Abstract
Orientation: Placemaking is a proclivity of cities to change space into place through zoning, naming and development into attractive, people-friendly landscapes where diverse, harmonious and sometimes contradicting amenities are coalesced to attract people.Research purpose: To establish the perceptions of the visitors on appeal, experience and safety of the Golden Mile of Durban.Motivation for the study: The study was motivated by availability of online reviews that remained unanalysed and did not aid decision-making.Research design, approach and method: Data were collected from 287 reviews sampled from the Golden Mile website. Qualitative analysis was performed on the data and categorised according to appeal, experience and safety associated with the Golden Mile.Main findings: The study found that placemaking is always work in progress as destinations strive for competitiveness and to avoid obsoletion. An overwhelming majority of visitors rated the Golden Mile as good to excellent on appeal, experience and safety. Some criticised the place as unsafe with a number of dilapidated buildings spoiling its appeal.Practical/managerial implications: Planners and tourism developers should factor the grass root approach to placemaking by increasing security and urging property owners to revamp their buildings, thus keeping with the image of the place.Contribution/value-add: The article emphasises the significance and value added by online visitors’ reviews in placemaking.
Highlights
The Golden Mile (Mile) of Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal is considered as one of South Africa’s most iconic public places (Cloete & Yusuf 2018) serving locals’ and visitors’ needs for open spaces (Open Streets 2017)
Elrahman and Asaad (2020) and Wesener et al (2020) argued in favour of multidisciplinary, participatory and grass roots design approaches to placemaking that consider the human dimensions of a place and inspire users to collectively (De Brito & Richards 2017:3) ‘reimagine and reinvent’ their public places as heartbeats of the community and its visitors
For 5-star rating, there were 145 reviews from 2014 to 2019, which formed 50.5% of the total sample. Of these 145 reviewers, 90 (62%) were from different parts of South Africa, 35% came from other parts of the world including America, Europe, India, United Arab Emirates, China, Australia and some parts of Africa and the remaining 3% did not include places of residence, as was the case with the study conducted by Kladou and Mavragani (2015) on Turkey and Istanbul using reviews from TripAdvisorTM
Summary
The Golden Mile (Mile) of Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal is considered as one of South Africa’s most iconic public places (Cloete & Yusuf 2018) serving locals’ and visitors’ needs for open spaces (Open Streets 2017). The development and upgrades currently underway are a deliberate and planned activity to make the Mile attractive (Kolas 2004) and ‘take Durban to the world’, (Matema 2018:1) by turning it into a place where ‘South Africa, if not the world, will rendezvous’ (Durban Point Waterfront 2020). This development will be made up of seven precincts including the completed promenade (recreation, residential, warehousing, harbour entrance, pedestrian access points and transport node) that will be thrown together to make the place as competitive as Copacabana in Rio, Bondi Beach and Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast of Australia (De Villiers 2019; Durban Point Waterfront 2020; Naidoo 2019:1). Whilst the Durban Point Waterfront (2020) Master Plan does mention developers, stakeholders and investors, it was silent about the role to be played by users in the development and how their voices were factored in. De Brito and Richards (2017) and Elrahman and Asaad (2020) question the relevance of top-down placemaking approaches that do not consider the input of users. Elrahman and Asaad (2020) and Wesener et al (2020) argued in favour of multidisciplinary, participatory and grass roots design approaches to placemaking that consider the human dimensions of a place and inspire users to collectively (De Brito & Richards 2017:3) ‘reimagine and reinvent’ their public places as heartbeats of the community and its visitors. Toolis (2017) and Wesener et al (2020) regarded collective approaches as critical to placemaking as they allow users to reclaim public places through their voices
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