“Nation building without city building is a senseless exercise”ud- Tomlinson et al (eds.) 2003: x.udWhat is the nation in the 21st century and how is it represented in the urban builtudenvironment? This question underlies an anthropological investigation into theudmeanings of the Nelson Mandela Bridge project - a simulacrum for the making of audparticular Johannesburg experience. The multi-million Rand fantasy of the urbanudimagineers showcases a post-apartheid inner city revival through the personificationudof a mayoral dream for a world-class city. The city’s textured socio-cultural andudpolitical-economic urbanity, its haphazard mining town origins and the aggressiveudapartheid urban politics, filter into its post-apartheid urban reconfiguration. The artfuludjuggling of socio-cultural, political and economic elements launches the project asudphysical and symbolic entry-point into a new urban and historical era – a new urbanudfrontier.udThe project’s technological innovation and slick excesses mirrors 21st centuryudcapitalist thinking – a packaging of local experiences into a marketable landscapeudcommodified for moneyed consumption and participation. The privatisation of publicudspace through modes of urban gentrification elicits elitist urban engagement in audpartitioned and generic urban space. The latter conflicts with the project’s officialudbranding as: “[being]‘for the good of all’. This research interrogates the adaptation ofudinternational best practices, the machinations of trans-nationalism in setting up urbanudexperiences that contest individual constitutional and democratic rights. Contrastedudhere are the un-narrated voices of the city’s dark underbelly, the uncertainties of audmarginalized majority struggling for a meagre existence in the inner-city in the face ofudthe grand-scale urban regeneration project.
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