Urban Forum (2013) 24:309–324 DOI 10.1007/s12132-012-9178-5
Why Won’t Downtown Johannesburg ‘Regenerate’? Reassessing Hillbrow as a Case Example Tanja Winkler
Published online: 13 October 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract This paper argues that neighbourhood change in Hillbrow is not concomitant with the linear processes of urban decline and economic resurgence. Instead, neighbourhood change is shaped by situated histories, politics and economics, in addition to the activities of diverse local actors. It also argues that despite severe physical decay, a history of being redlined and limited public sector support for the provision of public services, Hillbrow remains a resilient port-of-entry neighbourhood to Johannesburg for many residents who desire to engage in local and transnational economies. Current debates on urban land markets, therefore, necessitate an awareness of the roles that port-of-entry neighbourhoods facilitate in (mega)cities, and alternative urban planning responses to conventional regeneration strategies that are based on liberal market rationalities alone. Keywords Port-of-entry neighbourhoods . Urban regeneration . Linear market rationalities
Introduction Nearly 20 years has passed since public sector actors purposefully set out to regenerate the inner city of Johannesburg. And while we may identify a few, but mostly isolated, pockets of regeneration in downtown Johannesburg—including Arts on Main; the ABSA precinct; Ghandi Square; the Museum of African Design in Commissioner Street; the AngloGold Ashanti precinct along Main Street; Newtown’s cultural precinct; Ameshoff Street in Braamfontein; Constitutional Hill; and segments of Doornfontein—popular media reports continue to decry the inner city, ‘especially Hillbrow, as a derelict slum’ (Schnehage 2012). So while ‘millions of Rands have been invested [by the state] to regenerate Johannesburg’s inner city’, for T. Winkler (*) School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, University of Cape Town, Centlivres Building, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa e-mail:
[email protected]
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many observers, the inner city (especially Hillbrow) remains a space of ‘urban decay and criminal elements’ (ibid). This may be said despite the promulgation and implementation of various regeneration policies and the city’s purposeful investment in public art by prominent South African artists, including, for example, Clive van den Berg’s 20-tonne concrete sculpture of an eland in Braamfontein or William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx’s 11-m-tall steel sculpture of an African woman bearing a fire brazier on her head at the apex of Queen Elizabeth Bridge. Observers are told that ‘the perceived lull [in regeneration outcomes] is just a period’ that stems from typical time lags between ‘planning and strategising for regeneration’ and implementation (Hobbs 2012). Said differently, we need to be patient before an ‘intensive period of public beautification’ yields demonstrable and, more importantly, neighbourhood-wide outcomes (ibid.). The owner of Ponte City, the landmark 52-storey residential building in Hillbrow, thus maintains that ‘although Hillbrow’s crime-and-grime situation is startling to turn around, it will probably take a while before we see higher-income residents return to the area’ (Cotterell 2012). Yet, much of the literature on urban regeneration identifies 20 years as a sufficient ‘intensive period’ of public spending on regeneration for demonstrable and context-wide outcomes. Observers might then be inclined to ask: If so much time, money and energy has already been spent on regenerating the inner city of Johannesburg, why have outcomes resulted in isolated and fragmented pockets of ‘beautification’ that are scarcely noticeable amongst a mass of dereliction? Why are public art installations of little relevance to inner city users, so much so that Kentridge and Marx’s steel sculpture serves as a convenient public urinal and garbage disposal site? Why are regenerated precincts—like, for example, Arts on Main or Constitutional Hill—enclosed and exclusionary destination locations that tend not to be visited by inner city residents? Specifically: Why won’t downtown Johannesburg ‘regenerate’, in the sense as envisaged by local policymakers? One explanation for a lack of neighbourhood-wide regeneration may rest in the realisation that neighbourhood change is not, in fact, concomitant with a linear process of urban decline and economic resurgence and contemporary conceptualisations of urban land markets. Rather, change is shaped by complex, multiple and, at times, unpredictable processes and outcomes that are informed by the history, politics and economics of a situated context, in addition to the activities and agencies of many local—but often diverse and competing—actors. Thus, despite the legacy of apartheid; severe physical decay; a history of being redlined; oligopolies’ abilities to generate a ‘false competition’ in the property market; and at least two decades of public sector neglect followed by the implementation of various investor-friendly regeneration incentives, inner city neighbourhoods, like Hillbrow, remain popular and resilient ports-of-entry to Johannesburg for many who desire to engage in local and transnational economies. Yet, this vital port-of-entry function seems to be overlooked by local policymakers. Instead, public sector actors subscribe to linear free-market rationalities for the purpose of generating a physical and economic resurgence in downtown Johannesburg. Such a resurgence hinges, in part, on spending public funds to
