La question du logement à Mandela City

(ex. Port Elizabeth)

MORANGE, Marianne, 2006, Paris, Karthala; Johannesburg, IFAS
ISBN: 2-84586-770-0
Coll. Hommes et sociétés; Collection directed by Jean Copans

[Book in French]

This work is based on a doctoral thesis in Urban Planning that was defended at the Institut Français d’Urbanisme in 2001. Twelve years after the abolition of apartheid, it offers a first evaluation on the choices made during the 1990s in this politically crucial field by public authorities who were unsure as to whether they should practice withdrawal or interventionism.

Through the case of Mandela city, this work analyses the ideological presuppositions and public discourses that contributed to shaping the myth of historical reversal: changing from a society of lodgers to a society of owners, from an era of public housing to that of housing privatisation; it shows the limitations of this model for the poor who are confined to informal settlements or other associative solutions, highlighting that urban centrality, access to employment and urban services remain important, particularly in divided cities. At a time when deregulation and privatisation are at their peak, when State poverty leads to State inaccessibility and confines housing research to the field of popular practices, South Africa constitutes as such an exceptional research laboratory, inviting us to reopen the debate ? that was ended too hastily – on the new modes of public intervention as regards housing.

Former student of the École Normale Supérieure of Fontenay Saint-Cloud, Marianne Morange holds the agrégation in Geography and a doctorate in Urban and Land Use Planning. She is a senior lecturer at the Geography Department of the University of Paris 13. Specialised in urban dynamics and public policies in South African cities, she has recently extended her research work to include security governance in Cape Town and work mobility among the poor, with a view to comparing cities of the South and the North.