A mall for all? Race and public space in post-apartheid Cape Town

A mall for all? Race and public space in post-apartheid Cape Town

[SHS:GEO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography

Cape Town

mall

post-apartheid

public space

publicization

race

This article analyses post-apartheid public spaces through social and spatial practices at the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront mall in Cape Town. Our empirical evidence suggests that these public spaces involve much more than just consumption patterns, as they sustain and support novel ways of asserting social identities in a new political situation. These changes are, however, quite complex and fraught with ambivalence. Consequently, we scrutinize how race is staged in that space, and how racial diversity produces various kinds of boundaries. We then argue that these urban practices lead us to an understanding of the precarious balance between private and public spaces. We propose the notion of `publicization' -- the process whereby private spaces acquire a more public dimension.

Houssay-Holzschuch, Myriam

Teppo, Annika

Cultural Geographies

ISSN:1474-4740

2009

ENG

article in peer-reviewed journal

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00400561

DOI: 10.1177/1474474009105052

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/40/05/61/PDF/351.pdf