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‘beautify’ the physical environment through capital investments and public art installations and, in part, on stimulating economic growth, since ‘the city of Johannesburg wishes to see an economic resurgence in the inner city’ (CoJ 2007, p. 30). To this end, the Inner City Regeneration Charter (CoJ 2007) contains a meticulously crafted ‘package of incentives’ and ‘targeted support measures’ to attract private sector investment for specific economic and physical outcomes. Incentives and support measures include, for example: Public investments to stimulate new economic activities; tax rebates and tax increment financing schemes; reduced turn-around times on development and building plan applications; flexible building-control standards; and a more supportive land-use planning framework. (CoJ 2007, pp. 32, 33, 34, 51, 55) At the same time, a liner free-market resurgence necessitates, from the municipality’s standpoint, the establishment of supportive public–private partnerships, in addition to the implementation of public management strategies and control measures, since Hillbrow, in particular, is deemed to be chaotic, hyper-fluid and ‘dysfunctional’. The chief executive officer (CEO) of the state-owned Johannesburg Housing Company, Rory Gallocher, confirms that ‘the key to enhancing [regeneration efforts] in Hillbrow and elsewhere in the inner city is through partnerships, strict control and tight management [strategies]’ (Gallocher 2012a). Accordingly, downtown Johannesburg needs to be ‘cleaned up’, while ‘big businesses’ are perceived as better regeneration partners because they ‘have money, [are] organised, predictable, and involved in legal (if nor virtuous [sic]) practices’ (Chipkin 2005, p. 104). Still, Chipkin (2005, p. 103) warns that ‘there is a danger of positing inner-city society as fundamentally provisional, fleeting, and chaotic. It can be used to legitimise forsaking working with the poor in favour of other partners’. It might then be argued that by forsaking opportunities to work with economically stressed inner city residents, by subscribing to linear free-market rationalities alone and by ignoring the important function port-of-entry neighbourhoods perform in cities that hope to become ‘world class’ entities (as desired by Johannesburg’s policymakers), ongoing and longstanding regeneration efforts—whether implemented by public or private sector actors—will continue to yield only scant and asymmetrical results. In order to substantiate this argument, this paper is structured as three sections. The first outlines some of the histories of neighbourhood change in Hillbrow for the purpose of demonstrating that neighbourhood change is complex and multifaceted, rather than linear. Findings from this section debunk ideas that liberal market rationalities serve as a sufficient explanation for neighbourhood change in port-of-entry contexts. The “Conceptualising Hillbrow as a Port-of-Entry Neighbourhood” section conceptualises Hillbrow as a port-of-entry neighbourhood by sketching out how port-of-entry neighbourhoods function and what they entail. Finally, I turn to a discussion on the complexities of neighbourhood change and the futility of imposing linear free-market rationalities on port-of-entry neighbourhoods for the purpose of stimulating physical and economic resurgence before drawing to a conclusion. A critical discourse analysis of relevant policy documents, media reports, interviews and archival material is employed to establish the argument.
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Revisiting Histories of Neighbourhood Change While developers and speculators enjoyed unprecedented booms in the construction of high-rise apartment buildings in Hillbrow during the 1950s and the 1960s and while various oligopolies were able to generate a ‘false competition’ in the inner city property market during the 1960s and early 1970s (Goga 2003), by the mid-1970s, the supply of residential stock began to exceed demand due to local and global economic recessions and, in South Africa, growing political instability (Brodie 2008). Up until the late 1970s, Hillbrow also functioned as a desired port-of-entry location for a steady flow of European immigrants—predominantly from Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Greece and Portugal—to Johannesburg. Immigrants not only resided in Hillbrow, next door to longer established White South Africans, but also established various continental restaurants, sidewalk cafés, bakeries, delis, bookstores, foreignfilm cinemas and trendy night clubs that many policymakers and regeneration enthusiasts continue to hanker after by referring to this moment in history as ‘Hillbrow’s glory days’ (Schnehage 2012). Nevertheless, ‘in the short period between 1978 and 1982, the racial composition of Hillbrow was altered’ (Morris 1994, p. 821). And until the late 1970s, few landlords would have risked letting apartments to Black tenants in racially segregated White Group Areas such as Hillbrow.1 However, by the late 1970s, the South African economy had collapsed and the apartheid state was no longer financially able to build houses in segregated, urban edge Coloured, Indian and African Group Areas. An oversupply of residential units in Hillbrow and a chronic shortage of housing in Coloured, Indian and African Group Areas prompted some Coloured and Indian (and later African) households to seek alternative accommodation in White Group Areas that, as a consequence of apartheid planning policies, were centrally located. But instead of conforming to linear free-market rationalities of supply and demand, racism and a fear of ‘an/Other’ resulted in the first wave of White and capital flight from Hillbrow. Additionally, the Soweto uprising of 1976 profoundly altered the political and economic landscape of South Africa. At a microscale, Hillbrow, with its sizeable European immigrant population, witnessed a rapid exodus of foreigners and their neighbourhood businesses following the uprising. The initial exodus of White tenants from Hillbrow was further fuelled by the lifting of the Rent Control Act in 1978. However, landlords were only allowed to charge new leaseholders market-aligned rents, as rent control continued to apply to units where original tenants remained. In order to circumvent this perceived impediment to free-market rationalities, landlords employed various covert tactics to ‘persuade’ protected tenants to vacate their apartments, including terminating maintenance contracts on buildings, which, in turn, left many buildings vulnerable to urban blight (Crankshaw and White 1995; Morris 1994, 1996). By engaging in such covert tactics, landlords hoped to fill vacant apartments with new leaseholders who would not be in a position to challenge the legality of rent increases and poorly managed buildings. In other words, they hoped to rent apartments at ‘considerably more than the going rate’ (Morris 1994, p. 826) to illegal, under the Group Areas Act, Coloured and Indian 1
These landlords were all White as Black South Africans were precluded from owning property in designated White Group Areas.
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(and later African) tenants who were desperate to find accommodation, albeit in poorly maintained buildings. These, and other, actions by seemingly powerful landlords serve to undermine the existence of linear, liberal market rationalities in Hillbrow. Unsurprisingly, the municipality’s initial reaction to the overt exploitation of Coloured and Indian tenants and to the physical and demographic neighbourhood change that was taking place in Hillbrow was one of indifference. And prior to a media exposé of ‘the new phenomenon taking place in Hillbrow’, tenants had not been charged with contravening the Group Areas Act (The Star 1982). For the local state, this ‘phenomenon’ alleviated a housing crisis. However, once the story broke, the City Council was forced by the conservative wing of the nationalist political party to intervene by issuing Coloured and Indian tenants with eviction notices. Regardless of eviction notices, many tenants refused to move since they had nowhere else to go. Instead, they mobilised against the state’s repressive policies by harnessing legal support from the Action Committee to Stop Evictions (ACTSTOP).2 This collective community-based action began to change the balance of power, and by March of 1981, charges against 157 households were withdrawn (Morris 1994). Victory for Hillbrow’s Indian and Coloured tenants was ultimately clinched in 1982 when, in the milestone court case of Govender versus the State, Judge Goldstone declared that Group Area evictions ‘need to be halted unless suitable, alternative accommodation is available’ (Goldstone, cited in The Star 1982, p. 32). No alternative accommodation could be found by the financially strapped apartheid state, and Coloured and Indian residents secured their right to live in Hillbrow. But this victory neither led to the abolition of the Group Areas Act nor to the enforcement of building maintenance contracts. Instead, Hillbrow was officially reclassified as a Grey Group Area, and this reclassification prompted financial institutions to redline Hillbrow,3 while many apartment buildings remained vulnerable to urban blight. Of equal concern, Goldstone’s ruling did not prevent landlords from exploiting tenants, particularly when property values plummeted after the neighbourhood was redlined. Landlords then turned to black South Africans, who were not protected under the judicial ruling, to fill their coffers. At first, only a few black South Africans moved to Hillbrow. But from the mid-1980s, many more sought accommodation here due to the intensification of violence in segregated Black townships and the scrapping of the Influx Control Act.4 Hillbrow offered an improved quality of life, access to inner city facilities and work opportunities and a ‘sense of escape’ from implosive township politics (Gotz and Simone 2003). Nevertheless, ‘landlords escalated rents significantly, and in some cases the rent more than doubled’ (Morris 1999, p. 517). Crankshaw and White’s (1995) study of living conditions in the inner city of Johannesburg during the late 1980s concluded that, in order to meet inflated charges, many tenants had no choice but to resort to subletting apartments. Subletting practices, in turn, created severe overcrowding and overburdened the already poorly maintained apartments and buildings in Hillbrow (Crankshaw and White 1995). 2
ACTSTOP constituted 50 members of Johannesburg’s legal fraternity who volunteered their time to defend Hillbrow’s residents charged with transgressing the Group Areas Act. 3 The Group Areas Act was only abolished in 1990. 4 The scrapping of the Influx Control Act allowed black South Africans to move freely between urban centres (Morris 1999).
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Interspersed in these multifaceted histories of landlord greed and neglect, White and capital flight, citizen mobilisation and neighbourhood redlining rests an additional non-linear story: The introduction of the Sectional Titles Act in 1971. This Act allowed Hillbrow’s property owners to sell off individual apartments within a building with freehold rights. Furthermore and in accordance with the Sectional Titles Act, individual apartment owners automatically became members of a Body (management) Corporate. Body Corporates, in turn, were responsible for collecting levies for general building maintenance projects and for paying municipal rates, taxes and services. Converting buildings to sectional title became a widespread practice in Hillbrow, and by the late 1970s, almost 70 % of Hillbrow’s buildings fell under this type of ownership (Morris 1999). Initially, units were occupied by owners. However, ‘by the mid 1990s only 16 % of apartments were occupied by their owners’ (Morris 1999, p. 515), and most Body Corporate structures had disintegrated. As a result, necessary maintenance projects and municipal debts were neglected. Sectional title buildings are currently in the worst state of decay and millions of Rands in municipal arrears. Many sectional title owners have also abandoned their apartments. Yet regardless of these financial, physical and managerial deterrents, since the ending of the apartheid era in the early 1990s, Hillbrow has witnessed yet another steady flow of immigrants and migrants (Kankonde 2009; Kihato 2010; Landau 2010; Winkler 2008). And like so many of the neighbourhood’s predecessors, they too are in search of work opportunities. For Hillbrow’s current residents, this inner city neighbourhood continues to function as a port-of-entry to Johannesburg. Let us now turn to a conceptualisation of port-of-entry neighbourhoods.
Conceptualising Hillbrow as a Port-of-Entry Neighbourhood Before conceptualising Hillbrow as a port-of-entry neighbourhood, the city of Johannesburg’s numerous regeneration efforts require a brief exploration. More than 20 years of capital and White flight from the inner city prompted the municipality, in the mid-1990s, to mitigate against the negative economic impacts of physical degeneration (Chipkin 2005; eProp 2012). For some policymakers, an economic and physical resurgence of the inner city was, in part, shaped by a romanticised conceptualisation of Hillbow’s past: A past that mimicked flourishing, 24-h cosmopolitan hubs found elsewhere in cities of the global north (interviews, senior city officials, 2005, 2010). By returning the inner city to some of its ‘former economic glory’— albeit a former context of socioeconomic exclusion—policymakers hoped to position Johannesburg as a ‘World Class City vis-à-vis other cities, nationally and internationally’ (CoJ 2006b, p. 2). To this end, the Central Johannesburg Partnership was established in the mid1990s to kindle some regeneration enthusiasm amongst disparate inner city businesses and residents, whilst at the same time, but in other quarters of the municipality, the former Inner City Office launched an ambitious Seven Buildings Project to tackle urban blight in Joubert Park by working directly with the residents of earmarked buildings. However, the financial and managerial failure of the Seven Buildings Project resulted in the premature termination of the project. Blame for this failure was attributed to the presumed inability of residents to manage the buildings in which
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they lived and, instead, the management of regenerating the inner city was to be vested in the formation of a new development agency. Accordingly, the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) was established in the early 2000. At the same time, local policymakers began a process of formulating a competitive economic growth policy for the entire metropolitan of Johannesburg with a 30-year horizon: Namely, the Jo’burg 2030 Vision (CoJ 2002). The 2030 Vision laid the foundation for the first Inner City Regeneration Strategy (CoJ 2003, p. 2) that, in turn, was adopted by the JDA. Specifically, the 2003 Regeneration Strategy was designed to accommodate the interests of private sector investors through a host of incentives, including establishing public–private partnerships, declaring an 18-km2 district in the inner city as an Urban Development Zone so that budding investors could become eligible for substantial tax breaks, stimulating buoyant economic development by supporting ‘big business’ through the design and implementation of carefully crafted physical interventions, investing in catalytic projects that presuppose a multiplier effect of increased property values through complementary private sector investments and facilitating the Better Buildings Programme (BBP), which replaced the Seven Buildings Project. The BBP—which was perceived by municipal officials as ‘one of the City’s most important mechanisms in accelerating [urban] renewal, [by] bringing old buildings to market for new residential development’ (CoJ 2007, p. 56)—allowed the municipality to write off arrears on identified ‘bad buildings’ and to transfer the ownership