiro, Brad Berger,
Pooya Ghoddousi, Kazumi Sato, Becky Charles, Chris and Kay-Dean at Bloomsbury Fitness,
Francois Murphy, Stella Stocker, Minty Hopkins, Will Gray, Ben Flower, Tali Erlich-
Karpelowsky, Craig Karpelowsky, Brad Koseff, Shaun Karpelowsky, (above all) Pfano
Rasivhetshele, Daniel Morrison, Thien-Vinh Nguyen, Cansu Civelek, Sam Sutner, Mateusz
Zatonski, Aleksandra Agata-Herbec and Valerio Campanella. Each of you in your own ways has
left an imprint on me and made me who am I today. For that, and for all the good times we
shared and those still to come, I am truly thankful.
Lastly, I would like to thank all of the people who participated in this research project. Without
them this would not have been possible. All those who shared their time with me, welcomed me
into their homes and gave me glimpses into their lives left a profound effect on me too. I hope I
have done justice to representing them and capturing their dedication, desire and commitment to
making Johannesburg a better place. I continue to draw encouragement and inspiration from
their examples.
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Contents
Chapter One: Introduction and rationale for the study ....................... 11
An overview of the inner-city and its history of decline .............................................................. 13
The research problem ................................................................................................................ 19
Pathway One: the social world of capital ........................................................................................ 21
Pathway Two: security, urban management and producing social order ............................... 25
Pathway Three: living with regeneration .............................................................................. 27
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 29
Chapter Two: Thinking through complexity ........................................ 31
Highlighting simultaneity and variety as the defining features of urbanity ............................. 32
The competing dynamics of the post-apartheid period: neoliberal urban governance versus
democratic transformation ........................................................................................................ 36
Expanding analytical accounts beyond the neoliberal narrative ............................................ 43
New barriers in the post-apartheid city: the effects of fear and insecurity on the post-
apartheid urban order ............................................................................................................ 47
Complicating security narratives: new forms of sociality and social relations emerging in
exclusive spaces and fear of crime as a shared social concern .................................................... 55
Conclusion: opening up our analytic accounts ................................................................................ 57
Chapter Three: Spatial habitus: Bourdieu, Lefebvre and inner-city
regeneration ...................................................................................................... 59
An overview of Bourdieu’s and Lefebvre’s theories: towards a spatial theory of habitus ....... 60
Putting concepts to work: urban regeneration, spatial habitus and symbolic violence in
Johannesburg ........................................................................................................................ 73
Accounting for multiple forms of habitus ....................................................................................... 77
Conclusion: creative applications of the theory ..................................................................... 84
Chapter Four: Methodology ........................................................................ 86
Research site and sample ........................................................................................................... 88
Operationalising concepts: spatial habitus in Johannesburg ................................................ 101
Living in the inner-city – what is an African urban space?........................................................... 105
Limitations and positionality .............................................................................................. 110
Chapter Five: An overburdened process: the competing agendas,
imperatives and outcomes of inner-city regeneration ........................ 115
The provision of housing after apartheid: successes, limitations and the ongoing need for
centrally-located, affordable housing ............................................................................................ 116
Facilitating housing provision and urban regeneration through targeted finance ................ 119
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Attempting to create an inclusive inner-city ........................................................................ 126
Commercial concerns and practices impose limitations on the developmental potential of
regeneration ........................................................................................................................ 135
The tensions between regenerating the inner-city and addressing city-wide concerns ........ 141
Conclusion: neither the market nor development prevail ...................................................... 143
Chapter Six: The contradictory habitus of housing providers .......... 146
Taking risks, seeing value: frontier urbanism and the entrepreneurial habitus in the context of
inner-city Johannesburg ...................................................................................................... 147
“We’re here, we live it every day”: engaging with and embracing change in the inner-city ...154
Torn between the demands of the market and developmental concerns .............................. 164
Conclusion: a contradictory, localised process .................................................................... 169
Chapter 7: Urban management: diverse meanings, practices and
outcomes ............................................................................................... 171
Precincts and representations of space ................................................................................ 173
Security practices in the inner-city: exercising spatial capital, shaping behaviours .............. 180
Domestication by football ......................................................................................................... 185
Facilitating the formation of community and forms of belonging through securitisation ..... 191
Adapting to the situation, embracing varied forms of urbanity ............................................ 197
New boundaries and forms of exclusion ............................................................................. 199
Conclusion: the need to maintain (at least) two perspectives ................................................ 206
Chapter Eight: Regeneration as lived reality: Necessity and the right to
the city...................................................................................................... 208
Regulation in residential buildings ...................................................................................... 209
Security and the right to the city: “I love the security and the area” ...................................... 222
‘It’s not a place I like, but I can live with it’: getting by in the inner-city .................................. 229
Inhabiting and appropriating space, transforming the inner-city ......................................... 237
Conclusion: regeneration has multiple effects, meanings and outcomes ............................. 245
Chapter Nine: Conclusion: towards a vernacular theorisation of urban
change .......................................................................................................... 247
Implications of the research part one: the need to develop a more interventionist and
coherent approach to inner-city regeneration ...................................................................... 250
Implications of the research part two: inclusion versus fragmentation ................................ 253
Vernacular definitions of regeneration...................................................................................... 254
Towards a vernacular theorisation of urban change ............................................................ 259
Potential future research .......................................................................................................... 262
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Bibliography ........................................................................................... 265
Appendix One .............................................................................................. 288
Appendix Two ......................................................................................... 289
Appendix Three ................................................................................... 291
Appendix Four ............................................................................................ 292
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Serious Crime in South Africa: 2010/11. Source: South African Police Services, 2011, Crime
Report 2010/11, pg.5 .................................................................................................................................. 48
Figure 2: Crime in South Africa, 2010/11. Source: South African Police Services, 2011, Crime Report
2010/11, pg. 5 ....................................................................................................................................... 49

