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URBANISM: UNCONSCIOUS
GEOGRAPHIES OF SEGREGATION
IN CAPE TOWN BY STEFAN VAN
BILJON
Cooper Union (USA) / Instructor: Diana Agrest and Lydia Xynogala (2013). Irwin
With the enactment of the Group Areas Act in 1950, South African cities were carved
into racially segregated sectors by urban planners and politicians. Apartheid was no
isolated project, however. Long before bulldozers bit the soil, lines dividing
Capetonians from the elements, and from one another, were drawn in the sand. The
idea that the city’s divisions are rooted as much in the soil, as they are in social
An outpost that started life as a seventeenth century refreshment station for ships en
route to the East, grew into a colony, and eventually a nation. Colonial land
In Cape Town’s urbanism, isolation and appropriation are strategies used to regulate
residence). The tactics used to execute these strategies are architectural in their
power to separate insiders from outsiders. Walls, moats, gates, towers, islands,
esplanades, buffers, mazes, satellites and grids have been used as spatial weapons
The strategies of isolation and appropriation emerged from two key structures of the
early Dutch East India Company settlement at Table Bay – a Slave Lodge, and a
productive Garden.
At the Slave Lodge bodies were disciplined for economic exploitation through a
suffocating confinement, slaves were housed near work sites where their movements
through the geographical isolation of Cape Town’s working populace on the low-
lying Cape Flats. This containment region is as easy to monitor as it to lock down by
severing the umbilical transport lines that connect its isolated neighborhoods to
As the lifeblood of a precarious settlement, the Dutch East India Company’s Garden
was a constant source of consternation and required jealous guard from the
to a persistent fear of violence associated with “other” poorer elements of the city’s
population. Cape Town’s economic outsiders remain trapped outside the fences of
These two early structures (the Company Garden and the Slave Lodge) represent in
microcosmic form the essential operational templates for larger urban projects
Fortified Garden and the Guarded Lodge, at metropolitan and regional scales, in
violent episodes that have shaped Cape Town’s urban morphology since the mid-
projected into these same patterns to nourish a tradition of military urbanism in Cape
Town.
dumping ground”) shown here as a sunken zone within the landscape (black). A wall
of industry and transport infrastructure (grey) isolates the Cape Flats from the rest of
the metropolis.
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Topographical information used to generate contour lines were extracted from the
Version 002) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) in ArcGIS, using data obtained
from NASA via the online Reverb|ECHO portal. ASTER data used to generate the
imagery is cited as per the Land Processed Distributed Active Archive Center (LP
of METI and NASA. The ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V002 was retrieved
from the online Reverb|ECHO tool, courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov.
Citation for dataset: METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry of Japan) and
Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). Version 002. NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
DAAC, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls,
page http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.002.
Appropriation: Displacement of Khoi transhumance by expansion of Dutch freehold
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Topographical information used to generate contour lines were extracted from the
Version 002) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) in ArcGIS, using data obtained
from NASA via the online Reverb|ECHO portal. ASTER data used to generate the
imagery is cited as per the Land Processed Distributed Active Archive Center (LP
of METI and NASA. The ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V002 was retrieved
from the online Reverb|ECHO tool, courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov.
Citation for dataset: METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry of Japan) and
Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). Version 002. NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
DAAC, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls,
page http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.002.
Phantom of Khoi transhumance pattern (black) superimposed on Dutch agricultural
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Version 002) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) in ArcGIS, using data obtained
from NASA via the online Reverb|ECHO portal. ASTER data used to generate the
imagery is cited as per the Land Processed Distributed Active Archive Center (LP
of METI and NASA. The ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V002 was retrieved
from the online Reverb|ECHO tool, courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov.
Citation for dataset: METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry of Japan) and
Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). Version 002. NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
DAAC, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls,
page http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.002.
Appropriation: Van Riebeeck’s Hedge excluding Khoi from the nutrient-rich soils of
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Base drawing for layout of Table Bay settlement with fort redrawn from: Pistorius et
al. 1656 [a map redrawn from a 1956 map of the settlement at Table Bay, Algemeen
Rijksarchief VEL 820]. With graphic scale. In: Pistorius, P.; Bezzoli, M.; Marks, R.;
Kruger, M.; Harris, S. (2002) Texture and Memory – The Urbanism of District Six
(Second Edition). Cape Town: The Sustainable Urban and Housing Development
Topographical information used to generate contour lines were extracted from the
Version 002) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) in ArcGIS, using data obtained
from NASA via the online Reverb|ECHO portal. ASTER data used to generate the
imagery is cited as per the Land Processed Distributed Active Archive Center (LP
of METI and NASA. The ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V002 was retrieved
from the online Reverb|ECHO tool, courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov.
Citation for dataset: METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry of Japan) and
Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). Version 002. NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
DAAC, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls,
page http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.002.
Left: Economic Prisons – slums of District One (left) and District Six (right),
convenient sources of labour, located near harbour building sites. Right: Guarded
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Base drawing (grid layout, topography and street blocks of Cape Town circa
1856/1861 with Castle of Good Hope) redrawn from: Pistorius et al. 1862 [a map
redrawn from a 1862 survey of Cape Town by William Barclay Snow, Cape Town City
Council Map Collection). With graphic scale. In: Pistorius, P.; Bezzoli, M.; Marks, R.;
Kruger, M.; Harris, S. (2002) Texture and Memory – The Urbanism of District Six
(Second Edition). Cape Town: The Sustainable Urban and Housing Development
Left: Suburban flight – property owners vacate burgeoning Districts One and Six, to
Right: The creation of central Cape Town’s slums (circa 1860s) through real estate
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Base drawing (grid layout, topography and street blocks of Cape Town circa 1860
with Castle of Good Hope) redrawn from: Pistorius et al. 1862 [a map redrawn from
a 1862 survey of Cape Town by William Barclay Snow, Cape Town City Council Map
Collection). With graphic scale. In: Pistorius, P.; Bezzoli, M.; Marks, R.; Kruger, M.;
Harris, S. (2002) Texture and Memory – The Urbanism of District Six (Second Edition).
Cape Town: The Sustainable Urban and Housing Development Research Unit,
slum districts (One and Six) near the harbour. The plague provided a pretext for the
forced removal of Cape Town’s black population to the first racially segregated
township at Ndabeni. Top Right: Black and Coloured plague victims rounded up and
contained at Ebenezer Road and the central railway station. Bottom: Black and
Coloured plague victims removed from city centre and quarantined at the Ndabeni
DRAWING SOURCES/CREDITS:
Base drawing (grid layout and street blocks of Cape Town circa 1901) redrawn from:
Pistorius et al. 1897 [a map redrawn from W Thom, Cape Town City Council Map
Collection). With graphic scale. In: Pistorius, P.; Bezzoli, M.; Marks, R.; Kruger, M.;
Harris, S. (2002) Texture and Memory – The Urbanism of District Six (Second Edition).
Cape Town: The Sustainable Urban and Housing Development Research Unit,
Bickford-Smith, V.; Van Heyningen, E.; Worden, N. (1999) Cape Town in the Twentieth
Century – An Illustrated Social History. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, p. 20.
Chain gang construction teams (circa 1848-1854) connect the isolated Cape Town
with the mineral riches of the South African interior. Hard roads skirt the windswept
Cape Flats, effectively priming the former coastal plain to become apartheid’s human
Topographical information used to generate contour lines were extracted from the
Version 002) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) in ArcGIS, using data obtained
from NASA via the online Reverb|ECHO portal. ASTER data used to generate the
imagery is cited as per the Land Processed Distributed Active Archive Center (LP
of METI and NASA. The ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model V002 was retrieved
from the online Reverb|ECHO tool, courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
http://reverb.echo.nasa.gov.
Citation for dataset: METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry of Japan) and
Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM). Version 002. NASA EOSDIS Land Processes
DAAC, USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls,
page http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.002.
Stefan van Biljon is a South African architectural designer and artist. He received his
M.Arch II degree from The Cooper Union, and his M.Arch (Professional) from the
University of Cape Town. Stefan’s work focuses on discovering the unseen forces
that shape cities, through drawing and personal narrative. He currently lives and
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