在這篇文章中, Robinson 討論在南非民主浮現的轉型階段中, 政治認同和空間安排的爭議。南非轉型中的新地方政府是由先前種族隔離政府結構下的行動者所組成, 包括了反對派的非洲民族議會(African National Congress: ANC)與公民運動(南非民族公民組織: South African National Civic Organization: SANCO)。地方政府協商論壇(Local Government Negotiating Forum: LGNF)的成立, 提出了地方政府轉型法(Local Government Transitional Act), 以便使轉型中的地方政府合法化。公民運動組織提出了"一個城市"(one city) 的政策, 認為城市基於功能的基礎, 將生活與工作整合在一個大都會的區域中, 並且要求地方政府必須組織在非種族歧視、民主、 非性別歧視和財政公平的基礎之上。

    然而, 在地方層級的民主選舉過程中, 卻由於和先前種族歧視的城市結構相妥協的結果, 使得議會中的白人代表不成比例的偏高。因此, 白人特權和空間區隔仍然存在於種族化政治認同的過渡期地方政府結構中。Robinson 認為雖然南非左翼政治否認族群認同的政治有效性, (這也是他們最重要的特色), 但是分佈在新的次結構和行政區中的種族組織化的投票模式, 卻是承續了先前的種族隔離的空間分化, 在現實中卻是無法抵擋。因此, 南非民主化的過程, 同時也是政治規模創造的過程: 行政區, 次結構, 都會結構, 以及和區域政府的關係。Robinson 結論道: 重繪種族隔離城市是一個動態與競爭的過程, 因為在轉型過程中立法的舞台上, 是整合了先前區隔化的都市地區到一個新的都市政府結構中。

    Robinson 留下若干有關如何維持一個"非種族歧視" 的城市, 卻又同時接受種族與文化認同等非基進的政治特質的問題。Robinson在本文中雖然沒有論證的很清楚, 但他仍然提出了一些視野, 分析一個內部殖民的城市, 如何透過民主的過程轉化其都市模式。但有幾個有趣的問題是, 究竟先前種族隔離城市中的社會範疇, 例如黑人或白人, 是如何影響他們政治位置的選擇, 例如自由主義或左翼? 而種族或族群政治又是如何和自由派和左翼的政治視野相衝突? 這些動態過程又是如何影響民主選舉, 都市政策和空間的再安排? 我們也可以由南非民主轉型的例子, 回頭看看台灣的民主過程與相關的種族/族群, 城鄉政治和左翼爭議的問題, 或許可以給予我們一些啟示吧! 

    In this article Robinson argues that how the political identity and spatial arrangement contests in the transitional phase of the emergence of democracy in South Africa. A new local government was combined with actors from the former apartheid government structures, the oppositional African National Congress (ANC) and the civic movement (South African National Civic Organization, SANCO). A Local Government Negotiating Forum (LGNF) was held to set the Local Government Transitional Act to legislate the transitional form of local government. The ‘ one city’ policy central to the civil movement imagined a functional basis and integrated all that lived and worked within broader metropolitan areas, and requested the local government to be organized on a nonracial, democratic, nonsexist and financially sound basis. 

    However, in the democratic process at the local level the compromises agreed upon the previous apartheid structure of the cities created councils with white representation disproportionately high. Thus white privilege and spatial separateness still maintained in embedded racialised political identities in the interim local government structures. Robinson argues that the most important feature of left politics of South Africa is to deny the political validity of ethnic identity. But it is difficult to overcome the inherited spatial differences of apartheid which have been transformed into racially organized voting patterns distributed across new substructures and wards. As a result, the demarcation process was the process about the creation of political scale: wards, substructures, metropolitan structures and their relations to regional-level government. Robinson concludes that the remapping of the apartheid city is a dynamic and contestable process because the board of the transitional legislation integrates previously fragmented urban areas into new urban government structures. 

    Robinson also leaves some questions about how to maintain a “nonracial” city while simultaneously accepting the ineradicably political character of ethnic and cultural forms of identification. This article is not very clear stated and well organized, but it still provides a perspective to analysis of how an internal colonial city transforms its urban pattern through democratic process. But I am interested in how the previous social category, like black and white people, influences their different political position, like liberal or left wing? How the ethnic politics contradicts with these different political visions of liberal or left wing? How this dynamic process influences the results of election, urban policy and spatial rearrangement?