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Open-plan suburb to fortified suburb: home fortification in Soneike, Cape Town, South Africa

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Abstract

The management of crime and violence finds expression in the built environment. Citizen-driven home fortification has changed the character of established residential suburbs as the populace attempts to mitigate unacceptably high crime rates in South Africa. By employing the crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) thesis this study uses a mixed-methods approach to track how a suburb in Cape Town, South Africa, initially developed as an open-plan suburb, has undergone transformation into a suburb which has become increasingly fortified. The spatio-temporal dimensions of residential securedness, an assessment of residential crime and the reasons for citizen-driven home fortification in combating residential crime are explored. Walls, fences and an assortment of security paraphernalia added to existing houses are attempts by citizens to fortify themselves against residential burglaries and robberies. Residents maintain that fortification not only reduces the possibility of crime victimisation, but that it also insulates them from contact with people deemed to be “out of place” in the suburb. Home fortification also impacts negatively on neighbourhood interactions between residents as the suburb has desegregated from being previously whites-only to a racially and culturally mixed suburb.

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Notes

  1. Enclosed neighbourhoods are defined as “… existing neighbourhoods that have controlled access through gates or booms across existing roads” (Landman 2003, p. 16).

  2. According to the City of Cape Town (2012) “the single residential zones are designed to provide locations for predominantly single-family dwelling houses in low to medium-density neighbourhoods, with a safe and pleasant living environment” (p. 30).

  3. “The decisive factor separating ‘robbery’ from ‘burglary’ in South African law—the former being a contact crime, the latter a property crime—is the use of force or violence against another person during the commission of the crime. Simply put, a robbery occurs when there is a direct threat or use of violence between a victim and the perpetrator while a burglary occurs when there is no contact at all between a victim and the perpetrator” (Brodie 2015).

  4. The height of walls and fences (and electric fencing) is regulated by a city policy which stipulates a maximum height of 1.8 or 2.1 m depending on whether the wall or fence is on a street boundary or lateral boundary (City of Cape Town 2009).

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  1. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland, Stellenbosch, 7602, South Africa

    Christian Jacobus Cronje & Manfred Spocter

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  1. Christian Jacobus Cronje
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  2. Manfred Spocter
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Correspondence to Manfred Spocter.

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Cronje, C.J., Spocter, M. Open-plan suburb to fortified suburb: home fortification in Soneike, Cape Town, South Africa. J Hous and the Built Environ 32, 713–732 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-016-9532-3

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