Walking In Johannesburg

In her book walking between slums and skyscrapers, Huang describes two forms of dual compression local compression and global compression. Huang integrates dual compression with recent and past infrastructure project and the devastating cultural effects. Global compression’s role in Hong Kong has erased large communities “Rendering old communities obsolete” (Walking between slums and skyscrapers). Hong Kong, one of the many examples globally, has experienced a change in the city’s infrastructure to accommodate international businesses and create a utopia, thus creating local compression. Similar to the authority that destroyed Radio Row in New York City in order to build the World Trade Center, Hong Kong’s government has complete control over the land and distributes land as they please. In the citizen’s case, there is no board to plead their case concerning eminent domain to obtain space. Instead of land owners competing against each other, Hong Kong citizens compete with state owned land and transnational space. The space many of the inhabitants have lived in for decades has been displaced for industrial and cooperate business needs.  

The Apartheid, a law of discrimination in South Africa that segregated blacks from whites but post-Apartheid proves to be a catastrophe. In terms of space and latent opportunity, black families are behind in education, infrastructure and economic wealth. These issues have created social exclusion and politic unrest. The people who live in townships are marked as thieves, criminals, filthy and beasts. Furthermore, the township people are alienated from the right to their own city. The land that use to be owned by white families has now become mostly black. Although everyone in South Africa have equal rights, unstable low-wage careers prevents township people from joining the white middle-class families. Fear has dispersed the white families in Johannesburg, fear of violent retaliation has moved whites into private communities. In Lindsay Bremner’s journal article Bounded spaces: demographics anxieties in post-apartheid Johannesburg, states “The wall is, in a sense, the figure of our democracy, a reminder of the malignant object, the terror within”. The past still haunts the township people, seemingly a nasty past they can’t seem to escape. The city is structured to service white middle-class workers (managerial). Unfortunately township people only can find work in the service sector (house maid or janitor), working in private communities. Buildings glowing with lights and clean floors followed by the new elites due to global compression, excluding the local inhabitants.

Township people can’t afford the cost of living and have become fluaners and dupes of their own city. The limited land and private space creates a yearning for personal space causing sadness and or regret. In the journal article Rescaling White Space in Post-apartheid Johannesburg, Andy Clarno asserts that the city of Johannesburg is still segregated and the government was fixed to keep whites in power. Transformation of the government to provide for the township people will take decades due to how expensive it is to upgrade infrastructure.  Media covers up the ugly truth about Johannesburg and omits any issues about the city’s people fighting against each other for space.