Challenges to Ownership of Overlooked Urban Spaces and Lives: Notes from a Spatial Justice Tour Through Bloemfontein

Abstract

Overlookedness as a theoretical enquiry should be concerned not only with cities as entities that are overlooked but also with the lives and inhabitants within cities that are overlooked. Overlooking happens for a variety of reasons, one of which is the disjuncture between abstract space and lived space. A spatial justice tour through Bloemfontein presented the opportunity to reflect on ways in which lives are overlooked because of the continuation of inequalities, the classification of certain roads and the increased privatisation of services. These three issues affect the everyday lives of inhabitants of the city, who are not always seen or considered. The spatial justice tour presented different instantiations: first, a section of busy national road that children have to cross; second, a section of road in front of a mall that is maintained by the owners of the mall in addition to (or even instead of) the municipality; and third, a bird’s-eye view of the city from a hill, showing the apartheid city grid. These instantiations form the basis for reflections on the role that law plays in the continuing spatial inequalities, the classification of roads and privatisation. From these reflections flows a reconsideration of notions of property and ownership within a pluralist legal system.