A Sensitive City: Ethnography of the Role of Urban Practitioners in Re-Imagining the City of Cape Town

Abstract

"More than two decades into changing apartheid spatial planning, the promise of a more inclusive city is still palpable in the growing interest to re-imagine the city of Cape Town. This process is not an easy one as the often-diverging interests and opinions with regards to urban developments are repeatedly further polarized by the consensus-seeking procedures of public participation. This ethnographic account, based on three months of fieldwork in the Cape Town, explores the process or re-imagining the city. Yet, historical trajectories determine current conditions and constraints in establishing better alternatives when it comes to controversies regarding the ability to intervene, shape and participate in the unfolding idea of the city. Dealing with conflict as inherent to society, democracy and thus also public participation seems a requisite in finding a common ground. The urban landscape in Cape Town can be characterized as highly political and sensitive and demonstrates that it isn t just the physical form of the city that asks to be re-imagined, but rather highlight the demand of the city to come to terms with one self and re-imagining past and emerging relationships. The urban practitioner has come to play a key role in this process as the facilitator of the imagination whilst also being concerned with reassessing their own practices."