Contested Inner-City Gentrification: Evidence From the Bo-Kaap, Cape Town

Research on gentrification is dominated by scholarship in the urban Global North but of increasing relevance to Southern cities. The novel contribution of this paper is to expand literature and debates around the contested nature of gentrification in the urban Global South through an examination of urban change and restructuring in the environment of South Africa. The neo-liberal policy context of postapartheid South Africa provides the setting for the progressive advance of gentrification in Cape Town’s historic inner-city neighbourhood of BoKaap. The study draws upon primarily the findings from detailed semistructured interviews which were conducted in 2023-2024 with a crosssection of stakeholders. It is revealed that the city of Cape Town authorities have adopted a growth at all costs mentality which provides the base for much of the area’s development trajectory and restructuring. The demand for growth premises the vision and purpose of the local government and supersedes meanings of community. Gentrification processes are purposefully supported by the state in a fashion similar to those documented in cities of the Global North. Powerful property developers determine where and what gets built in inner-city Cape Town, including in the space of Bo-Kaap. It is argued current gentrification trends in the Bo-Kaap are reinforcing socioeconomic polarization and confirming it as a defining feature of gentrification processes in the urban Global South.