Meth, P.J. orcid.org/0000-0002-2273-5134 and Buthelezi, S. (2017) New housing/new crime? Changes in safety, governance and everyday incivilities for residents relocated from informal to formal housing at Hammond's Farm, eThekwini. Geoforum, 82. pp. 77-86. ISSN 0016-7185
Abstract
New state-subsidised ‘RDP’ housing in South Africa aims to provide former informally-housed residents with a better quality of life, stronger community and decreased levels of crime. Despite the state’s ambitions, this process is highly contradictory, increases in safety occurring alongside rising incivilities and tensions. This paper contributes to an emerging set of debates on the socio-political outcomes of state-led housing interventions in the global South, through an illustration of the limitations of efforts to produce ‘safe neighbourhoods’ in contexts of high unemployment alongside high levels of violence. The conceptual framing of ‘Southern Criminology’ (Carrington et al, 2015), centres the significance of histories of colonial and post-colonial violence, inequality, hybrid governance and justice practices, as well as informal living, and is employed to analyse recently housed residents’ experiences of crime and safety in South Africa, in a north eThekwini settlement, Hammond’s Farm. Recognising these ‘Southern’ factors, the paper argues that movement into new formal housing, is typified by significant material changes at the home and neighbourhood scale which foster privacy and safety, formalised governance practices and (partial) improvements in policing services. These occur in conjunction with access to new leisure activities including alcohol consumption and ‘township life’ which alongside ongoing poverty foster urban incivilities. A ‘Southern Criminology’ perspective frames concluding questions about the nature of crime in contexts of urban change, which are persistently shaped by inequality and wider historical and structural factors, challenging the state’s aspirations to achieve crime reduction through housing.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Formal housing; urban change; crime; everyday incivilities; Southern Criminology; informal housing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Urban Studies & Planning (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number BRITISH ACADEMY (THE) SG133010 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 29 Mar 2017 13:21 |
Last Modified: | 24 Oct 2018 13:47 |
Published Version: | http://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.03.026 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.03.026 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:114215 |