HSD: Remaking the Apartheid City

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SBE-0527667Patrick HellerBrown UniversityThis project will use state-of-the-art Geographical Information System (GIS) and spatial analysis methods in conjunction with extensive qualitative field research to study the impact of infrastructural development in the post-apartheid period in South Africa's three high-density megacities: Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban. This project addresses a central question--if the South African apartheid city was planned for segregation, can the post-apartheid city be planned for integration? An interdisciplinary team of social, physical and spatial scientists brings a multidimensional perspective to investigate the transformative effects of planned intervention in a highly uncertain and unequal environment. The South African experience provides a critical test case of the ability of a high capacity state to be an agent of change, capable of reversing the accumulated inequalities of the past. Mixed methods research will be conducted in two stages over three years. The first stage will involve collection and analysis of spatial data on infrastructural development, economic development, and racial segregation from the three megacities. Data will be collected from 1991 - as a baseline that marks the height of segregation and the end of legalized apartheid - to the present. For each of the three cities, georeferenced census data will be combined with infrastructural, economic, and racial data to produce maps at three time points of racial and economic segregation. Local areas of significant integration and exclusion will be identified, which will be further studied in the second stage, a qualitative analysis. This qualitative research component includes case studies of new areas of integration and new areas of exclusion and focus groups (with consultants, planners, politicians, and activists) to discuss the effects of four macro variables: historical legacies, globalization, elite power and governance regime. Broader Impacts. This project builds and nurtures an interdisciplinary team and community of researchers. The research team brings together a range of disciplines and the design of the project requires cross-disciplinary integration of methods, concepts and perspectives. The project will develop a detailed, spatially referenced data set on the social geography of the post-apartheid city that will be accessible and publicly available. The research findings will speak to a wide range of scientists in the areas of development, democratization, urban studies, race and ethnic studies and physical and environmental planning. Community leaders, city officials and politicians will be involved in and benefit from the data and results of this project. The project data set, results, and GIS maps of the cities will be posted on a website. Results will also be diffused broadly both in the US and in South Africa through a series of workshops, papers, and a manuscript. Finally, graduate students at Brown, MIT and in South Africa will be offered a wide range of hands-on interdisciplinary research opportunities, and students at Brown and MIT will benefit from a course based on the results of this project.