of these buildings to private sector developers for renovation.5 ‘Bad buildings’ were abandoned by their owners, but they were also occupied by residents who were unable to find affordable accommodation through the private housing market.6 In order to address some of the social-oriented shortcomings of the 2030 Vision and the initial Regeneration Strategy, policymakers responded by establishing the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco) in 2004 and by promulgating a Human Development Strategy (CoJ 2006a) in 2006 and, a year later, the Inner City Regeneration Charter (CoJ 2007). The city of Johannesburg also introduced its ‘1 % rule’ that required all building projects of more than R10 million to allocate 1 % of the construction budget to public art for the purpose of ‘beautifying’ the inner city (Hobbs 2012). While the Human Development Strategy makes a ‘commitment to Johannesburg’s poor’ (CoJ 2006a, p. 2), this commitment is implemented in compliance with the municipality’s Growth and Development Strategy (CoJ 2006b), which replaced the Jo’burg 2030 Vision in 2006. And both the Growth and Development Strategy (CoJ 2006b, p. 2) and Inner City Regeneration Charter are designed to enable linear freemarket rationalities, economic growth and a physical regeneration of inner city 5 The City of Johannesburg defines ‘bad buildings’ as ‘properties where little or no investment is being made in maintaining the building, either because (i) the owner has abandoned the building or the building has been hijacked, and so there are no clear landlord/caretaker structures or arrangements in place; (ii) residents are not paying rents and so owners do not have the means to pay for building upkeep; (iii) residents are paying, but the payments are not being utilised by the owner or manager to maintain the building or pay Council rates and service charges, often leading to disconnections of services, with a resultant compounding of the problem’ (CoJ 2007, p. 49). 6 In 2011, the city of Johannesburg replaced the Better Buildings Program with the Inner City Property Scheme (CoJ 2011).
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neighbourhoods. To verify this claim, the GDS (like the 2007 Regeneration Charter) is purposefully crafted to ‘connect the Johannesburg economy to global economies, [so that] its economy will be competitive’ (CoJ 2006b, p. 76). And to become competitive, ‘municipalities must satisfy the requirements of the free market, and so gain access to private sector investment’ (RSA 1998, p. 78). To further verify the ongoing presence of linear market rationalities, the CEO of Joshco, Rory Gallocher, confirms: Years ago the only thing property owners wanted to talk about was selling-up and getting out of Hillbrow. On the occasion that we have been in the market to buy property in the inner city, we have experienced difficulty [in] finding buildings that are priced at a level that would allow it to work for our market because of high demand [for affordable accommodation in the inner city]. [Still,] our vision for individual buildings is to replace chaos with order through basic management. We believe in [the] proper management of buildings, where rules are clearly stipulated. The good management of buildings will attract business to the inner city. (Gallocher 2012b) Regardless of numerous state-led regeneration efforts and contrary to experiences in other geopolitical contexts, decades of capital and White flight from the inner city resulted neither in a depopulation of Hillbrow nor in a vacant, boarded-up landscape. Rather, a prodigious mix of both formal and informal socioeconomic activities, coupled with a significant and ongoing inward migration of job seekers, continues to transform Hillbrow, since it is in these neighbourhoods that newcomers to city tend to first establish themselves. Regardless then of an ever-changing socioeconomic and political landscape, an ongoing spatial transfiguration and the implementation of a myriad of resurgent initiatives and policies, Hillbrow continues to function as port-ofentry to Johannesburg for many who hope to engage in the city’s perceived employment opportunities. Port-of-entry neighbourhoods typically facilitate some degree of readjustment in a new place. They allow diverse cultural customs to be practised, and they are at times perceived by their residents as a temporary place of abode: A place to ‘land’, find your feet, strengthen your networks and, ultimately, move from (Abu-Lughod 1994; Wacquant 2007, 2008). While some residents might have settled in such neighbourhoods for many years, others might constantly be on the move. The present population diversity found in port-of-entry neighbourhoods then represents a cross-section of temporal succession, with newer groups overlaying earlier ones (Abu-Lughod 1994). Hillbrow resembles such ports-of-entry characteristics, if popularity, density, heterogeneity, relative anonymity, some degree of ‘normlessness’ and informality, a large proportion of tenant occupiers and geographical mobility define such a type. Of particular significance, such urban realms are continually evolving. Thus, for one resident, who recently moved to Johannesburg from Lagos: Hillbrow will continue to be popular, and it will always be the first place to come to in Johannesburg for whoever wants to make it. They will come to here. It is also a place with many foreigners. I like all the different people who live
