Residential change in Woodstock, Cape Town, prior to the repeal of the group areas act.

[摘要] A neglected focus in South African urban geographical studies overthe last two decades has been the changes taking place in the innercity. The objective in this study is to examine residential changein one inner city suburb of Cape Town, namely Woodstock. The timeperiod for this investigation is the era of late apartheid prior tothe repeal of the Group Areas Act. The theoretical framework forthis dissertation is provided by international Iiterature on ethnicsegregation and the gentrlflcatlon issue'. The majority ofresearch undertaken on gentrification has concerned the cities ofNorth America. Western Europe or Australia. With few exceptions,gentrificatl. has been little researched outside of the devalopedworld. The South African context therefore provides a developingworld setting for research on gentrification.is argued that between 1900 and 1980 the case study area ofWoodstock experienced considerable change in its residentialcomplexion. In particuIar, the ethnic composition of the suburbshifted throughout the twentieth century with waves of newimmigrants to the suburb, including Jews from Eastern Europe andthe settIement of a Portuguese community from Madeira. These shiftsin the ethnic make-up of Woodstock reinforced the 'respectable',working class character of this mixed race, inner city zone of CapeTown. During the 1980s, however, a change in the class compositionof the area was triggered by the onset of processes ofgentrification. The advance of gentrification was taking place atthe same time as apartheid legislation, in the form of the GroupAreas Act, was posing a threat to the multi-racial character of thesuburb. The research documents the relationship betweengentrification and the community struggle mounted to retain themulti-racial status of this inner city Area. It is shown from thisSouth African study that the 'gentrification issue' is of relevanceto research on developing world cities.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand