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Planning ‘Suburban Bliss’ in Joe Slovo Park, Cape Town

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Steven Robins
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Abstract

Joe Slovo Park, a housing development in a white middle-class suburb of Cape Town, was designed to replace the shack settlement of Marconi Beam with an orderly working-class suburb. This article focuses on the vicissitudes of post-apartheid housing development schemes, and raises troubling questions about the failure of planners, policy makers and developers to take into account the complexities of the everyday lives they sought to transform. Had they done so they might have anticipated the ‘re-informalisation’ of the newly formalised suburb. The article explores the disjunctures between the planners' model of ‘suburban bliss’ and the reality. The messy, improvised character of low-income housing development in South Africa is contrasted with their Utopian and technocratic vision. This is not to deny that dreams embodied in blueprints may often be shared by the intended ‘beneficiaries’, only that for a variety of social, economic and cultural reasons poor communities are generally unable to realise such ideal visions of modern urban living.

Résumé

Joe Slovo Park, lotissement de la banlieue de Cape Town habité par les classes moyennes blanches, visait à remplacer le baraquement de Marconi Beam par une banlieue ourvrière bien ordonnée. Cet article traite des vicissitudes des projets de construction de cités d'habitation post-apartheid et soulève des questions troublantes quant à l'incapacité des planificateurs, des décideurs et des promoteurs à prendre en compte les complexités de la vie quotidienne qu'ils ont cherché à transformer. S'ils l'avaient fait, ils auraient pu anticiper la «réinformalisation» de la banlieue nouvellement formalisée. L'article examine les disjonctions entre le modèle de «bonheur banlieusard» des planificateurs et la réalité. Il met en contraste le caractère désordonné et improvisé des logements sociaux sud-africains et la vision utopique et technocrate qu'on leur attribue. Il ne s'agit pas de nier que les rêves incarnés dans les projets ont souvent pu être partagés par les «bénéficiaires» visés, mais seulement de dire que pour des raisons sociales, économiques et culturelles diverses, les communautés pauvres sont généralement incapables d'avoir conscience d'une telle vision idéale de la vie urbaine moderne.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , November 2002 , pp. 511 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2002

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