“Slum” Upgrading in South Africa: Defamiliarising the Global Neighbourhood Aesthetic

Abstract

Grappling with South Africa’s processes of participatory urban development and bottom-up in-situ upgrading of informal settlements raises questions around the perception of neighborhoods. At the root of these questions is what has value, or is given value, in today’s climate of “desirable” urban landscapes. On the one hand, worth is added to (often imported) urban character which is deemed to foster the current trend toward globally competitive cities. On the other, worth is withheld from seemingly untidy, unsafe, unhealthy “slum” communities. This dichotomy becomes the core from which to explore the nature of aesthetic and its role in defining neighborhood within the context of urban in situ upgrading of informal settlements. This chapter’s underlying argument is therefore the need to defamiliarise the notions of both neighborhood and slum in the urban development process.