Researchers in Geography & Environmental Studies

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Browsing by Subject "Cape Town"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Cape Town as Africa's gateway for tourism to Antarctica - development potential and need for regulation
    (2014) Boekstein, Mark
    Cape Town is one of the five Antarctic gateway cities from which ships and aircraft travel to and from various parts of Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands. Gateway cities are used by government scientific expeditions, as well as for tourism. While tourism to Antarctica is increasing rapidly, most of it occurs from the South American gateways of Ushuaia and Punta Arenas, and to a lesser extent from Christchurch (New Zealand) and Hobart (Australia). The Cape Town-Antarctica tourism industry is relatively undeveloped in comparison to other gateway cities, mainly because the distance to Antarctica from the South American gateways is considerably less than from Cape Town. In 2009 the City of Cape Town signed the Southern Rim Gateway Cities Agreement, joining the other gateway cities in an agreement to cooperate on issues such as science, education, logistics, business opportunities and tourism. Tourism to Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands, and the regulation thereof, is discussed in the light of the fact that South Africa, unlike countries like Australia, does not have any specific policy to develop or regulate tourism to Antarctica, neither to its own bases, nor to other parts of Antarctica accessible from Cape Town by ship or air. This paper considers the development potential of Cape Town as a gateway for tourism to Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic islands, with recommendations for particular types of tourism development, in specific locations, and suggestions for both growing and regulating the industry.
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    Community as utopia: Reflections on De Waterkant
    (Springer, 2008) Rink, Bradley M.
    This paper will reflect on research currently in progress in Cape Town's De Waterkant neighbourhood�an area also known as Cape Town's 'gay village'. This paper engages the literature of utopia as a framework of analysis for interrogating the performance of community�while at the same time problematising the terms "community" and "utopia" upon which much geographical description of the area is based. This research argues that both 'comforting' and 'unsettling' relational achievements amongst the human and non-human actors in De Waterkant function as building blocks of real or imagined community and further recognises multiple tensions that affect the formation of community and the pursuit of utopia in the South African urban context.
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    Quartering the city in discourse and bricks: Articulating urban change in a South African enclave
    (Springer, 2016) Rink, Bradley M.
    Focusing on the urban enclave in Cape Town known as De Waterkant, this paper examines the product and process of �quartering� urban space�shaping urban space as the locus for the symbolic framing of culture. This paper advances recent studies of De Waterkant by applying the concept of quartering to understand urban change in an African context. Complicating existing research on De Waterkant, the findings show that the area has witnessed four distinct quartered identities including: an ethnic quartering which was dismantled under apartheid; a Bohemian quartering that changed racial dynamics and improved housing stock; a �gay village� quartering that engaged sexual identity performance as a strategy for place-making; and most recently a consumer lifestyle quartering that exhibited new notions of citizenship and consumption. This paper advances theorization of how quartering as a process is articulated through the application of discursive and material tropes to the urban fabric of the city.