With Covid-19 having dealt a devastating blow to the tourism industry worldwide, it was reassuring to discover a small tourist operation in Joburg’s CBD that had been able to survive the crisis by running inner-city walking tours. On 20 and 21 November 2020, we went on a walking tour through the gritty streets of Joburg’s CBD. Our guide was Charlie Moyo from JoburgPlaces & Thunder Walker, a tour company founded in 2011 by Gerald Garner, the author of many books on Joburg, including Spaces & Places – Johannesburg.

We began our day with a briefing by Charlie in the restaurant of JoburgPlaces building on 110 Fox Street, an elegant Edwardian structure that was built in 1904 as the head office of the then United Building Society. The building, which is situated on the recently renovated Gandhi Square, is where the court building once was and where Mahatma Gandhi practised law. This 120-year-old building is one of the few “survivors” of Joburg’s tumultuous history of architectural reinvention since the discovery of gold in the 1880s.

Charlie exuded enthusiasm for Joburg’s residential property developments that are bringing young black professionals and office workers into the inner city.

Charlie provided us with a broad brushstroke history of the making of Joburg. He spoke about how, from the Edwardian to the high modernist architecture styles of the mid-20th century, the city had undergone relentless transformation in the wake of the inexorable capitalist logic of “creative destruction”. He also alerted us to the waves of migration to Joburg from the 1880s to the present, and discussed how, since the late 1980s, “white flight” from the inner city began to intensify, with residents and businesses relocating to Sandton, Midrand and other parts of the city. Then, in the 1990s, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, banks and businesses moved out of the CBD, exacerbating an oversupply of office space, which in turn led to vacant office buildings being hijacked or boarded up.

This “white flight” from the inner city catalysed decades of urban renewal programmes and a variety of policies promoted by urban planners, private developers, local government agencies and city officials. One of the many changes Joburg has undergone over the decades has been the repurposing of office blocks into rental accommodation for a growing class of black professionals and office workers in the CBD. By the time Charlie had concluded his brief introduction to Joburg’s turbulent history, we were convinced that he was not only a tourist guide, but also a savvy and knowledgeable storyteller and sociologist of the inner-city streets.

As we stepped out onto the street to start our tour, we saw three boarded-up buildings, a sign of what we were to encounter throughout the inner city. We walked eastwards from the historical CBD at Gandhi Square and made our first stop at the largely vacant Carlton Hotel, a melancholic monument to the dramatic decline of high modernist architecture of the 1960s and 1970s. Opposite the hotel is the former IBM building, another formerly iconic modern building that had fallen into decline after IBM left South Africa in 1986.

Charlie spoke about how Joburg’s vacant and underused office blocks offered possibilities of being repurposed into residential units, and thereby re-animating the vitality of the CBD. It was our visit to Absa Towers Main that brought home this potential. While the original design of many of these office buildings seemed antithetical to dynamic urban life, for instance by blocking off pedestrian pathways and public space, some have been repurposed in ways that both repopulate the inner city and open up public spaces.

Notwithstanding a few exceptions to the rule, Charlie vented his frustration at fortified built environments that seemed designed to close down public space in the name of safety and security. Charlie’s solution to the fear of hijacked buildings, crime and urban decay is an open city in which the free flow of people on the streets keeps public spaces vibrant and safe, creating what Jane Jacobs once referred to as “eyes on the streets”.

Charlie exuded enthusiasm for Joburg’s residential property developments that are bringing young black professionals and office workers into the inner city. In a city in which the urban poor, migrants and refugees often have to live in dark, dilapidated and abandoned buildings, or else in illegal occupations in hijacked buildings, it seemed to him that private sector developers and the City of Johannesburg could make a contribution towards “improving” the CBD for all.

However, there was a shadow side to this upbeat story of urban regeneration. All too often attempts at “improving” the urban landscape, for instance by converting office space into “affordable” apartments, has been done at the expense of the working class and urban poor. Targeting “dark buildings” and occupations for “improvement” also often leads to what critics denounce as anti-poor neoliberal gentrification.

Charlie believes in the possibility of an “open city” in which the private sector, rather than the state, drives urban regeneration and creates new inner-city rental accommodation, public spaces and sports, retail and recreational facilities. He has a vision of soccer fields and urban gardens on high-rise rooftops and envisages the provision of other sports facilities such as basketball courts.

