A neighborhood in change
A case study on gentrification in Bo-Kaap, Cape TownEmilia Lundqvist
& Matilda Pettersson
Stadsbyggnad, stadsutveckling och planering / Urban Development and Planning. Kandidatuppsats, 20 HP
Vårterminen 2020
A special thanks to SIDA for providing us with a scholarship that made it possible for us to do our research in South Africa. Thanks to Hoai Anh Tran for supporting us when applying for the scholarship. And the biggest thanks to our supervisor Defne Kadioglu for providing us with much needed help during our difficult times.
Our original plan was to do an 8 weeklong case study in Bo-Kaap, but because of Covid-19 and the impact that the pandemic has had on both the Swedish and the South African societies, this has affected our case study. We were forced to leave South Africa five weeks prior to our original plan. Because of this we had to make several of our interviews online which may have affected our end result.
Abstract
When neighborhoods and cities fall in decline, cities and investors see an opportunity to turn the declining sites into profitable new projects, this happens all over the world in different renewal projects, or under the term gentrification. The outcome of gentrification can be considered to be both positive and negative, and the term is widely discussed in today's media. This study aims to get an understanding of how a small neighborhood in Cape Town called Bo-Kaap, that is famous for its rich culture and strong community, is affected by investors wanting to develop the neighborhood.
With a problematic history of apartheid and oppression the threat of gentrification creates a new threat for the residents of Bo-Kaap. During the last couple of years the property prices in the neighborhood have increased dramatically resulting in a large flow of new residents. This has caused many locals to fear for the safety of the neighborhood as well as the fear of losing its strong community and their identity as a muslim neighborhood.
Table of contents
1. Introduction...5
1.1 Purpose and Research question...6
1.2 Disposition...7
1.3 Background...7
2. Method...11
2.1 Review of popular culture……...12
2.2 Approach...12
2.3 Observations...12
2.4 Interview...13
2.5 About the interviewees...14
2.6 Discussion...15
3. Theory...15
3.1 Gentrification and displacement ...15
3.2Creating safe neighborhoods through a united community………...19
3.3 People's right to the city………...20
3.4 The link between our chosen theories………....21
4. Review of popular culture…...22
4.1 Bo-Kaap and its citizens...23
4.2 Bo-Kaap and gentrification...24
4.3 Bo-Kaap and tourists...26
4.4 Summary…...27
5. Observations...27
5.1 The structure of Bo-Kaap - Only colorful houses?...……….28
5.2 Flow of people - tourists and the locals...29
5.3 Interaction between locals and tourists - Did we feel welcome?...30
5.4 Summary...31
6. Interviews...32
6.1 Gentrification...32
6.2 Identity and community...34
6.3 Summary...36
7. Results and analysis………...39
7.1 Changes that have affected the character of Bo-Kaap...39
7.2 Changes that are in-direct gentrification...40
7.3 What did not change?...41
7.4 Can the changes be linked to gentrification?...42
7.5 How has the changes affected the community of Bo-Kaap?...44
8. Further discussion...46
9. References...48
1. Introduction
In a world striving for economic growth and urban development, cities and countries with a high inflow of tourism are especially thrilled to take advantage of the situation. Many investors turn to neighborhoods with poorer and more segregated people to turn this into new profitable sites that can both help the cities economy and at the same time make the site more attractive and, in some cases, more safe (Lees,Slater and Wyly, 2008). This process of turning declining sites into new developments by ambitious investors are worldly discussed under the term gentrification.
Lees, Wyly & Slater continue to write about the term gentrification as a slippery term with several different definitions. One reason that there can be different definitions comes from the fact that all people are shaped by the context in which they live and work, this also applies to researchers. Different backgrounds could influence how they define what gentrification is. This can be one of the reasons why gentrification is such a complex term. A majority of the research about gentrification is studied in western countries, specifically in the United States. This can sometimes make it difficult to compare cases of gentrification happening in a neighborhood in New York with a neighborhood in Cape Town. Butler (2007) is stressing that when studying gentrification it is important to have ”an understanding of the local social relations in which the gentrification process is taking place”. When conducting a case study on gentrification in a South African neighborhood we therefore thought it was important to have the country’s complicated history present with us when we were conducting the study. This so that we can understand gentrification in a South African context.
Gentrification is a complex concept that can have several positive outcomes but also many negative ones, and it is a process that affects people's daily life. The purpose of this study is therefore to get an understanding about how changes in a small neighborhood in South Africa called Bo-Kaap can be linked to the concept of gentrification and how this affects the people who live there. Bo-Kaap is a neighborhood that is famous for its bright colorful houses and its rich cultural history that has experienced a lot of oppression in the past. Bo-kaap has in recent years become a well visited area for tourists and lots of new businesses have occured in the area. We have chosen to study Bo-Kaap because we find it interesting how this cultural neighborhood is changing with the new flows of tourists. Bo-Kaap is also an interesting
neighborhood to study in the concept of gentrification because the area mainly consists of small privatowned houses, something that may affect how much a neighborhood can change (Kotze, 2013). It is also interesting for us to study Bo-Kaap because this gives us an insight into the dynamics of development in a city outside of europe, as we are used to. Of course this can also be problematic due to the fact that we have a vision of how the planning and development process is supposed to manifest itself, and we are aware that this is different in other parts of the world. Our goal is to look at the changes Bo-Kaap has been facing with an impartial view but we understand that this may be hard and our research can be affected by our western education in the area of urban planning.
As we started our research we got an understanding that South Africa has a long history of oppression due to former governments laws. Gentrification brings back some of these feelings from former types of oppression with forced displacement and forcing people to leave their homes due to increasing rents as an effect of development. To really get an insight into the daily life in Bo-kaap we conducted observations and interviewed people who live in the area or people who own businesses in the neighborhood, these people all have different experiences of their lives in Bo-kaap.
1.1 Purpose and Research question
The purpose of this research is to get an understanding of the changing process that has taken place in Bo-Kaap in recent years, and how these changes affect the residents of Bo-Kaap and their living conditions. We want to study what the community has done to handle these changes and research how the residents have been participating in planning the future of their neighborhood.
Our research question thus becomes:
● How has Bo-Kaap changed in recent years and how can the changes be linked to the concept of gentrification?
