This 90-min documentary film will explore the parallels, history and effects of our current urban environment by investigating urban processes such as Gentrification, Urban Renewal and the legacy of Architectural Apartheid in Cape Town, NewYork City and São Paulo. The narrative will be guided by three central characters. Through their eyes map the history of architectural apartheid, its contempora
ry re-enactments and the effects of gentrification on individuals and communities. The audience will travel through 3 globalized cities, exploring the nature of urban transformation and the various ways in which communities articulate a response to this changing urban fabric. What does gentrification tell us about our current social condition? Has gentrification become the natural development trajectory of the Neoliberal Global Cities? What are the alternative and pro-poor models of urban renewal? The film will explore these questions and the ways in which the existing place-making activities of established working-class and lower-income residents remain socially segregated from those of high income residents. Exploring the points of contestation between the marginalised and privileged the film exposes the parallel cultures within their new shared physical space, the value systems and stigmas attached to various urban forms and the tensions that arise from neoliberal land use practices. We look at the economic, social and cultural production in gentrified areas and the inter-generational struggles of local business owners, residents and activists fighting to keep their businesses alive, their family homes safe and their little bit of space within the increasingly neoliberal identity of the ‘Designer World Class City’. We look at the urban economics of gentrification and processes of economic and social exclusion as the processes of gentrification shape new virtual realities that are, in many ways, inaccessible to the urban poor.
