Process of renewal must include all residents of an area
WITH all the buzz around new business in Woodstock and Salt River, it’s easy to forget about the impact this can have on people who already live and work there.
My dictionary defines gentrification as “the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middleclass or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents.” It’s a clear conflict of interests. We want the city to be maintained in a good state, but when investment occurs it pushes up land values, which makes property unaffordable for many residents and business owners.
If people own property, they might benefit from increased values, but only if they want to move their home or shut down their business and sell the building, or if they rent the property to others. If they want to stay in the property themselves, they are saddled with increased rentals or property rates, and often this is what drives people out.
Cities always need areas where people with little or no income can survive; the challenge is how to accommodate them without spreading slums.
In effect what we do in Cape Town is create relocation camps – either deliberately in places like Blikkiesdorp (where residents of Woodstock’s Gympie Street were relocated to) or by default as residents create their own informal settlements. Those are the slums that grow as we redevelop and “clean up” other areas that were landing places for migrants or places where people grew up in poverty.
So the challenge is to figure out how rich and poor can co-exist with less unease.
Last week a group of CPUT design students came up with some thoughts on gentrification. In partnership with students of the Köln International School of Design in Germany, the Cape Town students interviewed and observed residents and business owners in Woodstock and the Fringe District.
The German students had looked at the process in the Berlin neighbourhood of Neukölln, and have created a globetrotting exhibition that will have Cape Town’s experience added to it, followed by Santiago in Chile.
What has emerged so far is more of an observation of what is happening than a strong set of recommendations; and to their credit, many of the students recognise that the first challenge is to overcome their own limitations in understanding how people react to change.
The German students found in Berlin that effects of gentrification can be felt before economic indicators such as rent price, household income and age distribution start to change.
Simply looking at changing shop fronts can provide clues about who is frequenting them, and a shift is obvious on the commercial strip of Woodstock and Salt River. While there are clearly many differences between Berlin and Cape Town, the students have found similar processes under way.
Gentrification of the Fringe, which is beginning to show similar signs, probably would not yet show up in economic indicators. But interviews by students show that already there is anxiety among locals, including those who call the streets their home.
Just as visual changes are signals to potential investors who might be attracted by a consciously cultivated hipster scene, they also produce discomfort among those who feel they won’t be welcome in the emerging culture. Even the World Design Capital is part of this threat.
If the student projects achieve nothing else, they will at least have given voice to some of the disenfranchised, as those interviewed were filmed and photographed with verbal and written impressions of what they are experienc- ing. Some of the proposed projects were aimed at finding ways to expand that voice.
The Berlin work included research into ways that people learned to fight their marginalisation, including the formation of co-operatives that helped them maintain a foothold in the face of rising housing costs. Resistance can take many forms, from passive determination to hanging on to a shrinking space, to aggressive attempts to undermine the increase in property values.
Perhaps now is the time, before communities in our gentrifying areas become polarised, to learn the lesson that has been eluding us: the value of diversity.
As these areas go through the first phases of what some will see as an invasion of galleries, hip cafés and the nebulous creative class, what matters is recognition of different priorities, and a search for shared interests that can turn threats into opportunities.
@carbonsmart