GreYeo: Community Based Internet Communication in Yeoville

posted by Ismail Farouk at Monday, October 01, 2007

The Yeoville Yahoo Group called GreYeo represents a successful case study of a community based internet communications system. The group was established in 1999 and boasts 139 active members.

The importance of GreYeo is the information being communicated around urban management, service delivery, crime and general community news. More recently, some members have been mapping garbage on street corners and this action has placed the city utility companies under pressure to provide better services.

The group demonstrates a positive social capital resource in a suburb considered as lacking in community ownership. It proves that there are many people who love and care for the suburb but their actions need to be reciprocated.

As a new feature to this site, I have added the Yahoo GreYeo RSS feed to my news page. Check out my news page to see what Yeovillites have so say.

Labels: Citizenship, Communication, Community, GreYeo, Internet, social capital, social networks, urban research, Yeoville

Yeoville Rhythm Analysis

posted by Ismail Farouk at Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The performance begins at dawn on the corner of Bedford and Raleigh. Besides the few perennial garbage heaps, the space is deserted. The streets begin to wake at first light and at six o clock in the morning the only sound is that of occasional minibus taxis accelerating down Rockey Street. A few people emerge onto the scene. This is mostly the working-class making their way to work. Some of the hawkers appear and construct their haphazard stalls. The market traders across the road are sweeping their spaces and bringing out their wares. A few of the schoolchildren stop on the sidewalk for a quick game of tazzos. As the first light breaks and the streets become more populated the sound grows to a perceptible din. Soon the taxis hurtle down the road advertising their destinations. There is a young man wearing a new suit running after one of the taxis shouting excitedly. He seems to be running late. The sound of his voice echoes above the traffic. He stumbles on the broken pavement and nearly falls. His body unexpectedly rushes forward and he flails his arms in an attempt to right himself. His right leg juts out forward at unpredictable angles and finds firm footing. The taxi he was shouting after disappears down the road, but another one pulls up next to him and he jumps in.

The traffic quickly becomes chaotic. The traffic lights are out of order and the pedestrians run across the road at random intervals. Outside Time Square there is a considerable traffic jam and the drone of the traffic is often punctuated by shouts and hooting. People are in a rush and yet they are not in a hurry to get anywhere. Organised chaos. More hooting and shouting. It is still early in the morning, but the heat is beginning to intensify. Outside the Lothlorien Paper Recycling Centre the loud beeping of the paper truck echoes relentlessly and forces a synchronized blink from passers-by. The shops are open. People are milling outside the shop fronts and internet cafes and weighing out their options. The proprietors typically of continental African descent sit inside the darkened shops looking bored.

And through this seeming disorder there exists an order that binds Yeoville together. The streets function as an organic entity that exists as an arrangement of activity and change. It seems as if there is an invisible conductor that coordinates this performance of conversation, construction, street trade, traffic, and social interaction. These diverse rhythms in the concrete are made up of subjects and objects where opposites find and recognise each other in a unity both more real and more ideal, more complex than its elements. Rhythms are the music of the city, a picture that listens to itself. They represent a struggle between a measured, imposed and exterior time, and a more endogenous time. And while every street, every corner, every cafe and every sidewalk have their own rhythm there exists a binding beat to which Yeoville dances. This dance is never the same, however. It is riddled with improvisation and replete with variation through space and time. It is difficult to concretise a starting point to discuss the streets of Yeoville and impossible to distinguish a beginning and an end to the performance. It is as if the streets vibrate imperceptibly with their own, almost palpable creative energy.

By eleven, Rockey Street settles down and quietly hums for the next few hours. The streets are less populated, but street traders and the car guards continue their vigilance over the streets while the taxis persist in their quest for customers. On Fortesque Road, a weathered old man in tattered grey clothes sits on the pavement next to a street pole and shouts impatiently into its empty insides. In the main park, in the dust below the rusted park ride and next to the old swings, two ashy-legged youths sit with no shoes and talk excitedly. On Hopkins Street the smell of rotting sewage floats on the gentle breeze as the workers continue their work despite the smouldering heat and the blinding light. A few of the seats at the numerous shabeens are occupied. The clientele talks quietly while one of the local beers.

After lunch, the streets become livelier. There is more traffic while people move about their business or stop to talk. Banks and shops get busier in the afternoon as the heat begins to subside and the light strikes the city at a slightly more obtuse angle. There are more children on the streets and there is a gradual crescendo of sound. The movement on the streets begins to intensify. In the din of the afternoon a phone rings on the corner of Bezuidenhout Street, a little way downhill from the BP Garage. The phone rests atop a muddy computer stand. A woman approaches it picks up the receiver. She shouts jovially into the receiver in French. She continues to shout over the noises of the afternoon.

By about five o clock in the afternoon, the rush hour reaches its peak. The pavements are packed with people going home after work. The taxis and busses once again joust for position while their informal conductors advertise their destinations over the noise of the traffic. It is starting to get dark and some of the children, on their way back from play, have stopped at the well-lit popcorn machine near the market. One of the kids feels that he was cheated and argues with the popcorn vendor. The other children laugh and dance with glee at the site. Across the road a black, polished, expensive-looking Mercedes convertible stops next to the kerb and attracts considerable attention from the passers-by. A small group of people stops to stare at the impressive vehicle.

The darkness is thicker now and the some of the streetlights are switched on. The sidewalks are changing as the homebound citizens are replaced by throngs of residents looking for entertainment. In the evening, young men and women gather at tables located at the (often informal) cafes and shabeens to drink and sing. Piccadilly Square is a hive of activity in the evenings. The sidewalk is packed and comes alive after nine o clock when it is fortified by loud music emanating from the numerous bars. Tandoor is a rooftop club located between Bezuidenhout and Raymond Street that attracts creative minds as well as young people looking for a night of quality reggae beats. On the other end of the street, at Time Square, a different kind of party is going down. In a small pool hall people gather to drink, gamble and shoot pool.

The parks, normally vibrant spaces during the day, are poorly lit and considered dangerous spaces to frequent. Many of the sidewalks are shrouded in darkness and present a danger to passers-by. Up to about two o clock in the morning, the streets are populated with people. The smell of food from informal vendors fills the air and security guards diversify their activities by selling cigarettes and sweets to passers by. About the only time that there seems to be no human activity on the streets is between two and five o clock in the morning. Things quiet down for the night and an eerie silence settles on Yeoville. The streets are deserted and feel foreign and hostile with an occasional passer by or car headlights.

And so the cycle is complete. The performance does not have a conclusion; the rhythm of Yeoville evolves through time. Some of the rhythms are cyclical and occur at intervals, some of them are accented and sudden, some have longer durations while some occur unexpectedly and disappear just as suddenly. Some rhythms dominate and determine other rhythms while others are mere remembrances of moments. The changing rhythms of different spaces and times throughout Yeoville provide a backdrop for social interaction that, in turn, becomes a part of the symphony as each player contributes to the overall performance.

The above rhythm analysis was interpreted by Milos Sajin and myself in 2004. Milos is an extremely talented urban geographer and guitar teacher who now resides in Japan. Together we collaborated in Yeoville in a parallel research process.

Labels: Citizenship, Communication, Network Approach, Rhythm Analysis, social capital, social networks, urban research, Yeoville