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and work here; the different smells and food you find on the streets; the different languages: That’s what makes Hillbrow a special place. (Interview, inner city resident, 2010) This port-of-entry character is further evidenced by the fact that at least 38 % of Hillbrow’s current residents are foreign-born. Sixty-eight percent of residents moved to Hillbrow during the last 5 years, and 90 % of the inner city’s total resident population did not live in downtown Johannesburg during the early 1990s. Yet, instead of acknowledging or celebrating the vital role that ever-evolving and popular port-of-entry neighbourhoods perform in various cosmopolitan cities (or megacities), in the Johannesburg case, the very same attributes that characterise such neighbourhoods are, ironically, perceived by policymakers and law enforcers as uncontrollable, chaotic, ephemeral and dysfunctional. Accordingly, Hillbrow is demonise as a place of ‘grime and crime’ that necessitates ‘a stricter enforcement of by-laws’, since state actors and agencies hold on to a belief that there is a ‘demonstrable relationship between grime and crime’ (CoJ 2007, p. 9). This ‘demonstrable relationship’ is, however, not founded on empirical evidence. Regardless of unsubstantiated evidence, policymakers further maintain that there is ‘a lack of neighbourhood pride’ amongst inner city residents, and this lack of pride is obstructing the municipality’s regeneration efforts (CoJ 2007, p. 42). In response, the local state aim to ‘achieve a culture of compliance’ amongst residents by implementing ‘civic education and training programmes’ so that a ‘wellmanaged, safe, and clean public environment’ may ensue (CoJ 2007, p. 42). In other word, Hillbrow’s residents need to be ‘educated’ and ‘trained’ for the purpose of complying with policymakers’—predominantly middle class—values and desired standards of behaviour. Such ‘education’ and ‘training’ programmes conjure up outmoded and paternalistic images of nineteenth century social reform programmes implemented in Britain: Reform programmes best illustrated in Charles Dickens’ novels. But let us rephrase the argument by quoting an excerpt from the municipality’s Regeneration Charter: The City will refine its capacity to enforce by-laws through education programmes that make it easier for owners and tenants to comply with municipal by-laws. The City [thus] aims to achieve a culture of compliance where infractions are an exception rather than the rule. (CoJ 2007, p. 8) The presumed purpose for stringent law enforcement is further captured in the following media report: The only way to stop the mayhem is to tackle criminals head-on with militarystyle raids on crime-ridden Inner City buildings. It’s neither pretty nor easy, and it sparks mayhem of its own. Often innocent people’s rights get trampled. But, there is no other way to save the city from sliding irrevocably into the abyss. When we have returned to normalcy we won’t need to crack down anymore. (Financial Mail 2003, p. 13)
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Public policy and media accounts disclose the dominant political reality at play in Johannesburg’s port-of-entry neighbourhood to the exclusion of any other understanding of Hillbrow. They buy into the privilege perception of chaos: A place of ‘mayhem’ where ‘infractions are the rule’, but once ‘we return to normalcy, we won’t need to crack down anymore’. Only a partial reference is made to the majority of residents who are not involved in ‘criminal activities’, yet their daily lives are disrupted by state actions, while being placed in situations of fear and anxiety. These accounts then beg the question: What, exactly, is a ‘normal’ port-of-entry neighbourhood? Is it not precisely a place of ongoing change, complexity, diversity and mobility; a place where some residents might choose to be anonymous, while others become active ‘citizens’; a place where some establish themselves for longer periods of time, while others do not; a place that can facilitate some degree of ‘normlessness’ and informality, as well as more conventional and formal activities? Rather than explore alternative understandings of how Hillbrow ‘works’ as a dynamic place for a diverse resident population, local policymakers insist on embracing crude and dated ‘neighbourhood life cycle’, ‘invasion and succession’ and similar economic change models to inform their regeneration interventions. Accordingly, for local policymakers, ‘the challenge [in] going forward is to scale up regeneration efforts to ensure more rapid impacts, [since] previous regeneration effort were too piecemeal and small in scale’ (CoJ 2007, p. 4). There is thus a presumed linear inevitability of urban decline and resurgence that necessitates little more than a ‘scaling up’ exercise for an economic resurgence to occur. However, as the review of neighbourhood change in Hillbrow demonstrates, port-of-entry contexts refrain from conforming to a linear inevitability and liberal market rationalities (Figs. 1, 2, and 3).
