Flying, health and the city: sensing aeromobility and risk in an informal settlement

ABSTRACT

This research explores the relationships between flying, health and the city from the perspective of an informal settlement called Freedom Farm in Cape Town, South Africa. Located underneath the flight path for Cape Town International Airport, Freedom Farm has a low-income population whose proximity to and experience of aeromobility serve to complicate the relationship that humans have with commercial aviation, and our understanding of the health impacts of living near airports. Using semi-structured interviews with Freedom Farm residents and participant observation, this study explores the terrestrial experience and associated perceptions of health risks of aeromobility from the vantage point of informal dwellers. Findings indicate that the perceived risks from aeromobility are numerous and are exacerbated by the proximity of low-flying aircraft. They conclude that the relationship between flying and informal living is complex, and understood through relational geographies articulated by materiality and proximity. While the residents of Freedom Farm are not themselves air passengers or crew, this research also finds that residents nonetheless have unique experiences of aeromobility that they use to construct knowledge of a mobility practice that boosts the health of the city-region while it impacts negatively on their well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Aeromobility
• air transport
• health
• airport noise
• informality
• relational geographies
• Cape Town

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. isiXhosa is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, and is spoken predominantly by black African individuals in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces. Although most interviews were conducted in isiXhosa by one of the researchers, there were cases where the participants did not speak isiXhosa, and in that case English was used.

2. Decibel is a scientific measure of sound. It is equal to 10 times the logarithm (base 10) of the ratio of a given sound pressure to a reference sound pressure. The reference sound pressure used is 20 micropascals, which is the lowest audible sound (Dracoulides 2016, p. xx).

3. Day Night Level (DNL) is an internationally recognised measure of sound exposure used in airport noise studies. According to CTIA’s most recent noise study, it indicates the average noise exposure over a 24-hour period, with a 10 dB penalty added to the night‐time period between 22:00 and 06:00 (Dracoulides 2016, p. 2–3).

4. Although such racial categories are relics of the apartheid past, they are still widely used today for demographic purposes. Race-based population group categories currently in-use by Statistics South Africa include black African, coloured, Indian/Asian and white.

5. Aerotropolis is a concept introduced by John Kasarda that frames urban development around airports as the centre of economic activity. Such developments are often referred to as ‘airport cities’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bradley Rink

Bradley Rink is a human geographer and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Environmental Studies & Tourism at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). His interest in mobilities research and teaching is grounded in the social aspects of moving in and through cities of the global South. His recent outputs have been published in leading journals within his field including Mobilities, Transfers, and Tourism Geographies.

Lwando Klaas

Lwando Klaas completed his Bachelor of Arts Degree (Honours) in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of the Western Cape in 2015 and is currently completing his master’s degree in Geomatics at the University of Cape Town. His research interests focus on mobilities, GIS/remote sensing and informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa.