Vernacular Regeneration: Low-income Housing, Private Policing and Urban Transformation in Inner-city Johannesburg

Urban regeneration is currently taking place in inner-city Johannesburg. This
book presents an alternative, multi-layered account for reading the process of
urban change and renewal.
The provision of social and affordable housing and the spread of private
security is explored through the lenses of neoliberal urbanism, gentrification,
the privatisation of public space and revanchist policing. This book interrogates
these concepts and challenges their assumptions based on new qualitative and
ethnographic evidence emerging out of Johannesburg. Dated concepts in Critical
Urban Studies are re-evaluated and the book calls for an alternative, adaptable
approach, focusing on how we develop a vocabulary and creative understanding
of urban regeneration.
This book is an outstanding contribution to theoretical and comparative
approaches to understanding cities and processes of urban change. It offers
practical insights and experiences which will be of considerable use to practitioners, policy-makers and urban planning students.