The research questions are formulated so that we can identify the changes that have taken place in Bo-Kaap and how these changes affect people and their lives. And then analyze these results and how they are connected to gentrification.
1.2 Disposition
We have chosen to divide our research into four different parts, the first part is focusing on what academic literature says about different concepts and terms that can be linked to a process of urban change.
The second part is focusing on what the media is saying about Bo-kaap and the concept of gentrification and the changes that have occured in South Africa and Bo-kaap.
The third part is focusing on observations we made on site.
And the last part is focusing on interviews that were conducted with people living and working in the Bo-kaap area.
1.3 Background
The modern history of South Africa started when the country was colonized by the Netherlands in 1652 who named it Kaapkolonie. The natives were captured and killed or became slaves. Several years later, the United Kingdom became new colonizers of the country, now called it the Cape colony. The British abolished slavery which led to the Dutch’s, often called boers, to emigrate and found their own republics in the country (Svenska FN-förbundet, 2016).
The modern time of South Africa have been characterized by a white minority defining and controlling urban planning through colonialism and apartheid. Through discrimination and racism the country has always been segregated. In 1948 the National party were elected and begun to apply their policy of apartheid. They constituted new laws that were supposed to divide black, coloured and white South Africans. The laws especially oppressed coloured and black South Africans. From 1950 there was the Population Registration Act that classified people by race and the Group Areas Act that forced people to reside in racially zoned areas (Thompson, 2001). People were displaced from their old neighborhoods to a new one. With
few exceptions, areas designated for the black population were placed far out from the city, on land with bad conditions (Thompson, 2001). The regime was heavily criticized internationally with several economic sanctions and embargoes imposed making the South African economy weak, but it was not until 1994 that the first democratic election was held (Levy, 1999). The racially oppressive government was replaced by ANC and Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president. Since then, South Africa has undergone a massive political transformation and the South Africa that we know of today has been formed.
As just mentioned the country has undergone a massive political transformation, however, the country is still troubled with segregation, oppression and poverty. South Africa has a high unemployment and 25% of the adults are unemployed which has led to high crime and poverty rates (Statistics South Africa, 2015). Corruption in both politics and the police force has led to concern in the country and many residents have no confidence in the authorities (Höglund, 2019).
(South Africa Statistics, 2015)...
But despite the troubles regarding high crime and poverty the country has become a popular tourist destination. South Africa attracts many tourists with its vibrant culture and the many wine districts around the country. One indication of the big upswing in tourism is that the FIFA 2010 World Cup was decided to be hosted in South Africa. An effect of the increasing tourist-industry has been that the government now focuses on transforming the old and declining neighborhoods into tourism-friendly and attractive zones that can attract even more tourists (Kotze, 2013).
The neighborhood of Bo-Kaap is one of the most famous neighborhoods in Cape Town. The neighborhood is visited by tourists for its rich and traditional culture and the bright colorful houses, but the history of Bo-Kaap can be traced back to the 18th century. The neighborhood
was originally developed for the working class. When the British colonizers occupied South Africa they brought slaves from several different countries. These slaves were brought from other countries occupied and colonized by Great Britain, countries such as India and Malaysia for example. They used these slaves to help develop Cape Town, and many of them were placed in the Bo-Kaap neighborhood. The neighborhood is formerly known as the Malay Quarter because of this (Townsend, 2015). Kotze (2013) develops the history about the term ”malay” and what it means in a South African context. The term has its roots in slavery and has no ethnic significance. The term was used to refer to the colored Muslim population in Cape Town despite their origin and it has no actual connection to slaves that were brought from Malaysia. In fact, only one percent of the slaves were brought from Malaysia (Kotze, 2013). In South Africa when describing people's ethnicity it is still common to refer to people as black, white, Indian and colored. The latter term is considered outdated in many countries and not used anymore, for example here in Sweden and the United States. During this thesis we do however use the term on a few occasions, this because it is still a very common term used in South Africa.
When the apartheid regime ruled, they decided that Bo-Kaap was going to be a Muslim neighborhood only (Onishi, 2016). Even today Bo-Kaap has a strong Muslim identity. This is however starting to change and Bo-Kaap is becoming a very popular neighborhood, not only for tourists but also for new residents. Investors are seeing a great opportunity to invest in the neighborhood, but with these investments and a new type of residents the character of the neighborhood is slowly changing. Many people from the Muslim population that has been living in the area for a long time, some their entire lives, are feeling that they are losing touch with the neighborhood, as they feel that the identity of
Bo-Kaap is changing (Burke, 2018). The
carried out three national census surveys, in 1996, 2001 and 2011. According to the latest census data from 2011, surprisingly a majority of the residents of Bo-Kaap consider themselves to be Muslim. However, the most recent census data is from nine years ago and the statistics might have changed since. It is clear during our research of the Bo-Kaap that the people living in the neighborhood are experiencing a change in the area. When new census data will be presented in 2021 we will see these possible changes in numbers and statistics (Statistics South Africa, 2020).
We find support for our research in Donaldson et al. (2013) where they did a study about gentrification in the Bo-Kaap where they interviewed residents of the neighborhood. Many of the residents stated that they feared that the gentrification process would eventually force them to leave the neighborhood. Many of the people in the Bo-Kaap have a low income and fear that they will be forced to move from the neighborhood because of economic reasons. Through the interviews that they conducted it became clear that the community was weakened and that many of the residents no longer perceived the neighborhood as a community. While other residents although admitted to the community being weakened, they claimed that there was still a strong sense of community in the neighborhood. Making people realize how important it is to retain the unique character and cultural significance of the neighbourhood created a new form of community.
2. Method
To answer our research questions we have in our research used literature and media review, qualitative interviews, ethnographic observations and perform these in a case study. We used a social constructivist point of view (Patel and Davidsson, 2014). Since social constructivism is based on the fact that knowledge develops through different relationships we wanted to examine how people experience Bo-Kaap's change through their own relationship to the neighborhood.
We also apply a critical theory of science to our research because we feel that this is necessary due to the fact that critical theory analyzes how knowledge is produced and used (Patel and Davidsson, 2014). We apply this because, as already mentioned, the term gentrification has different definitions due to the background of the researchers. The critical theory of science is important for our study because we have to understand that different backgrounds produce different knowledge and this knowledge has laid the foundation of our research.