Reconceptualising Neighbourhood Change Since the late 1970s, the inner city’s resident population has increased by 130 % without a complementary provision of physical housing stock (Statistics South Africa
Fig. 1 A view of Hillbrow looking east (photographed by the author prior to the commodification of the Hillbrow tower)
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Fig. 2 Small-scale informal trading along Abel Street (photographed by the author)
2008). Here, more than 250,000 residents live without substantive public sector investment in new social services (including investment in schools and health care facilities) and with a poorly maintained urban infrastructure despite ongoing regeneration initiatives (Schnehage 2012; eProp 2012). While 12 % of inner city residents earn R1,500 or more per month and 20 % are university graduates (eProp 2012), 68 % of Hillbrow’s residents earn between R800 and R3,200 per month, which barely covers the cost of renting an average bachelor apartment as rentals range from R800 to R1,200 per month (Winkler 2008). Moreover, at least 35 % of the inner city’s total resident population is officially unemployed (CoJ 2010). ‘A substantial [number of residents] are [engaged] in low-wage employment, either trading or domestic work, and many small-scale entrepreneurs’ activities function because of their location [in the inner city]’ (eProp 2012). Hillbrow, as a port-of-entry neighbourhood, has also become an anchor for conventional and unconventional small-sized to medium-sized trading across the continent (Crush and McDonald 2002; Simone 2011). Cross-border traders from other African countries travel back and forth, often on 2-week visitor visas, to buy and sell commodities (Simone 2004). For these mobile traders, ‘home’ in Hillbrow is
Fig. 3 Pretoria Street, Hillbrow (photographed by the author)
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often a long-stay hotel. Some residents, whether South African or not, are, therefore, transient, and they do not perceive Hillbrow as a long-term investment, either financially or emotionally. Rather, it is a place from which some migrants can start to access economic opportunities that may enable them to return home with enhanced purchasing power (Englund 2002; Gotz and Simone 2003; Simone 2011). This may be said even if: Residents happen to stay in Hillbrow for a long time. Saying in Hillbrow for a long time is not because they intend to do so. They want to improve their economic conditions to a level [from] where they can move. Some residents always talk about going home. (Interview, inner city community leader, 2005) Despite economic hardships, temporal successions and degrees of fluidity and mobility—and despite the implementation of urban management strategies, xenophobia and the ongoing exploitation of tenants by landlords—Hillbrow remains a ‘popular’ neighbourhood, where the demand for accommodation continues to exceed supply. It also remains resilient to physical decay, a history of being redlined and limited public sector support through the provision of public services. Hillbrow is, therefore, a place that enables residents to adapt to ongoing structural, demographic, political, economic and social change. It provides many of its current residents with opportunities to access the city and to share in its resources. And it allows some residents to experience anonymity, freedom of choice and empowerment through the claiming of rights. For example, with the Centre for Applied Legal Studies’ legal support, some residents secured their right, in 2008, to live in the inner city without the fear of being evicted from ‘bad buildings’ by the municipality.7 Communitybased actions—including those fought and won in the early 1980s with the legal support of ACTSTOP—serve as examples of residents’ resilience to asymmetrical power relations and political processes. These attributes alone nullify a presumed linear inevitability of the inner city’s future. Hoover and Vernon’s (1959) ‘neighbourhood life cycle model’, Schelling’s (1972) ‘invasion and succession model’, the ‘filtering hypothesis’ of Grigsby et al. (1987) and Quercia and Galster’s (2000) ‘neighbourhood threshold change model’ are, therefore, inadequate conceptual frameworks for a more nuanced understanding of neighbourhood change in port-of-entry contexts. These conceptual models subscribe to a presumed linear inevitability of neighbourhood decline before a physical and an economic resurgence may be envisaged, and in the process, they ignore the complexities of human affairs and situated sociopolitical structures. They also oversimplify the ability of the liberal economy to rationally distribute urban populations. Similarly, the ‘rent-gap thesis’ favoured by neo-Marxist analysts, the ‘cultural distinction’ approach to ‘creative cities’ studies adopted by neo-Weberian or postmodernist scholars and the globalisation thesis inspired by Saskia Sassen all ignore the role of public agencies in neighbourhood change (Slater 2006: Wacquant 2008). 7
The pro bono Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) based at the University of the Witwatersrand sought to defend residents’ rights to live in the inner city by arguing that the Inner City Regeneration Strategy ignored the state’s obligation to safeguard residents rights to live in the inner city (see Winkler 2012).
