COMMUNITY, PLACE AND TRANSFORMATION - A PERCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF RESIDENTS RESPONSES TO AN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT IN HOUT BAY, SOUTH-AFRICA

Land invasions, where people move onto private or public land illegall y in an attempt to gain access to resources within the urban sphere, r esult in the juxtaposition of contrasting urban landscapes and in alte rations to place-making processes. This paper examines the changes to place, as perceived by the formal residents of the area, arising from the establishment and growth of an informal settlement in Hout Bay, a middle-to-upper-income coastal suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The resettlement of over 2500 squatters in a site-and-service scheme in cl ose proximity to established formal residential areas resulted in mark ed social conflict. This was perhaps inevitable given the sharply cont rasting socio-spatial patterns that were created. In analysing the sur rounding community's perceptions of the informal settlement, the influ ence of spatial proximity vis-a-vis other explanatory factors is the p aper's central focus. The paper reveals that a number of different fac tors underlie the conflict: factors rooted in social structures and pr ocesses (both class and political); in the actions and interpretations of human agents; and in the nature of the locality. Most formal resid ents were negative about the development of the informal settlement, a lthough for different reasons, depending on their socio-economic statu s. Shifting political relations in South Africa during the early 1990s played a key role in influencing both the planning of the informal se ttlement and residents' reactions to it. The paper concludes by sugges ting some policy implications of the Hout Bay case study. (C) 1997 Els evier Science Ltd.