1.4.
The Sites: The Places & Spaces of Lockdown
Diary entries were received from all three of the largest Metropolitan Municipalities in the province: the cities of Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni, as well as from Mogale City Municipality (formerly known as Krugersdorp) . Participants were ‘locked down’ in different types of areas or neighborhoods, and living in different unit types, and residential arrangements. These included suburban, inner-city, township, and informal settlement areas. The majority of participants were from suburban and township areas. The chart below below presents the numbers of participants by these main typologies.
The main characteristics of these areas are summarized below: • Townships: Townships were historically developed as residential areas for black residents under the apartheid regime, and feature a formally planned and predominantly residential pattern. Townships were situated far from traditional CBDs and places of employment, and feature free-standing houses and backyard residential dwellings. • Suburban: For the purposes of this report, we considered suburban areas to include traditional, centrally located suburbs, as well as suburban gated communities, including enclosed suburban neighbourhoods, gated estates and gated complexes. Suburban areas refer to lower density, low-rise, and more centrally located residential and mixed-use areas, that are traditionally located close to and around CBDs and employment nodes. In South Africa these were historically designated for white residents under the apartheid regime. In the post-apartheid period, many gated communities have located themselves within and close to these suburban areas, while in other instances, largescale gated suburbs were built on the periphery of urban areas (Peberdy, 2017). Barring one participant, all of our gated community participants were located within these old or newer suburban areas. • Inner city neighborhood: Referred to high-density, mixeduse areas, often close to older CBDs of major urban areas such as Johannesburg and Pretoria.
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• Informal settlement: While definitions vary, informal settlements in this research referred to settlements not planned by authorities which are often located on unsurveyed land, or on land that is not proclaimed or designated for residential purposes, and which consist of dwellings that are mainly informal (shacks).
