The (Post-)Apartheid City: Applying Hoyt's Sector Theory to Cape Town, South Africa, Poster 9

Space reflects and reinforces inequality. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa, where the social, economic, and racial divisions of apartheid were (and remain) spatially constructed. The ‘apartheid city’ is... [ view full abstract ]

Space reflects and reinforces inequality. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa, where the social, economic, and racial divisions of apartheid were (and remain) spatially constructed. The ‘apartheid city’ is perhaps the most extreme example of social engineering through spatial manipulation—the ultimate paradigm for urban division and exclusion. Since the end of apartheid in 1991, reintegration has largely not occurred; South African cities remain profoundly segregated and unequal despite concerted government efforts to extend development opportunities to the urban poor. Economist Homer Hoyt’s classic sectoral model of internal city structure (1939) resembles and potentially influenced the apartheid city form, based on racial hierarchy, implemented by the oppressive regime. Contemporary socio-spatial research demonstrates that the legacy of 'grand apartheid' persists, presently manifested in the urban fabric of Cape Town. While the city is ostensibly undergoing a deracialization of space, the apartheid order remains resilient despite transition because intraurban mobility is now simply determined by wealth. Evidently, through the lens of sector theory, the sectoral structure of spatial segregation imposed by the apartheid regime permeates the city of Cape Town to this day; hence, apartheid geographies—and their associated forms of racial inequality—have persisted and adapted in the ‘new’ South Africa.