“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.