ABSTRACT
The suburban landscape of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Region is dominated by racially segregated townships, among which are the predominantly working-class coloured areas. According to Harvey (1985) the built environment of capitalist cities can conceptually be divided into fixed capital (composed of items used in production such as factories, highways and railways) and collective means of consumption (consisting of items used in the reproduction of labour power, such as houses, roads and health care facilities). South African cities, despite the specificities arising from race, are shaped by the processes of capitalist urbanization. The study of the urban process in South Africa should proceed from the accumulation of capital and its corresponding categories such as labour and capital, as well as the struggles between classes. The coloured townships in Johannesburg are largely the result of the provision of collective means of consumption by state initiative to a predominantly working-class population. That the built environment is also the site of class struggles (Harvey 1985) is clearly the case with the coloured areas of Johannesburg.