We consider our research to be from a hermeneutic point of view which means that our research is based on the experiences of the people living in Bo-Kaap. This means that our research is not based on materials that are measurable but instead is based on material that is interpretational. The main purpose is to interpret the materials we produce to create knowledge about our problem area, which is the changing process of Bo-Kaap (Patel and Davidsson, 2014).
As our problem area studies along the above methods, the goal is not to get a result that solves the problem of gentrification. Instead our goal is to create an insight into how a process of change is expressed and how it can affect several different people and a community of a neighborhood. We base our studies as Merriam and Grenier (2019) mention on open-ended results, results that are changeable with the development of the city which can mean that results can be somewhat fuzzy. We believe that the connection between the problem area, the research question and the methods will give us knowledge about the subject and therefore be able to get a credible result (Turen, 2007).
2.1 Review of popular culture
To understand the problem of the concept of gentrification and the changes Bo-Kaap is facing, it is necessary that we study literature related to the subject. We will also study articles and media reports. By just reading the academic literature linked to our research area we will not gain a full understanding of the problem regarding our topic, and because of that it is important that we research literature from other platforms than just scientific literature. When studying media reports and articles it is important to understand the background of the literature and why it is written. In our review, we analyze both the importance of language but also who has written the texts and for whom the texts are intended. These relationships, author and reader, creates power relations both in the context of literature and also in society. It is important for our work that we understand how the concept of gentrification is defined in media, as the concept is complex and many times have different meanings, it is important that we analyze how the concept of definition affects the view of gentrification in society (Kvale, 2009).
2.2 Approach
We chose to divide our review into different parts because we want to highlight how different authors and people define the situation in Bo-Kaap and how they use the different terms we have been working with. Because gentrification is filled with questions about moral and ethical issues it is important to have in mind that different backgrounds make people pay attention to different aspects when they want to share their knowledge about the topic. With different backgrounds and point of view the issues are widely varied and the focus may shift from different articles. Our goal is to get an overview how regular people like us come in contact with Bo-Kaap as a neighborhood through the media, and what kind of effect that has on how we perceive Bo-Kaap.
2.3 Observations
Our purpose of doing observations was to collect information about Bo-Kaap on ordinary days, to see it in its natural state. Observations is a way to join theory and practice, and it can serve as a good complement to our interviews about the neighborhood (Kvale, 2009). We
decided to rent an apartment and live in the neighborhood during our weeks in South Africa. This so we could get as much experience as possible of the everyday life of Bo-Kaap.
Ten observations were made, for 30 minutes each observation. What we studied during these observations was what kind of businesses that were active in Bo-Kaap and what kind of activities were happening in the neighborhood. We did this to get an understanding of how the place is being used by different groups. When doing these kinds of observations one must be aware that we can observe how people use the place, however we don’t know their backgrounds or the motives they have when using the place (Kvale, 2009). What we base our observations on are generalizations.
2.4 Interviews
By using qualitative interviews we have interviewed people who are active and/or live in Bo-Kaap. By interviewing people we wanted to get knowledge about how they view the changes happening in Bo-Kaap and if they have been affected by the changes. Because of the effect that Covid-19 had on our research some of the interviews were conducted in person, while some of the interviews had to be made online. Our original plan was to only interview people active in different local businesses but since we had to re-think our original plan we decided to also interview people living in the neighborhood. By interviewing people active in the neighborhood we get an insight from people that on a daily basis come into contact with many people, they may have a deeper insight into how people in Bo-Kaap feel about the changes that are occurring in the neighborhood. Our decision to mainly talk to people who, through their businesses, are more visible in the neighborhood is because we feel that this may make our research more doable than just talking to private local people.
To get an insight into these peoples opinions and thoughts about the changing process happening in the neighborhood, we get a good complement to our own observations being carried out in Bo-Kaap. Their thoughts and opinions about the neighborhood are of course their own personal opinions which we must be aware of when analyzing the interviews. Interviewing people about the changing processes can many times encounter ethical dilemmas (Kvale, 2009). Gentrification is a sensitive question in many neighborhoods, especially in Bo-Kaap with its history, and we consider it important that we are aware of this.
Our approach will be semi-structured interviews that focus on the narrative. Through this approach we as interviewers create a number of questions but focus more on the interviewee's stories and let the conversation develop freely. It is important here that as researchers we do not weigh in too much of our own thoughts and experiences, but allow the interviewee, who has a deeper insight to share their thoughts. Since gentrification is a much debated topic and many times sensitive to talk about, it is important to understand the ethical dilemmas that can arise in contexts that involve personal stories. It is therefore extremely important for us to create a relationship with the interviewee so that people feel safe enough to share their stories (Kvale, 2009).
2.5 About the interviewees
Since our chosen topic is often associated with ethical dilemmas, we have chosen to keep the interviewees anonymous and therefore gave each interview person an alias. We will in the following text refer to the persons by their alias. We met Carl after we sent him an email asking him if we could interview him about his experiences of running a business in Bo-Kaap. We met up with him in his office and interviewed him. Carl then helped us to get in contact with Sarah who is living close to his office. We got in contact with Aisha through a mutual contact. Since we had to leave South Africa five weeks prior, our interviews with Sarah and Aisha had to be conducted through email and telephone.
● Carl - Runs a business renting out luxurious cars for different day-tours. He does not live in the neighborhood. He is not a part of the community more than the fact that he has a business there. Has a bachelor degree in Environmental studies from Stellenbosch university.
●
● Sarah - Born to French parents and grew up on the African continent. She has been living in the neighborhood for a couple of years with her husband and their 2 year old son, her husband has been living in Bo-Kaap for 15 years. They are a part of the community and she is active when it comes to questions regarding the development of Bo-Kaap.
● Aisha - Runs a Bed and Breakfast in the central parts of Bo-Kaap. She grew up in the neighborhood and still lives there with her family. She is active in the community.
2.6 Discussion
In order to gain a deeper insight into how different people experience the changes Bo-Kaap has gone through, our goal was to interview people with different backgrounds and jobs. Through this we can gain knowledge about how the process has affected different people with different living conditions. This can also create very different results, which can be a criticism as we do not get a result we can apply and generalize to the entire community but on the other hand this gives us an insight into how the change is experienced on a deeper level for an individual. To be able to analyze these results at a larger scale we have to compare the results from the interviews with the academic literature that we have read about gentrification. In this analysis we hope to get an understanding of how an individual's experience can reflect how the community is affected by the things happening in Bo-Kaap.
