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Space Theft or Space Transfer: The Nature of Crime-Induced Spatial Partitioning and Control in Enclosed Neighborhoods in Ibadan and Johannesburg

Department of Geography, University of Ibadan

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: seyifabiyi{at}yahoo.com.

	Abstract

The article compares the typologies of road closures and the resulting enclosed neighborhoods in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Ibadan, Nigeria, and the nature of internal democracies behind the enclosures. It uses unstructured questionnaires administered to the neighborhood associations’ executive members and the spatial analysis of road closures in geographic information system databases of the two cities to describe the differences in typologies of enclosures and nonstate spatial mechanisms. When gates or barriers are retrofitted on existing public roads, it implies that the legitimate authority of the state to control space and social lives in neighborhoods is either transferred to the nonstate actors by the state through constitutional provision or hijacked (stolen) if such provisions do not exist. The article observes that space transfer by state to the community in enclosed neighborhoods is ongoing in Johannesburg, yet enclosed communities largely lack social cohesion. Space theft is common in Ibadan, as no legal control is in place.

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