Community as Utopia: Reflections on De Waterkant

Abstract

This paper will reflect on research currently in progress in Cape Town's De Waterkant neighbourhood-an area also known as Cape Town's 'gay village'. This paper engages the literature of utopia as a framework of analysis for interrogating the performance of community-while at the same time problematising the terms "community" and "utopia" upon which much geographical description of the area is based. This research argues that both 'comforting' and 'unsettling' relational achievements amongst the human and non-human actors in De Waterkant function as building blocks of real or imagined community and further recognises multiple tensions that affect the formation of community and the pursuit of utopia in the South African urban context.

Quartering the City in Discourse and Bricks: Articulating Urban Change in a South African Enclave

“…Firstly, the results of this study apply the concept of quartering as presented in European and North America contexts within a South African setting. Although De Waterkant has been the focus of inquiry through the lens of sexuality and leisure/tourism (Elder 2004;Sonnekus 2007;Rink 2008aRink , 2008bVisser 2002Visser , 2003aVisser , 2003bVisser , 2013Visser , 2014, this study situates previous investigations of De Waterkant in the conceptual framework of quartering while highlighting four distinct quartered identities, adding depth to the neighbourhood's social and spatial contexts.…”

“…The area is often referred to as 'De Waterkant Village', or simply 'the Village'. The area's identity has thus shifted with the coming and going of the apartheid city, but in the past two decades has witnessed a surge of economic and infrastructural development that in the late 1990s gave birth to the area's reputation as Cape Town's gay village (Elder 2004;Rink 2008a), which gave way to the dawn of a new era of consumer-driven development (Rink 2008b) drawing local and international visitors to this urban enclave. Contemporary depictions of De Waterkant as a gay utopia (Rink 2008a) are both instructive and limiting.…”

“…The area's identity has thus shifted with the coming and going of the apartheid city, but in the past two decades has witnessed a surge of economic and infrastructural development that in the late 1990s gave birth to the area's reputation as Cape Town's gay village (Elder 2004;Rink 2008a), which gave way to the dawn of a new era of consumer-driven development (Rink 2008b) drawing local and international visitors to this urban enclave. Contemporary depictions of De Waterkant as a gay utopia (Rink 2008a) are both instructive and limiting. While the embodiment of the enclave as a site of gay male leisure pursuits is substantiated by Visser's (2003a) description of the area as "consolidated gay territory" (Visser 2003a: 128) and is clearly evident through touristic publications like the Pink Map (Rink 2008a(Rink , 2013, such reading of De Waterkant proves problematic since such places are understood to have North American roots as the identity-marked enclave known as the "gay ghetto" (Levine 1979).…”

“…Contemporary depictions of De Waterkant as a gay utopia (Rink 2008a) are both instructive and limiting. While the embodiment of the enclave as a site of gay male leisure pursuits is substantiated by Visser's (2003a) description of the area as "consolidated gay territory" (Visser 2003a: 128) and is clearly evident through touristic publications like the Pink Map (Rink 2008a(Rink , 2013, such reading of De Waterkant proves problematic since such places are understood to have North American roots as the identity-marked enclave known as the "gay ghetto" (Levine 1979). Gay villages nonetheless serve as a locus of gay identity performance (Désert 1997;Binnie 2004) and leisure/consumptive pursuits (Elder 2004;Visser 2002;2003a;2003b) that are rich with symbols and meanings of otherness in contrast to the 'ambient heterosexual' (Murray 1995).…”

“…Growth of the gay village and its rise in popularity to the point of being considered the 'gay capital of Africa' (Rink 2013) has been documented by a range of scholars (Elder 2004;Visser 2002Visser , 2003aVisser , 2003bSonnekus 2007;Rink 2008aRink , 2008bRink , 2013. However, opportunities for further property development focusing on the coming FIFA World Cup 2010 shifted De Waterkant into a process of 'de-gaying' (Visser 2014) that is evidenced in its most recent quartered identity; that of a consumer lifestyle quarter.…”