ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses inner-city housing developments are tightly controlled spaces. The term ‘building hijacking’ is contentious and often confusing. It broadly speaks to processes whereby landlords lose control of their buildings, particularly their ability to collect rental income. Access control management and enforcing a strict regime of rental collection are techniques which help separate inner-city residential buildings from other ‘unruly’ spaces in South Africa, and assert their belonging to an order of regularity, financial discipline and submission to the rule of the market. Although forms of regulation, spatial ordering and the uneven distribution of power and capital are all features of life in the inner-city for tenants, and express the ongoing marginalisation and inequalities which continue to characterise post-apartheid transformation, experiences of inhabitation, change, agency and everyday life remain complex and have multiple expressions and consequence.
