ABSTRACT
The origins of this chapter are found in a larger research project focused on the production and management of "informal sector space" in Cape Town, South Africa (Dierwechter, forthcoming). Central to that project is a sustained engagement with the work of Henri Lefebvre (1971, 1991, 1995, and 1996). Lefebvre has stimulated much recent thinking about urban space (Harvey, 1989; Soja, 1996, 2000; Doel, 1999; Merrifield, 1993, 1997, 2000). But he has also made major contributions to our understanding of urban modernity (see especially Lefebvre, 1995: 168-238; cf. Shields, 1999). In what follows, I interrogate these two themes - the production of space and the theorisation of modernity - through a selective excavation of urban planning and economic survival in post-apartheid Cape Town. Based upon this excavation, I argue that the informal sector is providing the working through for a different kind of urban modernity in that city. I also consider the implications of this argument for how we imagine and thus collectively manage rapid urban change in the South.
