ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a look at spatialised lending practices in the real estate sector in Johannesburg, South Africa's financial capital, in order to highlight the consequences of redlining. It focuses on Brixton, a neighbourhood on Johannesburg's desegregating east-west axis. The chapter examines both the market based, spatially stigmatising consensus that determines investment patterns in Johannesburg in its transition beyond apartheid, and the reaction and agency from within social space. Spatial stigmatisation in the form of redlining by financial institutions is not only a form of space-based economic exclusion, but it is de facto a significant contributor to the reproduction of spatial segregation in the post-apartheid condition. The chapter demonstrates the possibility of local contestations of territorial stigmatisation. It presents a case study that demonstrates the huge efforts required by spatially discriminated individuals to challenge the spatial ideology that defines the decision-making of financial institutions.