3. Theory
This section presents previous research that forms the basis of our work and here we present what different authors and researchers have conducted in their studies regarding our topics. 3.1 Gentrification and Displacement
In 1964 the British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification (Lees & Phillips, 2018). The term was formulated after the word “gentry”, a term from the 19th century which marked the class position of people who where situated somewhere between nobility and peasants, today it could be an approximate comparison with the concept of middle class (Thörn & Holgersson, 2014).
Glass may have coined the term gentrification but the phenomenon of gentrification has been talked about for a long time. German philosopher Friedrich Engels talked about it as early as 1872. He meant that the working class, as a consequence of a city's economic growth, was pushed out from the central parts of the cities to the periphery. When they, either willingly or
unwillingly, were displaced from the city they were replaced by a new population that could afford to live there (Engels, 1982). During this same period there was a reconstruction going on in Paris that resembled a gentrification process, heavily criticized by Engels. The prefect of Paris, Georges Eugene Haussmann, restructured the infrastructure of the city, boulevards were drawn straight through working class neighborhoods (Hunt, 2014). By doing this he created the possibilities for the new modern city life, making Paris a metropole. But the consequences of it meant increasing rents that caused displacement (Hunt, 2014). Engels critiqued it by writing
”The result will be the same everywhere, however diverse the reason may be: the most scandalous streets and alleys disappear (...) but they immediately resurface elsewhere and often in the immediate neighborhood” (Thörn & Holgersson, 2014).
Marcuses (1985) definition of gentrification hinges on a change in the categories of economic, social and population that causes a physical change to a neighborhood, although the physical change is not substantial in a gentrification process. Gentrification occurs when older residents, who often are low income, working class people of color are replaced by new residents who are young, white people with a higher education and income level. To establish that these cases of displacement have been caused by a gentrification process can be difficult. Marcuse suggests that displacement can be conceptualized by distinguishing different types of displacement by gentrification. Reasoning that this will make it easier to detect displacement caused by gentrification. These different types are represented by direct displacement and in-direct displacement. Different types of a direct displacement are physical displacement and economical displacement. A physical displacement might happen when a landlord is reducing the maintenance of a building, for example by cutting off the electricity. An economical displacement might occur when a landlord raises the rent above the tenants ability to pay and this causes the tenant being forced to move since they can no longer afford to pay rent. These two direct types often happen simultaneously. We consider Marcuse’s types of in-direct displacement to be more interesting in our case study. One of these is exclusionary displacement. Marcuse (1985) write about this -
”When one household vacates a housing unit voluntarily and that unit is then gentrified or abandoned so that another similar household is prevented from moving in, the number of units available to the second household in that housing market is reduced. The second household, therefore, is excluded from living where it would otherwise have lived” (p. 206)
Meaning that one household could willingly sell their house and make a profit out of it. But when analyzing this in a larger picture, this selling contributes to the neighborhood being in a gentrification process. This action of an individual household raises the housing price in that neighborhood's housing market, excluding another similar socio economic household to move into the neighborhood.
He continues to write about the ”pressure of displacement” which is less abstract than the other presented types. For someone living in a neighborhood that is changing dramatically it can become difficult for them to continue living there. They see their neighbor’s moving from the neighborhood and their regular stores are being closed, with new stores taking its place, targeted against another clientele. These families, living under these new circumstances may choose to move but they are however a cause of displacement that is caused by a gentrification process. Marcuse argues that these different types of displacement should be present when analyzing a gentrification case. In our case study they will be vital for us, so that we will be able to answer our research questions.
In The Just City (2010) Fainstein is criticizing how deindustrialization and globalization has affected how cities are being planned. What she is criticizing is that the focus today is being set on private investments instead of creating a city based on what the city and its citizens need, there is a strive for economic growth. A critique that she is sharing with Thörn and Holgersson (2014). They criticize that there has been a shift when talking about the urban economy and that cities have become viewed as products that are going to be packaged, marketed and sold. Harvey (Thörn & Holgersson, 2014) agrees with this and as a result the consequences are that cities are being put to compete with each other. Gentrification is being discussed as something that could both be positive and negative. It can generate a positive effect on a neighborhood such as making it more safe and increasing the service. A positive factor when competing with other neighborhoods and cities. Another positive factor that is
being highlighted when discussing gentrification is that a gentrification process is creating more diverse neighborhoods. Although Lees (2008) claims that this is rarely the case. She points out that the original residents are often replaced by new residents. This is supported by Thörn & Holgersson (2014) who criticize gentrification claiming that a gentrification process often has large negative effects on the people already living there. In many cases they are forced to move from the neighborhood because of rising rents or even by being evicted. They argue that in cases of gentrification, research shows that there is always obvious that some people are winners, while some are losers. The people that lose are always the poor, so according to Thörn & Holgersson, gentrification is always something negative. The US government agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, highlights the health effects of gentrification. The built environment and social conditions are factors in the health of a community. People living in neighborhoods that are under threats of displacement often belong to a lower socioeconomic group in the society. When a neighborhood is changing rapidly and the conditions for the people living there is affected making them victims of displacement, it has a negative effect on people's health. The negative effects this has on people in lower socioeconomic groups are for example higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. They are also more likely to have a shorter life expectancy and higher cancer rates (CDC, 2009).
Apart from economic growth, displacement and health aspects gentrification can be directly linked to tourism, by either using gentrification to attract tourism or gentrification is produced by tourists and this is called tourism gentrification (Lees, Shin & Lopez-Morale, 2015). In the first aspect investors change the structure of a neighborhood or city to make it attractive for tourism, it can be both in the sense of security but also what type of businesses and attractions there are. In the second aspect tourists themself create a form of gentrification by just visiting and using an area. When lots of new people enter and use an area the atmosphere changes, especially for the residents in the area. Tourism gentrification is focusing on attracting tourists and if there already are lots of tourists in the area, this type of gentrification aims to make the area even better for this occasion. Lots of visible changes can occur when this happens, first and foremost the businesses in an area are aiming towards the tourism industry such as cafes, shops, restaurants and hotels. Another visible change can be that there are great
investments trying to make the area safe, often by using CCTV and moving poorer people to other neighborhoods.
