[imagesource:here]

Last week Coligny (HERE), this week Maboneng.

We’re not the ones using the word ‘apartheid’, because the story over on Quartz comes with the headline “In their rush to become global, hipster-friendly cities risk creating spatial apartheid”.

See hipsters, look what you’ve done now.

They paint Maboneng as a hipster haven, with craft beers and wood-fired pizzas and smartphones for days, but let’s get to the apartheid bit:

Maboneng is a distinctly hipster “cultural time zone” or microspace. Its upmarket bars, fashionable restaurants, creative work spaces and loft-style apartments have more in common with its equivalents in Euro-America than less developed local areas adjacent to it…

The city’s core areas are occupied by the wealthy. Low-income residents are pushed to the urban peripheries in search of affordable housing…

We have seen this model before. It was called the apartheid city.

We’ll skip ahead a little to a definition of “global”:

A city is “global” if it consists of very particular types of cultural time zones: skyscrapers, cafes and malls which adhere to western notions of “modernity” and “development”. Global cultural time zones in global(ising) cities create a network of geographically disparate but culturally similar spaces that allow for certain types of socio-economic transactions…

And while the hipsters move in, others are pushed aside. “Development-induced” migration is a growing phenomenon in many cities like Shanghai. There, authorities are removing millions of low-income residents from prime real estate in their quest to become more “global”.

And what can be done to combat this:

City officials need to rely less on profit-driven, private developers and more on specific government policies to aggressively protect and create more low and middle-income housing in city centres.

Spatial and economic inequality have many drawbacks and may negatively impact growth. Inclusive growth can only be achieved by rejecting the apartheid/global city model.

Something to think about next time you snack on your kimchi and kombucha, hipsters.

[source:quartz]

[imagesource:streatnik]