Walking through this district it became clear that Maboneng was designed to connect with other “hip” middle-class residential nodes such as the Absa Towers Main and the adjacent Jewel City complex

His version of the future growth of the inner city is shaped by a belief that the younger generation desperately desire to escape the stultifying social and cultural constraints and confines of township life. He also believes that the townships are often experienced as a burden for young people because of the onerous demands of “black tax” and family obligations. Escaping to the inner-city centre’s new residential developments, he suggests, provides young professionals with recreational spaces and “cool” city lifestyles that are not available in the townships.

To illustrate the lure of the inner city, Charlie took us to Absa Towers Main, a former office building that has been converted into 516 apartments by Ithemba Properties. The building has full-time security and biometric access control to the building, high-speed fibre internet, DStv, a private gym and children’s play area and a 15th-floor sky deck and luxury clubhouse. The online advertisement for this new development noted that these “stylish apartments” in the up-market Absa Precinct were “a stone’s throw away from the artsy Maboneng Precinct”, with its restaurants, pubs and music and cultural venues.

What grabbed Charlie’s attention during our visit to the Absa Towers Main was the dismantling of barriers around the building and the creation of public space that flows on to the streets.

During our walk from the Absa building to Maboneng, situated on the eastern edge of the CBD, Charlie spoke about how an abandoned, dangerous and decaying post-industrial urban landscape had been dramatically transformed into a vibrant African cultural precinct. Following massive investment by controversial developers such as Jonathan Leibmann of Propertuity, and supported by cultural entrepreneurs such as Bheki Dube, the old manufacturing buildings were retrofitted with modern structures of steel, glass and concrete, thereby transforming the formerly abandoned industrial area into street-facing retail, commercial work spaces, artist studios, clothing boutiques, art galleries, and upmarket residential loft apartments and penthouses.

This urban renewal process is celebrated in an online advertisement as “a contemporary urban space filled with the character and the charm of the older buildings that were given a second life, bringing the soul and heart of Johannesburg out through a new community of South Africans who now live, work and play in the city”. The advert then goes on to describe how this area has become “a centre of creative energy for Johannesburg’s urban artists” and “draws the inner-city public as well as the chic, art-going crowd of the city’s suburbs, bringing life back to this downtown Johannesburg neighbourhood”.

But it was on our walk to Newtown the following day, that the downside of this upbeat version of inner-city life and urban regeneration hit the pavement.

This representation of Maboneng as an “artsy” culture is also evident in a six-minute video on street art in the Maboneng Precinct produced and narrated by Bheki Dube, a cultural and tourist entrepreneur and owner of the first black-owned “hybrid hotel” brand Curiocity. In this online video, with its energetic African jazz soundtrack by Zim Ngqawana, Dube showcases the work of a range of well-known street artists (street artists featured in the video include Kim Lieberman, Vhils, the postman art, Falko One, Remed, snowchino, dbongz-one, Karabo Poppy, ROA, reggiethenomad, PASTELHEART, kazy Usclef, Nix indamix, ownurcrown, SENZART911, Freddy Sam, Nelson Makamo, CYRCLE, and ICY SIGNS).

Walking through this district it became clear that Maboneng was designed to connect with other “hip” middle-class residential nodes such as the Absa Towers Main and the adjacent Jewel City complex.

The recently opened Jewel City complex is a residential, commercial and retail development in the Joburg CBD that has been driven by the DiverCity project, a partnership between Atterbury, iThemba and Talis. The Jewel City Precinct, which consists of 1,125 apartments, 20,017m² of office space and a retail convenience, is an extension of the existing Maboneng Precinct and is bordered by Commissioner and Main streets, Berea Road and Joe Slovo Drive. The Jewel City Precinct consists of six existing street blocks with the spine of the Precinct in Fox Street, which is to be pedestrianised to link Maboneng to Jewel City through to Absa Towers Main. As a developer’s advert for Jewel City puts it: “The plan is to pedestrianise Fox Street, creating a safe, green and energetic place for people to enjoy the inner city.”

Walking along Fox Street past Jewel City, which is strategically placed between the Maboneng and Absa precincts, Charlie pointed out that this development had already had a major impact on the CBD. Not only is there rental accommodation for CBD professionals and office workers, but the complex also includes schools, sports facilities, coffee shops, restaurants, pubs and retail stores as well as other amenities and infrastructure to support middle-class urban life.

