Home Beneath Our Feet (Documentary)
A short film on redevelopment, belonging, and the right to the city.
Watch on YouTubeThis senior research project traces the people and places caught between redevelopment and belonging. The film is only the beginning.
This Senior Research Project (SRP) explores the complex dynamics of gentrification and displacement in Cape Town. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines documentary film, investigative articles, and data visualization, the project aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how urban redevelopment is reshaping the city’s landscape and the lives of its residents. Our research focuses on neighborhoods like Fish Hoek, Woodstock, Salt River, and Bo-Kaap, where gentrification has caused significant social, cultural, and economic shifts.
The documentary filmed Home Beneath Our Feet serves as the heart of the project, offering a cinematic exploration of the human impact of these changes. This website is designed as a platform to showcase the full range of work produced, including interviews, written stories, multimedia content, and data-driven insights into Cape Town’s housing crisis. Our goal is to spark conversation, highlight personal stories, and engage with both local and global audiences in finding solutions to these ongoing challenges.
In the heart of the city, residents of Cissie Gool House reclaim empty buildings as homes and symbols of resistance. Their movement, Reclaim the City, demands that Cape Town address its housing crisis rather than displace its working-class citizens.
Read MoreFrom Bromwell Street to Tafelberg, court cases test the City’s duty to provide inner-city housing. These legal battles expose how apartheid’s spatial divides linger in modern urban planning.
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An opinion piece confronting the language of “progress.” What the city calls urban renewal, residents experience as erasure and exclusion.
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A UCT student’s search for housing mirrors a wider crisis: rising rents, shrinking options, and a city becoming too expensive for its own youth.
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From Bo-Kaap to Woodstock, this feature maps nine ways gentrification is transforming heritage neighbourhoods through rent spikes, new developments, and disappearing landmarks.
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For some, Cape Town is postcard-perfect; for others, it’s a city of exclusion. This reflective piece contrasts luxury living with the realities of inequality and unemployment.
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A practical guide that breaks down the subtle (and not-so-subtle) signals of gentrification, from boutique cafés to disappearing rental boards.
Read MoreA synthesis of the SRP’s findings: how policy, profit, and global tourism have turned homes into investments and neighbourhoods into commodities.
Read MoreA short film on redevelopment, belonging, and the right to the city.
Watch on YouTube
Property prices, income gaps, and eviction risks at a glance.
Photo: Mads Norgaard
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Everyday connection and heritage in coastal Cape Town.
View GalleryThrough the lens of Bo-Kaap, this photo essay explores how gentrification reshapes heritage and belonging, revealing what’s lost when culture is priced out of its own home.
View GalleryShareable insights from the SRP, designed for quick reads.
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