La nuit à Maboneng (Johannesburg, Afrique du Sud) : un front urbain entre sécurisation, marchandisation et contestation

Simultaneously feared and desired, night is a polemic field in Johannesburg in general and in Maboneng in particular. In this space which is undergoing a process of gentrification in the lower-class neighbourhood of Jeppestown, the nocturnal practices of the lower classes are indeed invisibilized, devalorized and criminalized by the dominant classes who are reinvesting nocturnal spaces. This symbolic and material reinvestment of space and time has also an economic dimension: the night-time economy is thought as a way to revitalize and securize nocturnal urban spaces. However, the extension of the night-time economy encounters contestations. Through discourses and material transformations of nocturnal urban spaces, political and economic issues turn the night into a political object, into an urban frontier.