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This role extends to the gamut of policies that impact on housing opportunities and urban living, from public infrastructure maintenance to schooling and health care and from the provision of cultural and socio-economic amenities to the implementation of adequate public transportation (Herbert 2006). More generally, the historic shift from the Keynsian state of the 1950s to the contemporary neo-Darwinist state of hyperliberalism behoves us to redirect our understandings of neighbourhood change in port-of-entry contexts. Accordingly, Abu-Lughod (1994) and Wacquant (2007, 2008) argue for a ruthless deconstruction of linear market rationalities and the ‘one-dimensional poor neighbourhood’ concept, typified as a no-go zone with unbridled pathological problems. Wacquant’s (1999) study of inner city neighbourhoods in Chicago demonstrates how dominant sociopolitical structures and political moments systematically deny residents access to mainstream economic and political powers. Wacquant, therefore, dismisses a ‘blame-the-victim’ ideology implicit in ‘culture of poverty’ discourses: Discourses that officials, policymakers and law enforcement agencies in Johannesburg subscribe to. Such discourses obscure the socioeconomic and political underpinnings of neighbourhood change that impact on the life strategies of residents. [Such discourses also] reveal, confirm and abet the shifting role of the state from provider of social support for lower-income populations to supplier of business services and amenities for middle- and upper-class urbanities—chief among them the cleansing of the built environment and streets from the physical and human detritus wrought by economic deregulation so as to make the city over into a pleasant site of and for bourgeois consumption. (Wacquant 2008, p. 199) By contrast, Abu-Lughod’s (1994) empirically rich and in-depth study of the East Village in New York provides an alternative understanding of neighbourhood change. The East Village—as is the case for Hillbrow—has always been a port-of-entry for newcomers to the city, with newer groups of residents overlaying longer established groups. Here, diverse resident constituencies lead to shifting networks of cooperation and conflict that have their own rhythms and fluctuations (Abu-Lughod 1994). This immediately alerts us to seek variables other than sheer instability to explain neighbourhood change and resilience in port-of-entry contexts. Instability is then a fragile and inadequate construct upon which to hinge regeneration interventions. Rather, a more nuanced understanding of change in ever-evolving neighbourhoods requires uncovering the underlying causes of change and resilience that are shaped by a context’s history, politics and economics and the activities and agencies of various actors, including and importantly, the actions and agencies of the state.
Conclusion Research findings show how neighbourhood change in Hillbrow desists from conforming to free-market rationalities and linear processes of urban decline and economic resurgence. Instead, change is shaped by discursive, but situated, political and economic moments that led, in part, to the reclassification of Hillbrow as a Grey
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Group Area and the consequent redlining of the area by financial institutions. Neighbourhood change is also shaped by the actions and agencies of public and private sector institutions and actors, including the agencies of state institutions, landlords and residents, and ‘the moods of policy- and opinion-makers’ (Wacquant 2008, p. 200). The municipality’s original neglect of the inner city, its later focus on urban regeneration, landlord greed, the mismanagement of properties and some residents’ collective actions against injustices all contribute to neighbourhood change. Findings also show how legislation and neighbourhood change are intrinsically entwined and how legislation has a profound spatial ramification. The diverse and ever-changing composition of Hillbrow’s residents is then not the only determinant of neighbourhood change in this context. Today—and regardless of the implementation of urban management strategies and regeneration policies—property values continue to depreciate, service industries are not returning to the neighbourhood and the exploitation of tenants by landlords persists. Regardless of these findings, Hillbrow remains a popular inner city neighbourhood, as the demand for accommodation continues to exceed supply. However, relatively high rates of unemployment, residents’ chronic stress levels, xenophobia, physical decay and perceptions of crime collectively warrant a re-conceptualisation of Hillbrow’s future. But rather than embark on pervasive perceptions of Hillbrow as a dysfunctional neighbourhood that can only be ‘saved’ via the adoption of linear market rationalities, a conceptualisation of Hillbrow as an ever-evolving port-of-entry to Johannesburg that desists from conforming to linear market rationalities—and that operates differently from other neighbourhoods—might generate alternative ‘regeneration’ responses than those that have already been implemented. Such a conceptualisation may then begin to support, enhance and celebrate the fact that Hillbrow provides some residents with opportunities to access the city, to share in its resources, to experience anonymity and freedom of choice and to claim rights, even if some residents aim not to invest in Hillbrow, either financially or emotionally. In the process of supporting (or celebrating) Hillbrow as a port-of-entry to Johannesburg, the local state might consider directing its regeneration efforts to the maintenance of public infrastructure and the provision of public services, since, arguably, all ‘global’ cities require port-of-entry neighbourhoods.
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