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Towson University Office of Graduate Studies TOWSON UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES COMBATING SOCIO-SPATIAL POLARIZATION IN A GLOBALIZING ENVIRONMENT: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE TENSION BETWEEN PRO- GROWTH AND PRO-POOR POLICIES IN THE HOUSING PLAN OF CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA by Michael Strong A thesis Presented to the faculty of Towson University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Department of Geography and Environmental Planning Towson University Towson, Maryland 21252 May, 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I offer special thanks to my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Charles Schmitz. Not only does he deserve recognition for his work advising me on this project and giving me the idea to pursue this topic, but he also deserves recognition for his encouragement in my decision to change graduate programs and focus on geography. For that, I am very grateful. I would also like to thank Dr. Virginia Thompson and Dr. James Smith for serving on my committee. Both have provided valuable insight to this project, introducing me to authors I would have missed on my own and insisting that my writing be the best possible. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for listening to my thoughts on world cities ad infinitum. Their tireless ears helped me through the toughest paragraphs. iii ABSTRACT COMBATING SOCIO-SPATIAL POLARIZATION IN A GLOBALIZING ENVIRONMENT: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE TENSION BETWEEN PRO-GROWTH AND PRO-POOR POLICIES IN THE HOUSING PLAN OF CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA Michael Strong Cities across the developing world are caught between the demands of growth- oriented globalization and pro-poor policies aimed to improve the livelihoods of impoverished residents. For world cities, like Cape Town, the dynamics of world city formation, especially the impact of socio-spatial polarization, complicates the relationship between growth and redistribution. Cape Town’s legacy as an apartheid city further exacerbates the situation. Cape Town’s government believes it can achieve both a growth agenda and a redistribution agenda to overcome the segregation inherited from the apartheid era while dealing with the socio-spatial polarization that occurs during world city formation. A textual analysis of the language used in the city’s Integrated Development Plan and Integrated Housing Plan, however, shows the city favors growth over redistribution. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES....................................................................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................................................ vii ABBREVIATIONS USED THROUGHOUT THE TEXT.............................................................. viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................4 The Nature of World City Formation..................................................................................................................4 The Character of Socio-Spatial Polarization in the World City............................................................ 12 Defining and Identifying Social Polarization....................................................................................... 12 Defining and Identifying Spatial Polarization ..................................................................................... 20 Housing Markets in Developing World Cities.............................................................................................. 25 The Situation of a Globalizing Cape Town.................................................................................................... 31 Apartheid in South Africa............................................................................................................................ 32 Cape Town as a World City........................................................................................................................ 37 The Emergence of Pro-Poor and Pro-Growth Initiatives ................................................................ 44 Pro-Poor Policies at Work: Cape Town’s Housing Market ................................................................... 50 Research Questions................................................................................................................................................. 55 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 56 CHAPTER FOUR: DISCUSSION....................................................................................................... 60 Describing the Pro-Poor and Pro-Growth Agendas ................................................................................. 60 The Vision of Former Executive Mayor Dan Plato............................................................................ 60 The Vision of Current Executive Mayor Patricia de Lille................................................................ 67 The Vision of City Manager Achmat Ebrahim..................................................................................... 69 A Textual Analysis of Strategic Focus Area Five: Integrated Human Settlements........................ 72 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE RESEARCH .................................................. 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................................... 88 CURRICULUM VITA........................................................................................................................... 97 v LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Percentage Contribution to GVA by Economic Sector………………………..39 2.2 Cape Town Housing Projects………………………………………………….54 4.1 Strategic Focus Areas of the Cape Town Municipal Government…………….61 4.2 Pro-Growth Language Used by Former Mayor Dan Plato…………………….62 4.3 Pro-Poor Language Used by Former Mayor Dan Plato………………………..65 4.4 Three-Year Comparison of Funding Allocation to Housing Development…....74 4.5 Target Goals for Various Housing Projects…………………………………....79 vi LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 GaWC’s Roster of World Cities in 2010…………………………………………7 2.2 Decentralized Economic Nodes in Cape Town…………………………………43 2.3 Location of Fringe Municipalities at Consolidation………………………….....46 2.4 Cape Town’s Central City Improvement District……………………………….48 2.5 Location of Impoverished Townships………………………………………......51 4.1 Lone Toilet in Backyard Community…………………………………………...78 vii ABBREVIATIONS USED THROUGHOUT THE TEXT ANC African National Congress BLA black local authority BNG Breaking New Ground CBD central business district CCID Center City Improvement District CCDS Center City Development Strategy CCT City of Cape Town CTP Cape Town Partnership FDI foreign direct investment FIRE finance, insurance, real estate GaWC Globalization and World Cities Research Network GGP gross geographic product GVA geographic value added IDP Five-Year Integrated Development Plan IHP Five-Year Integrated Housing Plan IMF International Monetary Fund IRT integrated rapid transit system LA local authority LGDB Local Government Demarcation Board R rand RSA Republic of South Africa SACN South African Cities Network SAP structural adjustment program SFA strategic focus area UN United Nations URP Presidential Urban Renewal Programme WLA white local authority viii 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Cities across the developing world are caught between the demands of globalization development priorities and the implementation of strong domestic policies. The response of urban centers to globalization has long fascinated researchers (Hall 1966; Braudel 1984; Abu-Lughod 1989; Taylor 2004a). In the early 1980s, Friedmann and Wolff (1982) announced a research agenda to explore the impact of globalization on urban centers and the process of urbanization. The “world city hypothesis” (Friedmann 1986) emerged as a prominent explanation for how urban centers respond to globalization. Friedmann’s (1986) world city hypothesis links changes in urban structure to globalization. World cities represent nodes of articulation in the production process while serving as sites of capital accumulation. The degree to which a world city matches Friedmann’s description determines the degree of influence globalization has on the city’s urban structure. As global command centers, the economic priorities of world cities direct the structure of the world economy (Sassen 2001). Thus, the relationship between world cities and globalization is highly interactive, each proving to be formative for the structure of the other (Friedmann and Wolff 1982). World city formation—the process by which a particular city acquires world city status—results in increasing polarization (Friedmann 1986; Sassen 2001). Within world cities, financial resources concentrate in particular places resulting in the spatial segregation of the financial resources. Social segregation also occurs as low-income residents find themselves unable to access the high-income centers of financial 2 concentration. Socio-spatial polarization (the formation of social class structures and geographic locations into a dichotomy of polar opposites) increases as world city formation proceeds: the greater the degree of financial agglomeration, the greater the impact of socio-spatial polarization on urban morphology.
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