THE RIGHT TO THE CITY

Abstract

The apartheid city is typically touted as a negative role model for urban planners in other parts of the world, largely because of the fragmentation that apartheid social engineering imposed on the lives of urban residents. Under apartheid, the lines of fragmentation were forcibly racialized. This institutionalised racialization has been demolished, while other sites of splintering remain. Yet the aspiration to a wholly unified and orderly city is not necessarily desirable, or attainable. This article argues, somewhat controversially, that the persistent legacy of fragmentation which marked the apartheid city offers unforeseen opportunities to those who live in the cities now and are engaged in daily struggles for survival and mobility. Ironically, such multiple and discrepant orders of urban life can be seen to characterize, increasingly, many cities around the world today.

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