Conflict urbanism: reflections on the role of conflict and peacebuilding in post-apartheid Johannesburg

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article seeks to critically engage theoretical frameworks of urban conflict through an analysis of selected conflictual topographies in post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. Johannesburg illustrates not only the coexistence of past and present in the built environment, and the dialectic between urban identity- and interest-based conflict but also the coexistence of antagonistic and agonistic spatial practices. Such understanding of conflict in the city suggests reimagining urban peacebuilding as an effort to maintain conflict in the city as a productive force.