Differentiating networked services in Cape Town: Echoes of splintering urbanism?

The central focus of this paper is on the differentiation of basic urban trading services in middle income cities and its role in service provision for the poor. Most studies dedicated to service delivery to the poor emphasize the inequalities pertaining from a growing differentiation in provision and take up some of the arguments of the splintering urbanism thesis. The paper examines some of the main claims made in this debate through a case study of Cape Town (South Africa). It illustrates how differentiation is implemented through service levels and tariffs and suggests that it is a pragmatic way of accommodating social and spatial disparities in a highly polarized city, while making progressive steps in favour of the poor. The main argument is that, in Cape Town like in many middle income cities, urban diversity restricts the relevance of conventional social policies and the scope of local solidarity with regard to service delivery. The differentiation of provision is thus a strategy to bring the diversity within the public service, and hence to preserve an institutional and financial public capacity of delivering subsidized services to the poor.