2 – Urban Growth

Unlike other global cities, Johannesburg1 neither originated as an 3 agricultural hub nor as a trading centre, it was founded in the middle of nowhere as a result of discovering the world’s largest gold reserves (Foster, 2009). The making of Johannesburg’s spatial configuration is an unanticipated outcome of an ever-changing socio-economic process superimposed on the East-West ridge landscape greatly tied to its geology (Murray, 2010).

In 1886, the city of Johannesburg was founded on a triangular piece of unused land called ‘uitvelgrond’, wedged between Braamfontein, Turffontein and Doornfontein (Murray, 2010). The original town was laid out in a tight grid iron pattern of blocks consisting of small plots of lands and a compact street network as the city grew linearly in the east-west direction. From the start, the city planners, municipal authorities, wealthy miners, and property developers worked in unison to create a city as a reflection on western modernity. The shapeless jumble of historic inner city’s built fabric largely moulded by 3 different building eras; the first building boom was financed by the great financial success of the gold industry from 1900s till the First World War. The city builders used the technological advancements to experiment Victorian architecture with new steel skeletal structures, the construction of tall buildings without vertical constraints. The second phase was the outcome of a re-structured global economy after the collapse of the gold standard, and the final phase encompassed imposing imperial visions of modern city planners in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of European modernism.

The standardization of space into geometric patterns with little or no regard to terrain is causing imminent problems for urbanism that lie underneath the altered surface. On the contrary, city builders, planners, and municipal authorities echoed Le Corbusier’s futuristic vision in creating the modernist cityscape of Johannesburg. The push/pull factors of globalization and capitalism have contracted and expanded the city’s centre. This is often seen when many buildings and blocks are completely erased in a single stroke. Thus, transforming the cityscape. In his book ‘A City Divided’, the urban planner refers to the physical landscape features of Johannesburg as “original birthmarks” of the city that distinctively stand out in the background (Mandy, 1984). On one hand, the city seeks to redeem itself from the dusty mining town image and reconfigure it into a pan-African capital in the globalised network. Whereas on the other, the city is a virtual ghost town at night with rampant crime and fear of safety. These contradictory nuances have worked to create a dual character of the inner city.

3 The name /johannes+burg/ evolved from the names of two colonial English explorer’s Johannes Rissik and Johannes Joubert, who obtained the mining rights from British Crown till eternity. The other colloquial names of Johannesburg are Jozi and Jo’burg.

FIG. 2.1 The city embedded within Witwatersrand Gold Fields (Source - www.bibliopolis.com )

FIG. 2.2 The isolated town established north of the minning operations without any sustainable watersource (Source - www.bibliopolis.com )

1900 1917 1938 1957

FIG. 2.3 Historic growth of settlements along the Main Reef Road

Timeline

1984

The introduction of the Group Areas Act No. 41 in 1950 created a new set of formalized spatial and social structures based on discriminatory racial lines that significantly altered the demographic identities and forced resettlement of certain racial groups from one area to another (Knight, 2018). The ridgeline serves not only as a natural barrier but strategically employed to segregate groups based on ethnicity and wealth. Like the original town, the new townships were shaped by old farm boundaries which are disoriented and irregularly tied to each other without a coordinated plan (Knight, 2018). After a century of mining, the physical landscape on the ridgeline emerged as ready access to the gold-bearing outcrops that extend along an east-west direction (Murray, 2010. p. 40). After the end of apartheid in 1994, the combined pressures of decentralization and new opportunities for the disenfranchised resulted in a splintered megalopolis without definite city boundaries. By 1995, the inner city turned into a semi-ghetto left in ruins by the withdrawal of financial and business entities northward between Pretoria and Johannesburg (Reid, 2005).

00 05 10KM

FIG. 2.4 Historic Map of Johannesburg 1903 (source- (South Africa) Survey Department)