Walking through Braamfontein — a civic experiment in Johannesburg's heart

On a late Friday afternoon in October, I was in Braamfontein on Ameshoff Street watching the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) brass band lead a procession from the concrete Eland, created by Clive van den Berg, to a new fountain piazza behind the Joburg Theatre. The sentinel sculpture, one of my favourites, anchors Braamfontein in its historic geography, a reminder of a time when wild things moved freely across this space.

In most cities, you wouldn’t bother noting the three-block distance, but it felt unusually significant. The Ameshoff Street Placemaking Project was conceived as a celebration of public space. In a city where so much of our daily lives unfold behind high walls and gates, the simple act of walking the streets at dusk is akin to a civic experiment.

You could feel the excitement among the crowd of students, residents, urban enthusiasts, artists, and others lured by the spectacle of brass and rhythm. Even the heavy security contingent deployed for a mayor who didn’t arrive became part of the performance. The neighbourhood’s “Bad Boyz” security team whipped out their phones like everyone else, capturing the scene.

For a few minutes, the city softened. The programme that followed expressed Joburg’s cultural depth: the JMPD band (who are pretty impressive as musicians), the Wits Choir, Joburg Ballet, and the Soweto String Quartet. They performed on the street for anyone who wished to stop and listen, creating the kind of accidental magic that arises out of public spaces that welcome rather than repel.

A fragile magic, as we know. Across from the Eland lies Indwe Park, imagined post-Covid by Liberty as a green disc open to all. Today, it is fenced off and largely impenetrable, its idealism absorbed by a successive wave of protests.

Just a few steps away is the counterpoint: artist Dionne McDonald’s new fountain plaza, centred on her signature compass design. Inside the fountain, the mosaic basin references the city’s watershed and the unseen flow of water beneath us, anchoring the Witwatersrand. A circle of comfortable benches surrounds it – a quiet invitation to pause, breathe, and reflect.

Hostile architecture

Days later, I watched a New York Times video about the rise of hostile architecture in that city. Confronting rising subway crime and lower transit usage in the aftermath of Covid, New York City is doubling down on deterrence in public space, often at the expense of humanity. Benches have been replaced with flat, unfriendly slabs designed only for the able-bodied. Armrests were added not for comfort, but to prevent anyone from lying down. Spikes installed under bridges. In some spaces, seating has been removed entirely. Hostile architecture is, at its core, defensive design: a way of excluding vulnerable groups without having to say so.

Joburg, in its own way, has long practised a wild, improvised version of this. Consider the proliferation of yellow plastic road barriers across neighbourhoods, razor wire, spiked walls, and a bewildering maze of ad hoc traffic cones that have become semi-permanent markers of urban dysfunction. In mid-November, one lane of the major tributary that is Jan Smuts Avenue was blocked by a brick perched atop a tyre, to warn drivers about a missing section of road.

Then, days later, crews from the Johannesburg Roads Agency suddenly appeared, performing tasks such as sweeping, patching and painting, in a burst of pre-G20 civic energy. It was so unusual to see them so prominently at work, I almost expected to be handed a commemorative badge.

Cities, it seems, know how to tidy up in anticipation of guests. But what about when we are the only ones watching? What does it take for a city to invest in everyday dignity, not just diplomatic performance?

On a recent episode of The Urbanist podcast, the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson spoke about cities and belonging: “If you don’t feel you belong, if you feel alienated or not acknowledged, you lose self-worth. Art and culture — meeting places, small events — give a space identity and make you start to belong. Once you belong, you become a stakeholder in the future. One of the greatest things you can do with public money is invest in art. There’s a return in societal upside.”

Listening to him, I returned to that late afternoon on Ameshoff Street, to the unlikely joy of walking through Braamfontein alongside strangers, music swirling between buildings, people filming not chaos but celebration.

In Joburg, a good “public space” almost always seems to require private sector intervention. The city’s machinery simply can’t carry the weight alone, and so partnerships are our default setting.

But if others are doing the imagining and the building, then the city’s responsibility becomes sharper: to maintain what’s made, not as a performance for visiting dignitaries, but as a daily commitment to its residents. Saying that, I would like to make the case for the regular appearance of the JMPD Brass Band, accompanying road crews across the city.

Because the true measure of a city is not how effectively it keeps people out — but how warmly it invites people in.

Here are five things on my radar this week:

• The soft opening of Nine Yards in Parktown North has begun, an exciting new development and garden space on the corner of Jan Smuts Avenue and Bolton Road. Worth a stop for the best fresh produce store, Garden Fresh, as well as a new fish shop, Sea and Stream, a walk in the nursery and a visit to Art Club & Friends, who opened on the weekend.
• The Mzansi Philharmonic, who annually gather the equivalent of the “Springboks of the classical music world”, heads to The Linder Auditorium on 6 December.
• In Braam, visit Boys of Soweto on Juta Street and pop into Skinner Café, and then S.W.A.N.K. This little corner is now a cool streetwear treasure trove.
• Melville is gearing up for a First Thursday on 4 December, with the launch of an Art Mile.
• It never gets old — Pablo Dos Manos at Pablo House is one of those spaces that will give you a fresh perspective on Joburg. Great food, and the most jaw-dropping views across this tree-filled city. DM

Laurice Taitz-Buntman is an avowed urbanist and the founder of Johannesburg In Your Pocket, a city guide and media platform dedicated to reframing Johannesburg through storytelling, travel, and urban experience.