List of Tables
Table 1: Social housing providers in inner-city Johannesburg. Source: SERI (2013) and various
company webpages ............................................................................................................................... 90
Table 2: for-profit housing providers in inner-city Johannesburg. Source: SERI (2013) and various
company webpages ............................................................................................................................... 91
Table 3 Interview Schedule .................................................................................................................... 94
Table 4: Buildings in which interviews were conducted ......................................................................... 107

List of Maps
Map 1: Locations of buildings in which interviews were conducted ...................................................... 98
Map 2: Locations of buildings in Hillbrow in which interviews were conducted .................................... 99
Map 3: Locations of buildings in the CBD in which interviews were conducted ..................................... 99
Map 4: Location of building in Jeppestown in which interviews were conducted ................................ 100
Map 5: JHC building clusters. Source JHC 2013.................................................................................... 178
Map 6: Map demarcating the eKhaya neighbourhood and the participating buildings ...................... 179

List of Images
Image 1: Abandoned but still occupied buildings in Jeppestown (photographs by the author
05/07/2013) ............................................................................................................................................... 140
Image 2: The Ellis Park sports precinct: Source http://iflaonline.org/gallery/ifla-africa-gallery .......... 175
Image 3: Image of Bad Boyz' policing activities and images taken by their surveillance systems
(photograph by the author)...................................................................................................................... 182
Image 4: the eKhaya RID soccer day, eKhaya Park, Hillbrow, 04/05/2014 (photograph by the author)
............................................................................................................................................................ 188
Image 5: Images of cleaning services undertaken in the eKhaya RID (photograph by the author) ..... 191
Image 6: Entrances to social housing buildings, Hillbrow (photographs by the author) ...................... 211
Image 7: Entrance to a communal housing building, Jeppestown (photograph by the author) .......... 211
Image 8: CCTV surveillance equipment inside social housing buildings, Hillbrow (photographs by the
author) ....................................................................................................................................................... 211
Image 9: The Old Synagogue, Hillbrow (photograph by the author) ..................................................... 249
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List of acronyms
AFHCO: Affordable Housing Company

ASGISA: Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa
BID: Business Improvement District
BNG: Breaking New Ground
BBP: Better Buildings Programme
CBD: Central Business District
CDS: City Development Strategy
CID: City Improvement District
CJP: Central Johannesburg Partnership
CPF: Community Policing Forum
GEAR: Growth Employment and Redistribution
GPF: Gauteng Partnership Fund
ICHAP: Inner City Housing Action Plan
ICHUT: Inner City Housing Upgrading Trust
ICRC: Inner City Regeneration Charter
JDA: Johannesburg Development Agency
JHC: Johannesburg Housing Company
JOSHCO: Johannesburg Social Housing Company
JSDF: Johannesburg Spatial Development Framework
NASHO: National Association of Social Housing Organisations
NGO: Non-Governmental Organisation
NHFC: National Housing Finance Corporation
RDP: Reconstruction and Development Programme
RID: Residential Improvement District
TUHF: Trust for Urban Housing Finance
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