Today the term is studied in several different fields of disciplines, not only urban planning. Gentrification as a term has become more broad and therefore a more complex term to understand.
3.2 Creating safe neighborhoods through a united community
Oscar Newman (1975) created a framework on how to create safer neighborhoods. In his research, he shows that larger residential complexes often tend to create a precarious feeling for the residents of the area. This is because larger buildings often tend to make the residents feel that they have less connection to the surrounding common areas such as sidewalks, the street and green space. The less contact residents have with their surrounding area, the more anonymous one becomes in the context, this means that crime and decay are easier to occur. However, his research showed that if there were lower buildings with fewer families in each building, the public spaces did not become as anonymous and those living in these areas felt a greater responsibility to care for and control the common areas. Control in this aspect is linked to the possibility to have an insight in the flows of people using and visiting the neighborhood, possibilities for every person to control their own life and affect what changes that may or may not happen in a neighborhood and a residents personal life. Greater control of the common areas creates a sense of community-feeling among the neighbors and it is easier to create relationships with the people in their surroundings. Which according to Newman’s study, led to the fact that crime and decay decreased when smaller areas did not become as anonymous as bigger building complexes. With a bigger sense of community-feeling it is easier to recognize people who do not "belong" to the area and therefore prevent criminality. By community-feeling Newman (1975) means that the bond that connects people in a neighborhood, the feeling of belonging to a group and a place. A vital part of the community is the shared responsibility for making the area a greater place and helping each other out. With community-feeling a great sense of trust is built. Belong or not-belong can be separated by different aspects, the people who do not “belong” are often
defined by not-residents, but it can also be people in the area who are actively choosing not to be a part of the community by expressing deviating opinions than the majority of the people. But Newman also believes, in his framework, that smaller areas can create their own cultures. In many cases smaller areas have in turn taken over almost all control over their surroundings and many times choose to set up their own rules and laws that stand outside the country's real laws. This can create a great balance of power between the area and the city as a whole. This also tends to allow residents in the area to take the law into their own hands in many different situations, which can make anyone who does not "belong" to the area feel unwelcome. Nonetheless, Newman concludes that, in general, all forms of community-feeling are positive for neighborhoods, since in most cases it creates a sense of security. But to achieve this sense of belonging to a place, it is necessary to involve residents to a great extent when it comes to developing neighborhoods and that urban planning must be included by citizen participation (Newman, 1975).
3.3 People's right to the city
That the city develops from one basic principle, to create economic growth, has for a long time been a debated topic. David Harvey (2012) discusses in his book Rebel Cities, how individuals throughout history have taken the initiative to take control over different developments in the city. By doing this they gain more control over their own lives, and to do this they created different groups and movements to question and challenge governments to include the people in the urban renewal process. Harvey (2012) explains that this fundamental thought from the people, to regain control over their surrounding environment, comes from a feeling of oppression and the thought about people's right to the city.
But what makes people join different movements in the fight for their right to the city? Harvey (2012) concludes that it begins with a moral order that connects people through the sharing of the same opinions. By having the same opinions the group creates a strong foundation and this creates a strong purpose for their rebellious acts. He argues that it is impossible for one single person to achieve great change and that is why movements have to be created. When the future of a city is controlled by a central government body, the only
way to gain access to the inner core and influence it, you have to destroy it. To destroy it, rebellious acts are necessary.
As Harvey (2012) explains the foundation of activism in urban planning stands from a point where people feel that they have lost control over their own lives, and this loss of control is often an effect of urban renewal processes that change neighborhoods in the favor of the economy. This leads on to be a dilemma not only about economic growth but also about class, race, ethnicity, culture and so on. Renewal processes are often developed on sights that have some sort of specific advantages, Harvey (2012) name one such advantage as contemporary tourism. Contemporary tourism occurs in places that have aspects that attract tourists such as a vibrant culture, unique nature or an inspiring history and all this is summed up to be something Harvey (2012) calls symbolic capital. This symbolic capital is often taken advantage of by people outside the community and this leads to the dilemma of class and economy. Because it is the people with money and power who seek to exploit specific qualities to attract tourism. It is not the people in the neighborhood who want to or have the opportunity to make a profit of their surroundings. Having outside people controlling the neighborhood makes the people in the neighborhood feel like they have lost control over their lives, and this process creates rebellious movements to take back control from the rich and those with power (Harvey, 2012).
3.4 The link between our chosen theories
We have chosen the above theories because we feel that it is essential for our research to investigate the changes in Bo-Kaap from different perspectives. It may seem that the different theoretical concepts are contradictory to each other, but we want to research our topic on a broader level. The concept of gentrification is our main focus in relation to the changes that are happening in Bo-Kaap, and with gentrification comes a question regarding safety of a neighborhood. As Lees (2008) and Thörn & Holgersson (2014) discussed in their research, gentrification is many times in direct relation to making a neighborhood more safe, or this is in many ways the main goal with gentrification. Because of this we want to have Oscar Newman´s (1975) concept of creating safe neighborhoods. Newman (1975) claims that safe neighborhoods are created through smaller neighborhoods and that it is possible to feel more safe when you are in control of your surroundings by having a relationship with your
neighbors, people in the area and the built environment. But this theory of Newman (1975) is in many ways a contradiction to the belief that gentrification brings safety because with gentrification comes a lot of new people to an area.
By having two different sides of how safety in a neighborhood can be achieved, and how changes affect people, with Harvey´s (2012) theory about urban revolution we want to get an insight into what people are willing to do when they feel that the changes of a city goes too far without involving the people who gets affected by the changes. This theory is interesting for our research because this theory explains on a deeper level why some communities become strong and what makes people create communities. With this theory we will get an understanding why the community of Bo-Kaap is important.
4. Review of popular culture
In order to gain a deeper understanding of how Bo-Kaap is presented in the media and how people both in the neighborhood and outside the neighborhood get information about the changes in the district. It is important for us to do a deeper analysis on how the media writes and talks about Bo-Kaap and how the media uses the terms such as gentrification and displacement, and the changes that are happening. It is also important to understand who produces the material and for whom the material is produced, because this has a big effect on the credibility of the information that is shared through the media. It is especially important for us in this study that we analyze the material with a critical eye, because it is articles and other media reports that laid the foundation for this research and made us interested in this particular neighborhood.
We have chosen to divide this analys into three different parts. The first part focuses on two different podcasts investigating and talking about Bo-Kaap as a neighborhood from a local perspective. The second part focuses on how the media and newspapers from around the world and other parts of South Africa talks about Bo-Kaap. The third part focuses on how tourists are encouraged to visit the neighborhood. The question we want to investigate in this chapter is how Bo-Kaap and its changes are described by different groups and if there are any differences in the description and if so, what are the consequences of this?
4.1 Bo-Kaap and its citizens
When listening to podcasts about Bo-Kaap, the words people use when describing the neighborhood gives you a picture of a neighborhood with a strong community feeling. A strong bond that has been shaped between the local residents after enduring the apartheid together. The podcast Bo-Kaap: Heritage Preservation Amid Rapid Gentrification produced by the journalist Shannon Correia (2019) let eight residents of Bo-Kaap give their view of the neighbourhood and the changes happening there. All of them describe the changes happening in the neighbourhood using the term gentrification. Shafiq Morton says that with gentrification there exists both positive and negative effects but in his opinion, Bo-Kaap only experiences the negative effects of it. He continues to describe how the central business district is spreading itself, coming closer to Bo-Kaap and destroying the culture that has been preserved in the neighborhood, in his own words he describes it as a ”bulldozer destroying everything in its path”.
Shafiq’s opinion, that the changes happening in Bo-Kaap is a negative effect of gentrification, is an opinion that is expressed by the other locals interviews as well. Several of them point out that they have no problem that people with a different skin color visit the neighborhood or move into the houses but what they find a problem with is the way that some of the people behave. Bo-Kaap has a long history of being a conservative neighborhood, and people being intoxicated or posing in front of the many mosques that exist in the neighborhood is considered a disturbance of the peace. One man describes gentrification as a new form of apartheid. With gentrification and the increased housing prices people have been forced to leave the neighborhood. People that used to live in Bo-Kaap before but who were forced to move because of the apartheid rules, can not afford to move back to the neighborhood now because of the increased housing prices.
Another episode in the podcast series, one resident, the owner of a shoe repair store, describes the changes in the business structure in the neighborhood. He explains that most of the old businesses are gone. But he means that this is not only because Bo-Kaap is changing but it is because the entire city is changing. With new shopping malls, it is easier for customers to find what they need in one particular place. He says that he no longer has the same amount of regulars coming to his shop and he misses the feeling of a community. He also mentioned
that the former business structure of Bo-Kaap relied on “trust and supply”, meaning that different businesses were working together and helping each other out.
One topic that is discussed is how the community has fought for protecting their neighborhood. In this episode one man, a reporter, is interviewed regarding the protest against a big development in Bo-Kaap. The protest got a lot of attention because of police brutality. He says that the protests were a friendly action by the residents to prevent a new high-rise building to be built. The residents felt that they had no say in the development and that the investors had violated Bo-Kaap as a heritage site. He explains that the protest escalated quickly when the police arrested people and that many residents felt that they did nothing wrong. Furthermore, he discusses that Bo-Kaap has a problem when it comes to cooperations between residents and different actors, something that he explains has a long history going back to the discussion about displacement.
4.2 Bo-Kaap and gentrification
The first thing that hits you when researching about Bo-Kaap on the internet are thousands of articles highlighting Bo-Kaap as a neighborhood facing big trouble with modern gentrification. But on the other hand there are a lot of articles highlighting Bo-Kaap as a unique neighborhood that escaped gentrification.
One article that made a big impact on our research is Burke´s (2018) article in The Guardian addressing the fact that Bo-Kaap has been through alot during the years and that the new enemy is gentrification. In this article the author deeply describe the situation in Bo-Kaap as tense and that there is a large gap between the often poor muslim residents and the white rich investors. Burke (2018) highlights the problem that the community no longer has as much control over the area as they used to have. This is due to the declining economy in South Africa and the strong economy that foreign investors possess. This uneven economy puts the people in two different groups, one that has the advantage to invest in the neighborhood to gain an economic profit and on the other hand there are the residents that sell their properties for a great amount of money. This article compares gentrification to apartheid and refers to the new structure of investors and residents as displacement of the poorer. This of course affects the community in many ways, although this is something Burke does not go any
deeper into. The conclusion of the article is that the process that is happening in Bo-Kaap is something negative and that the local people are once again being oppressed and forced to take actions of their own to keep control over their neighborhood (Burke, 2018).
On the other hand we have been studying articles in the media saying that Bo-Kaap escaped gentrification. In a podcast and media series produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and Rebecca Davis (2019) they talk and write about Bo-Kaap as a neighborhood escaping the bad sides of gentrification. They are more positive about the neighborhood inviting tourists into the colorful and cultural area.
“Over the years, the country’s oldest Muslim community have opened up their hearts and homes, welcoming tourists to share in their heritage; one that once came under the looming threat of gentrification.”
As the quote says they mean that the threat of gentrification is no longer as profound as before because of the new laws securing Bo-Kaap as a heritage site. But it is important to mention that in their research they explain the changes that have occured in the neighborhood due to gentrification and what kind of effect these changes have had for the people. They talk about how they are aware of how gentrification has both a positive and a negative side. But they also highlight the fact that it would be better for communities to talk more about the positive effects of gentrification. One effect is that gentrification can create neighborhoods that are more diverse and that you should talk more about that instead of focusing on the negative sides of it, for example the displacement that is happening. By associating the changing process in Bo-Kaap with creating diversity in the neighborhood the good aspects of gentrification can flourish. And this diversity can have a good impact on both the people living there and on the economy. By only associating gentrification with displacement can create a negative approach that brings back the memories of apartheids oppression of the people (Dawjee and Davis, 2019).
As we mentioned above, the media has a two sided view on gentrification in Bo-Kaap, is the neighborhood gentrified or not? With this review it becomes more obvious that this topic is as complex as the term gentrification and that it is very personal how one views the issue regarding gentrification in Bo-Kaap.
4.3 Bo-Kaap and tourists
Alongside the different articles talking about Bo-Kaap as a changing neighborhood, there are many articles, blogs and websites about why you have to visit Bo-Kaap as a tourist. One thing that many of these articles have in common is that the culture of Bo-kaap is very fascinating and this is the highlight of Bo-kaap. South African travel guide (2019) writes
“Colourful Bo-Kaap has a fascinating history and unique culture just begging to be explored. Tucked away under the slopes of Signal Hill, this suburb formerly known as the Malay Quarter, is a bright and vibrant neighbourhood with a rich Cape Malay culture and roots as old as Cape Town itself.”
And one blog describes Bo-Kaap as “The rainbow heart of Cape Town” (Forstmanis, 2019) and another blog explains that Bo-Kaap
“Today, it’s known as one of the most Instagrammable places in the country, thanks to its pastel-colored houses and picturesque cobbled streets.” (Mcdonald, 2019)
And the website The lonely planet promotes all their tourist tours with “Explore Bo-Kaap : Culture and Colour”
With these wonderful and intriguing words about the colourful neighborhood it is no wonder why so many people are visiting Bo-Kaap every year. All of the above-mentioned websites and blogs highlight the neighborhood's dark and rich history with apartheid and displacement but most of them are not really mentioning the new struggles of gentrification. The blog A common wanderer is an exception, this blog really problematizes the new struggle that comes with tourism. The author of the blog, Forstmanis (2019), mentions how to respect the locals by wearing clothes that show respect for the conservative neighborhood and also tells further tourists not to use the colorful houses as props when they take their holiday photos. This blog also encourages tourists to support the local people when visiting the area.
4.4 Summary
It did not really surprise us that there are different points of views when it comes to how the media writes about Bo-kaap. Different types of media have different goals with the produced materials. The podcasts, as we see are one form of media that want to tell people about Bo-kaap from the residents point of view and to spread knowledge about the area. The articles about gentrification in Bo-kaap are two ways to show readers that there are different thoughts about how Bo-Kaap has been affected by this fenomen. And the last part about materials produced for tourists are produced with the goal to attract tourists to the neighborhood and this material is of course produced to highlight the good aspects of Bo-Kaap.
As we wrote in previous chapters gentrification can be both good and bad and the term has different meanings for different people. It is also important to understand that these media are produced by authors with different backgrounds and that they have different views on gentrification and urban development. That some authors are not from the neighborhood also affect the connection they have to the struggles Bo-kaap is facing.
We feel that much of the media about Bo-Kaap is focusing on small parts of the neighborhood and not Bo-kaap in a bigger picture. The history of the neighborhood is important to spread and this is the foundation for today's struggle but in our opinion most media reports lack a more complex view of the changes in Bo-Kaap. Most of the material is obviously written to highlight or problematize one aspect of the neighborhood, but to spread more accurate knowledge about the area, there needs to be more material addressing a more broad view.
5. Observations
As we wrote in the beginning of this thesis we wanted to do observations to see how the everyday life in Bo-Kaap is lived. By studying the flows of people, types of businesses and activities we wanted to get an understanding about how the dynamics of the neighborhood is presented. To make this more clear we have chosen to structure this part into different aspects that we investigated during our observations. We also feel that it is vital to once again pay
attention to the fact that these observations were done during a time of pandemic which can affect the result of the observations.
5.1 The structure of Bo-Kaap - Only colorful houses?
The first thing that hits you when you arrive in Bo-Kaap is the bright colorful houses that cover almost the entire neighborhood. This is also the main thing that attracts tourists to the area. The colorful houses and the narrow cobblestone streets makes this place seem like an image from a fairy tale. The houses in Bo-Kaap are small, few of the houses are no more than two floors high, but they all are individually coloured and decorated with different paintings and ornaments. But it is not only residential houses that cover the narrow streets, in between the houses there are many small mosques, also painted in bright colors. The neighborhood has a total of 10 mosques and they are all active, something you notice five times a day when it is time for prayers.
The main street in Bo-Kaap is much wider than the rest of the streets and it is on this street that most of the activities in the neighborhood happen. Some of the old businesses are still active, such as the spice market called Atlas trading, the shoe repair called Rocksole and small dailymarkets, but apart from this the main businesses are cafes, souvenir shops and trendy clothing stores. The cafes have a common vibe around them, they all focus on tourism. They sell trendy organic food and coffee, and offer their customers a fantastic view over the neighborhood. This is something that differs from the other more traditional atmosphere of Bo-Kaap. Making it clear that their main customers are not the locals of Bo-Kaap but people coming from other parts of town.
What we just described is the central and older part of Bo-kaap, by walking just 10 minutes down the street towards the city center the neighborhood looks completely different. In this part the new developments have taken shape. The houses are no longer small and colorful
instead they are modern high-rise buildings offering luxurious apartments and office space. The streets here are wider, offering possibilities for heavy traffic and the businesses in this part are more commercial with big supermarkets, gyms and department stores. With such a difference in the built environment, a large contrast to the colorful hoses, it feels as if this is not the same neighborhood.
The fact that it seems like different neighborhoods can have one significant factor apart from the difference in the built environment. Right in between the older historical part and the new developments there is a small informal settlement, placed right behind the colorful houses on the slope of the hill. The area is surrounded by a high fence and the houses here are not exactly houses but they are more like small huts. The area is filled with trash (Mccain, 2017) ………. .and there is no real structure of this place. To answer the initial question if Bo-Kaap is more than .colorful houses the answer is yes, the neighborhood has three totally different structures making it feel like three different neighborhoods and the different structures provide conditions for different types of life. 5.2 Flow of people - tourists and the locals
By spending time in the neighborhood during different hours of the day, it made us realise that Bo-Kaap is a totally different place during the day and night. As we presented earlier Bo-Kaap is one of Cape Town's hotspots for tourists and this is obvious during daytime but during night time the place gets another character.
