Faculty of Social science School of Geography 0214462v wafera@hse.pg.wits.ac.za / This research report is an examination of urban identity in post-apartheid Soweto, using the SECC as a case study. The report examines the emergence of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), one of a number of post-apartheid social movements in urban areas around South Africa. The SECC have emerged in response to the policy of cost-recovery and cut-offs in the provision of services to poor communities in Johannesburg, and have also managed to tap into a broader discourse of anti-privatisation. While the SECC maintain a political agenda, and are affiliated to a number of overtly political organisations such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), I argue in this report that the SECC affirm a particular set of post-apartheid identities. This set of identities is constituted within a very particular relationship to place; the SECC emerged and lives in Soweto. Through the everyday activities in the branches of the SECC members of the SECC actively construct themselves and the places in which they live. The report draws on a literature that has considered the emergence of social movements in Latin American and post-colonial cities since the 1980s. This literature argues that social movements contest not only the material conditions but also the cultural and symbolic order of space and the city. The report then considers how the SECC is constituted across different scales. These different scales of movement activity represent a potential tension within the organisation between the leadership and the branches of the SECC. It is in the branches that the SECC exists from day to day, and it is in the branches that a strong sense of place is constructed through the everyday activities of the SECC branch. The report concludes that the everyday practices of the SECC at the scale of the local branches are part of a broader process of remaking place and identity in postapartheid Soweto.

Early reformers reasoned that by changing institutional structure in local government you could solve organizational problems. Institutional structural reform in local government has interested scholars ever since. The reform movement in the early 20th century firmly established the council-manager (administrative) model of government, which along with the mayor-council (political) model, is now utilized in 92% of all U.S. municipalities. Recent scholars have observed and reported on the fact that, increasingly, mayor-council municipalities are adopting structural changes that resemble characteristics found in council-manager municipalities and vice-versa. This research seeks to examine the question of whether these structural changes have any effect on these local governments by examining the behavior of Chief Administrative Officer’s (CAO) and municipal outputs. The author examines a representative sample of 266 administrative and political municipalities within the U.S. having a population between 10,000 and 250,000. The institutional structures of these 266 municipalities are measured for political model and administrative model characteristics using three separate independent variables. The effects of institutional structural change is measured using group mean T-tests, ANOVA analysis, and multiple regression for per capita expenditures, working time allocation between the management, policy, and political role activities for the CAO, the quality of services provided, and the involvement level of the CAO compared to the council in the mission, policy, administrative, and management dimensions of municipal responsibilities. The study findings are mixed; significant effects are found in some but not all variables. Changing local government structures from characteristics found in the political model to characteristics found in the administrative model: makes no difference in municipal expenditures; makes a difference in how a CAO allocates his time in management and political activities but not policy activities; makes a difference in how the CAO perceives quality of services; makes a difference in the level of involvement for the CAO in the policy, administrative, and management dimensions of responsibility but not the mission dimension. Overall, this study has found that, by using more complex methods to measure institutional structure change, changes in institutional structures do make a difference in important areas of CAO behavior and outputs in local governments.

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This dissertation explores processes of racialization, gentrification, and place reputation through a case study of Fishtown – a historically, white working-class neighborhood located along the Delaware River that generally falls within the 19125 ZIP code. Throughout the 20th century, Fishtown was an industrial hub for manufacturing. Reputationally, the neighborhood has been described as insular, racist, and hostile to outsiders, particularly toward Black folks. However, beginning in the early 2000s, Fishtown started seeing increases in median home values and the number of residents possessing at least a bachelor's degree. These changes partly came as a result of the city of Philadelphia’s tax abatement program that was designed to encourage development and spur growth. Fishtown stands as one of the bill’s biggest beneficiaries, receiving the fifth most abated properties of all neighborhoods in Philadelphia. In recent years, Fishtown has become a hub for nightlife and live music, which helps the neighborhood develop “new” reputations as “cool” and desirable. However, despite such changes in class status and the neighborhood’s reputation, Fishtown remains mostly white. Considering Fishtown’s status as a white, working-class neighborhood whose gentrifiers are also white, Fishtown presents itself as a deviant case in the gentrification literature, where cases of “white gentrification” remain understudied. In this dissertation I address the following question: how does racialization take place in a white neighborhood amidst the gentrification process? My study builds on Rucks-Ahidiana's (2021) application of Robinson’s (1983) framework of racial capitalism. Rucks-Ahidiana departs from class-based theories of gentrification to define gentrification as a racialized process of class change. In its application, this definition establishes that, while racial turnover is not necessary for gentrification, processes of racialization are. By using this framework, I find that racialization operates via three mechanisms in Fishtown’s gentrification process: 1) via gentrifiers' use of neighborhood associations, reorganizing the neighborhood’s geographic boundaries, and communicating “progressive” political ideologies to create a more socially desirable neighborhood of the future; 2) via reputational understanding of musical genre as a racialized process of organizing sound and constructing place, and 3) commercial gentrification via music venues. The empirical findings from this dissertation make several contributions to the gentrification literature. First, I identify how processes of racialization unfold in a white neighborhood amidst the gentrification process. Second, I specify the mechanisms social integrationist gentrifiers employ to create a more socially desirable neighborhood of the future. Third, I show how the racial politics of listening can be used to facilitate gentrification, and how corporate, chain-style music venues operate as powerful entities influencing neighborhoods and local music scenes. Theoretically, this dissertation highlights the importance of centering race and racialization in studies of gentrification and urban landscapes more broadly, as well as the importance of examining how places are racialized via their reputation. Policymaking for cities must work to restructure unequal social conditions so that racially biased ideologies cease to shape urban landscapes. This research utilizes qualitative data I collected in Fishtown between 2020 and 2022. The qualitative data include 29 in-depth interviews with neighborhood stakeholders, such as residents, music venue staff, musicians, DJs, business owners, and concertgoers, as well as participant observation and photography. / Sociology

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