But it was on our walk to Newtown the following day, that the downside of this upbeat version of inner-city life and urban regeneration hit the pavement.

Soon after we began our walk westwards, Charlie told us that in stark contrast to the vibrancy of the Absa Towers Main, Maboneng and Jewel City, Newtown seems stagnant. He described how Newtown, which was formerly a market with warehouses, had been redeveloped in the mid-1970s as a cultural precinct. He nostalgically recollected the Market Theatre’s anti-apartheid history, and bemoaned the area having become a fortified space of enclosed malls and desolate buildings and parking lots. He blamed Joburg’s corporate establishment and their fears of the “unruly masses” for this fortification of public space. In other words, the cultural vibrancy of Newtown had been undermined by the new fortified mall and its enclosed public spaces.

The original urban visionaries, progressive planners, creatives and city officials had initially promoted the Newtown cultural precinct as a strategy for reversing inner-city decline and corporate flight as a result of crime, hijacked buildings and disinvestment in public spaces. The ambitious Newtown precinct idea has resulted in significant achievements, including the Workers’ Museum, the SAB World of Beer, the Sci-Bono Science Museum, the expansion of the Market Theatre, the Dance Factory, Mary Fitzgerald Square and Museum Africa. However, at the time of our walkabout, which took place during the Covid-19 crisis, these venues were being described as “white elephants”, largely because of fears of inner-city crime.

Such perceptions of inner-city crime, grime and threat have ultimately reinforced styles of fortified architecture that cut off the flows of people through the city, resulting in walled shopping malls such as the one at the Market Theatre. Charlie and his business partner Gerald have made some progress persuading the Atterbury developers to try and open up the mall and integrate it with the surroundings. It remains to be seen whether these initiatives will also contribute towards restoring the spatial flows and connections between the CBD and Newtown.

For many of the residents of the neighbouring successful Brickfields social housing project, the Newtown mall is a safe and pleasurable place to do their shopping. Similarly, for the young black owner of Newtown’s First 15 Brewhouse to whom Charlie introduced us, the adjacent student residences and nightlife of the Newtown precinct provide a lively and reliable clientele. Although venues such as the Market Theatre seemed to be going through tough times, it appeared that the precinct’s future prospects were far from done and dusted.

The walks with Charlie had brought home some of the difficult truths about the making and remaking of the apartheid city. It seems that without the presence of inner-city residents, bars, restaurants, coffee shops, as well as stronger connections to the CBD, initiatives such as the Newtown cultural precinct may struggle to be sustainable. Moreover, the concept of “culture” that has animated the precinct’s development – theatre, art galleries, museums, dance venues, and so on – is likely to struggle to draw sufficient numbers of middle-class, suburban patrons, unless the latter feel that they are safe and secure.

Typically, the problem with both public and private sector-driven attempts to make such places “safe” is that they tend to lead to exclusionary forms of gentrification, enclaved shopping malls and walled-off public spaces, as well as evictions of the homeless, the urban poor, and others who are not seen to be “proper consumers”. Critics would no doubt see this as yet another manifestation of neoliberal gentrification.

It remains to be seen how Maboneng, Absa Towers Main and Jewel City will impact upon the urban landscape in the inner city. If the repurposing of CBD office buildings is successful, a number of questions will arise. How will these developments impact upon the urban poor trying to survive in illegal occupations and rundown “dark buildings” that are often without adequate water, sanitation, security, and electricity? Can the private sector developers, architects and planners “improve” the CBD built environment without excluding marginalised residents?

The walks with Charlie Moyo provided insights into Joburg’s dynamic urban landscape, but also raised some of the troubling conundrums for planners, government officials and NGOs seeking to improve the CBD, while simultaneously making Joburg a more inclusive and equitable African city.

How will the repurposed inner-city urban landscape be reclaimed in ways that are not exclusionary and anti-poor? Will the homeless, recyclers, migrants, urban poor and working classes also be able to make claims on the inner city?

These are some of the challenges of the latest phase of remaking Joburg’s CBD. Walking tours of the CBD, which differ strikingly from widely criticised “slum tourism”, are a very good place to start if you want to gain insights into this constantly mutating and elusive urban landscape. DM

Professor Steven Robins is with the Department of Sociology & Social Anthropology, University of Stellenbosch.

Professor Brahm Fleisch is with the Department of Education Policy, University of Witwatersrand.