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Caught Between the Market and Transformation: Urban Regeneration and the Provision of Low-Income Housing in Inner-City Johannesburg

Social Housing and Urban Renewal

ISBN: 978-1-78714-125-4, eISBN: 978-1-78714-124-7

Publication date: 7 August 2017

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter provides a critical examination of the urban renewal process currently taking place in inner-city Johannesburg. It evaluates the effects of an approach to providing social housing which blends commercial, market-based practices with state intervention and regulation and discusses the implications these competing imperatives have for the area and academic understandings of urban renewal.

Methodology/approach

Findings are based on a qualitative research process, carried out over 9 months in inner-city Johannesburg. Research involved interviews with property developers, housing providers, government officials, and tenants living in renovated social and affordable housing developments.

Findings

The process is contradictory and overburdened, and attempts to fulfill competing goals and agendas. Some developmental ambitions are being realized as the supply of social and affordable housing is expanding. However, the benefits are limited, as poor communities are being displaced and, in many cases, commercial concerns trump social and developmental considerations.

Social implications

Findings highlight the ways in which a range of political circumstances, policy decisions, and spatial conditions combine to create an approach to renewal which is neither entirely neoliberal nor developmental. The case study complicates narratives which stress the global dominance of neoliberal approaches to urban renewal and demonstrates that alternative developmental ambitions exist alongside commercial practices.

Originality/value

The chapter highlights the ambiguity and hybridity of localized approaches to housing provision. In doing so it adds nuance to debates about urban processes around the globe and draws attention back to the uncertainty, agency, and diversity which are continuously shaping urban societies.

Keywords

Citation

Mosselson, A. (2017), "Caught Between the Market and Transformation: Urban Regeneration and the Provision of Low-Income Housing in Inner-City Johannesburg", Watt, P. and Smets, P. (Ed.) Social Housing and Urban Renewal, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 351-390. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78714-124-720171010

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited