Beyond an over-reliance on historical categories like “ghetto” and
“suburb”- a study of post-Apartheid Cape Town
Abstract
In the iltearture on spatial changes in post-Fordist cities, concepts
like “ghetto” and “suburb” are commonplace, and they have been
applied to numerous contexts. However, this study focuses on the
potential limitations of relying too heavily on these historical
categories, including continuing to interpret new data to the lens of
those categories and/or the ideal types used to describe the quartered
post-Fordist city. While, this study acknowledges the utility and
relevance of those categories, as well as contextually relevant terms
like “former Whites-only” and “former Blacks-only” group areas of
the Apartheid-era, the analysis proceeds without relying on those
categories, only to reintroduce them later to aid intepretation of the
findings. Consequently, this study finds that, while some of Cape Town’s
subplaces might resemble the ghetto and suburb ideal types, without an
over-reliance on those categories a more nuanced and even paradoxical
understanding of neighbourhood change is possible.