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A Neighborhood in Change

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A Neighborhood in Change A neighborhood in change A case study on gentrification in Bo-Kaap, Cape Town Emilia Lundqvist & Matilda Pettersson ​ ​ Stadsbyggnad, stadsutveckling och planering / Urban Development and Planning. Kandidatuppsats, 20 HP Vårterminen 2020 Handledare: Defne Kadioglu 1 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. 2 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. Keywords: Gentrification, Displacement, Defensible space, Community, Urban development ​ 3 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 3.2 Creating 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 10. Appendix.........................................................................................................................51 4 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 5 neighborhood to study in the concept of gentrification because the area mainly consists of small privatowned houses,
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