To begin, it is important to understand that Bo-Kaap is a conservative muslim neighborhood which means that it is in many cases quite obvious who is a tourist and who is not, this by just looking at the way one another is dressed. Most of the flows of people happen in the central part, as we describe previously it is focused around the main street. From around 10
am to 5 pm there is a continuous flow of tourists visiting Bo-Kaap, either by small groups or bigger groups including a guide. They mostly walk around and admire the colorful houses and take pictures, sometimes getting real close to the houses or even using the stairways as props, sitting and leaning against it. They tend to stick to the area around the main street, not walking too far down to the newer development. Many of the tourists stop by the souvenir shops and the cafes which make the cafes a melting pot of different people from all around the world. A visit to Bo-Kaap seems to last for about an hour or so then they leave the area. The locals use the neighborhood in a different way, many young men are utilizing the tourists by helping them with parking and selling water and souvenirs. One thing that we observed is that the community seems small and the locals know each other because there are a lot of different groups standing in the corners of the street talking to each other and having a good time, but it is mostly men we see during daytime. As we observe the neighborhood one thing we notice is that the locals do not seem to use the cafes or the business in the neighborhood except from the spice market and the small dailymarkets. Most of the locals we observe are spending their time on their patio in front of their houses.
As mentioned before Bo-Kaap changes when the tourists leave the neighborhood. During daytime with all the people moving around in the area the neighborhood feels alive and safe but during nighttime Bo-Kaap gets quiet and still. During nighttime Bo-Kaap feels like a small town neighborhood and not a hip and trendy tourist destination in the heart of Cape Town. One aspect may be that Bo-kaap does not have any restaurants open late at night or clubs and bars that attract people.
5.3 Interaction between locals and tourists - Did we feel welcome?
There are few places where we have been that there is such an obvious structure about who is a tourist and who is a local. We did not really have the opportunity to interact with the locals in the neighborhood because the cafes we went to were all owned and runned by people not from the neighborhood. When walking around the streets even to do the most basic everyday stuff we felt like outsiders. Not because people were rude or something like that, but because of the strong community-feeling that exists in the neighborhood. With a strong community-feeling and the fact that most of the people in Bo-Kaap know each other we
became the “strangers”. This has of course affected our research where we were only able to observe from the “outside”. But we think that this aspect of how we as visitors and residents for a couple of weeks experienced Bo-Kaap is important to understand as we saw the effect that tourists have on the neighborhood. One interesting thought about this is that the tourists who visit Bo-Kaap never really support the locals because the businesses and activities they use are not owned or run by people from the neighborhood.
5.4 Summary
As described in this part, Bo-Kaap is a neighborhood with three different characters, one colorful part attracting tourists, one modern and newly developed part and a poor and forgotten township. As we observed, these different parts are clearly separated from each other and function in different ways. With the structure of the neighborhood it is hard for us to really see that these three parts belong together.
We got a feeling that Bo-Kaap for the most part only are the colorful houses and that it is this part that needs to be protected. The newly developed part may have been more like the colorful part before but with the new high-rise buildings it has become separated from each other. It was difficult for us to really understand that the newer part once looked like the central parts of Bo-kaap. This may explain why so many people in Bo-Kaap are afraid of the changes that are happening and the fear of losing touch with the old structure. We can also see why this type of development can harm the neighborhood in a bigger picture, both for the residents but also for the tourists. Tourists are coming to Bo-Kaap to explore the culture and the colorful houses and mosques. They are not coming to Bo-Kaap to explore new high-rise buildings that look exactly the same as in many other cities around the world.
Apart from the fact that Bo-kaap feels like three different neighborhoods, Bo-kaap feels like different neighborhoods during day and night. As written before it is the businesses that contribute to this. With the lack of restaurants and other tourist attractions open and running during nighttime there is not much to do for people who are not residents in the area. As we can see this is something that has stayed the same for all years and Bo-Kaap has actually escaped gentrification on this part. However, we as tourists felt quite unsafe during nighttime with the lack of places to go. We also experienced that the neighborhood became somehow
more unsafe during night time because the township became more obvious when the tourists left the area.
6. Interviews
Through the interviews with Carl, Sarah and Aisha we got an insight into the daily life in Bo-Kaap and how the neighbourhood has changed over the years. This is their personal stories about how they experience the changing process that is happening. We have chosen to divide these results by two different topics that characterizes the changing process going on, this to make it more structured.
6.1 Gentrification
When interviewing all three respondents they all acknowledged that a changing process is going on in the Bo-Kaap neighborhood. Aisha says that
”The Bo-kaap was a Muslim area only, it was considered a slum area, now people have discovered that it is a very cool area, very central, now we have a bit of all types of people in the area, but it is still predominantly a Muslim area.”
They do however view the effects of this in different ways. Carl runs a business in the neighborhood while both Aisha and Sarah live in the neighborhood. So all three of the respondents have a connection to Bo-Kaap, but the views on how they look upon the process is different. The reason behind this could be that they are affected by it in different ways.
Both Sarah and Aisha have been personally affected by the changing process and they both problematize it, in some ways Carl is also doing this. He criticizes many of the big companies that want to develop the neighborhood.
”Many of the companies don’t respect the architecture of Bo-Kaap and want to build large skyscrapers that just aren’t suitable in this neighborhood”.
He does however first and foremost see the positive possibilities with the neighborhood changing and the growing flow of tourists. This is something that is benefitting his business, when renting out luxurious cars he is dependent on tourists and that the neighborhood is actively opening up for tourism. Although he is quite clear that he wishes that the community would be more open to tourism and the benefits that gentrification brings. He continues to say that
”It is almost like they would rather want criminality than tourism”.
As written earlier, both Sarah and Aisha problematize the changing process and during our interviews with them, they both share what they consider to be negative effects on the neighborhood. Housing prices in the neighborhood have gone up which has several effects. When the prices go up so does the pr operty tax which in some cases makes it difficult for people to stay there and they are forced to sell their homes. Aisha says that
”During the past fifteen years my property tax has been increased with 1 500 rand every month.”
They both argue that this may create possibilities for new people to relocate to the Bo-Kaap. Sarah pointed out to us that several of her neighbors have chosen to sell their homes to Europeans, with the South African rand being so weak. Houses can be bought at bargain prices for someone living in Europe and the economy that exists in many European countries. Sarah says that
”One of our old neighbors had no other possibility but to move. He and his wife had both grown up in the Bo-Kaap, but they could no longer afford to pay the property tax. Our new neighbors are from the Netherlands and only live here in Cape Town during the warm summer months.”
Many of these houses that are sold are then renovated and put on the online marketplace Airbnb (Pather, 2018). Both Aisha and Sarah criticized the increasing number of Airbnbs in
