Abstract

This article studies the evolution of the urban space of Boksburg, a neighbour-town to Johannesburg. The forms of political activism developed to resist apartheid, as well as the very needs of the segregated economy, had tied a number of links which dissolved during the 1990s. Is a city like Boksburg condemned to fragmentation as the only alternative to segregation? Can this situation be remedied by policies of urbanism based on participative democracy? Or should we look for urbanity somewhere else, in a specific relation to time and space, as constitutive of the urban identity?