Definition from South Africa
Typically a component of social apartheid, urban apartheid refers to the spatial segregation of minorities in remote areas. In the context of South African apartheid, this is defined as the reallocation of the four racial groups defined by the Population Registration Act 1950 into group areas, as provided for in the Group Areas Act 1950. Outside the South African context, the term is also used to refer to the ghettoization of minority populations in suburban or special neighbourhood cities. (Wikipedia)
Definition today
For Jean-Pierre Garnier, sociologist (2002), this is in line with security ideology. It is the materialization of the increasingly clear separation between « civilized » and « wild ». In addition to the social division, there is also the spatial division. Even if this urban segregation is not totally new. We saw a strengthening of this new « urban apartheid » in the early 1990s with the abandonment of urban policy, which was supposed to mitigate the effects of liberalism. Until then, we tried to open up the suburbs and reintegrate the excluded. And then we accepted the failure of this policy. Which materialized in space.
Urban apartheid can therefore be defined as follows:
Urban apartheid is a decentralization of administration and culture to the suburbs. This apartheid creates a cultural and solidarity imbalance. But urban apartheid is also the partitioning of functions within a given space, with separate spaces for shops, housing and administration. The ghetto is of course a form of urban apartheid, with segregated neighbourhoods (as in the USA or France) and the creation of gated communities.
More informations (fr) :