Abstract
Residential gated communities have become a distinctive feature of urban landscapes throughout the globe. There are various subjective and structural motivations for their presence such as the fear of crime, globalisation, and neoliberal urbanism however in South African cities they have been gravely critiqued for serving as a façade concealing elitism and privilege resulting in a neo-apartheid where society is divided based on class. Equally, questions have been raised around the benefits of living in a gated community, including the lifestyle they provide for their communities, and what these spaces represent in a democratic setting. This study moves beyond the universal study of residential gated developments from a solely physical lens to a critical subjective sociological lens. It does this by analysing the everyday lived experience of living in a gated community and unpacks the concepts of social cohesion and ubuntu at a micro-society scale. This perspective is important because current literature and studies on social cohesion and ubuntu in the South Africa tend to narrowly focus on the state’s responsibility in realising social cohesion and ubuntu that undermines the role of local communities at the neighbourhood scale to contribute to or hamper this vision. The study is qualitative and applies an interpretivist view using a phenomenological case study of two middle-class gated developments namely, Pebble Creek Residential Estate and Bushwillow Park Estate in Greenstone Hill situated in Johannesburg, South Africa. The data collection process was three-fold; i) semi-structured interviews with twenty-two participants including the residents, domestic workers, security personnel, the ward councillor and city planning officials, ii) site observations to observe the social interactions among residents in common spaces and places within the gated developments and, iii) documentation review of public and private documentation and policies such as rules and regulations and municipal policies relating to gated developments. A thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data.
The study found that the communities reflect both individualistic and communitarian qualities and while residents do not move into a gated community with the intention to search for a sense of community, the social order and control via security and safety positively impacted on residents’ desire to interact with one another, as it generated trust in the community. In addition, social interactions among residents began as a result of chance encounters and it was observed that these would develop into meaningful social ties mainly with direct neighbours as opposed to the whole community. The research
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also revealed that the social environment in gated communities is both complex and multi-dimensional, while the space provides a platform for racial and cultural diversity to co-exist in the post-apartheid space, race is significant when explaining cohesion and ubuntu within these spaces. The study also indicated that there is a complex relationship between post- apartheid reconciliation speech and lived everyday realities; this was observed in the attitudes and behaviours of the participants, and while these spaces provide their communities with a good quality lifestyle, the social realities (such as prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping) within the broader South African community filter through into the social environment within the gates. This also applied to how the space within the gated community permitted and prohibited certain cultural and religious celebrations and these findings contributed to a discussion on the experiences of the black middle class and their sense of belonging and identity formulation within these spaces. This was further observed in how the homeowners’ associations (HOA) managed and regulated the homogeneity of these spaces that is sustained through rules that determine social behaviours that are acceptable or not by limiting expressions of individuality within the community. Furthermore, the common spaces also played a role in facilitating social interactions; however, the facilities in these spaces were orientated towards children. As a result, adults were observed less frequently in these spaces. While social cohesion and ubuntu in the communities are found to have not reached a culmination point or a desired state, the thesis concludes by proposing a trans-urbanity conceptual framework that considers the social, mental, and physical spaces of these communities to be considered by property developers, urban planners, homeowners’ associations and residents of these communities in the fulfilment of social cohesion and ubuntu in this urban setting, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. It calls for the need to forge new approaches to urbanism in South Africa and a new way of thinking about the production of spaces and the meanings and lived experiences that are realised from its production.