Privatisation of Security in Sub-Saharan African Cities: Urban Dynamics and New Forms of Governance (2003-2006)
The aim of this programme is to understand perceptions on security and criminality in the way they relate to actual forms of privatisation of security services and public space within a selected number of African cities, in order to assess their potential impact on urban sustainable development. Highlighting the political, social and economic processes underlining spatial transformations, this programme examines implications in termes of urban planning, land management and local government. International comparison based on a common methodological framework combining GIS and qualitative methods defined for the programme.
A workshop in the Johannesburg City Council took place in August 2004. A colloquium held by the Gated Communities International network is scheduled for February 2005 in Pretoria. Finally, an international dissemination conference will be held at the end of 2005 beginning of 2006.
Who?
Coordinated by Elisabeth Peyroux (Géotropiques laboratory, University of Paris X) and Delphine Sangodeyi (Institut Français d’Urbanisme), this research programme involves 19 researchers from six countries, including Sophie Didier, Marianne Morange, Claire Bénit. The research team is working in collaboration with a GIS station coordinated by Nathalie Paralieu (HSRC).
This programme is the result of a partnership between IFRA-Ibadan, IFRA-Nairobi and IFAS-reasearch, and involves a continental network including the Geography Departments of the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Cape Town, Namibia, Paris X and XIII, IFU, ENS Lyon, the CEAN of Bordeaux, the HSRC, the UN Habitat and the Johannesburg City Council.
Three trainee honours students undertook a qualitative study on Cape Town and Johannesburg. IFAS-Research hosted a post-doctoral bursary holder, financed by the three French Institutes, who assumed GIS coordination and modelling.
Where?
A comparative study on enclosures and privatisation of security means in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.
How?
Field trips were carried out on thematics covering various aspects of the security issue:
- Johannesburg, Claire Bénit: Community policing implementation in the residential suburbs, Existing partnerships between the police, the community and private security companies, Modes of community structuring;
- Johannesburg, Elisabeth Payroux: Urban regeneration projects with a security elements in the centre and northern suburbs (City Improvement Districts, Business Improvement Districts);
- Cape Town, Marianne Morange and Sophie Didier: Residential CIDs, Territorial identities and security responses in the “white” suburbs;
- Cape Town, Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch: Public space evolution;
- Johanneburg and Sao Paulo, Delphine Sangodeyi: Residential enclosure, Privatisation of security, Inclusion and exclusion phenomena and Spatial configurations;
- Johannesburg and Durban, Laurent Fourchard: Privatisation of security and territorialisation;
- Maputo, Fabrice Folio (University of Reunion): Urban violence, the development of gated communities and the relations between criminality and the privatisation of security
Dr Seyi Fabiyi (University of Ibadan) spent four months at IFAS as a post-doctoral fellow to conduct a quantitative and qualitative analystical work on the orad closure phenomenon in Johannesburg based on a Geographic Information System (GIS).
t the phase of GIS comparison and modelling of Johannesburg, Ibadan and Nairobi jointly with Nathalie Paralieu, Associate-Researcher with the Post Graduate School of Agriculture and Rural Development of the University of Pretoria.
Publication:
Elisabeth Peyroux, 2005, “‘Sorting Society Through Gates’: A Controversial Form of Crime Prevention in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg”, Trialog, 87(4), p. 31-35. Accessible here.
Trialog 89: https://www.trialog-journal.de/en/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TRIALOG-89-Controlling-Urban-Space-The-Rise-of-New-Actors-Vol.-2_2006-scan56FD.pdf