“Woodstock was a ‘lekka’ place”: neighbourhood gentrification and generic-ification in a South African city

Gentrification-induced displacement is an increasing concern in South Africa, heightened by memories of and viewed as akin to the social and spatial engineering practices of the apartheid-era. While South African urban geographers were initially optimistic about the prospects of economic growth and job creation linked to gentrification, the reality is proving radically different for many communities–such as Cape Town’s inner-city Woodstock neighbourhood. Here, residents face pressures of dual-marginalisation arising from the inflationary pressures of gentrifiers investing in certain areas and resultant exclusionary “generic-ification” of the space, alongside growing in-migration of poorer African migrants and displacement of previous residents into overcrowded areas. These competing processes necessitate an understanding of the hitherto overlooked “micro-geographies” of gentrification and “generic-ifcation”, and focus on the street level dynamics of (counter)gentrification that are integral to discussions about the (un)just city.