The Johannesburg Central Business District, commonly called Johannesburg CBD, is one of the main business centres of

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. It is the densest collection of

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Most modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise bui ...

s in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, however, due to

white flight The white flight, also known as white exodus, is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the Racism ...

and urban blight, many of the buildings are unoccupied as tenants have left for more secure locations in the Northern Suburbs, in particular

Sandton Sandton is a financial, commercial and residential area, located in the northern part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Formerly an independent municipality, Sandton's name came from the combination of two of its suburbs, Sa ...

and Rosebank. There are significant movements to revive the area.

History

The area that is currently the Central Business District has been the central area of Johannesburg nearly since its inception. Its central location in the city as well as careful planning led to it being chosen as the best location for residential and commercial development, especially during the economically prosperous 1960s and 1970s. Many large commercial products were completed in this period, such as the

Carlton Centre The Carlton Centre is a 50-storey skyscraper and shopping centre located on Commissioner Street in central Johannesburg, South Africa. At , it was the tallest building in Africa for 46 years from its completion in 1973 until 2019. It is today ...

, the tallest building in Africa for 46 years (currently the fifth tallest). Under

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

, the Central Business District was classified as a whites-only area, meaning that black people were allowed to work and shop there but could not live there. Application of the

Group Areas Act Group Areas Act was the title of three acts of the Parliament of South Africa enacted under the apartheid government of South Africa. The acts assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas in a syste ...

became very lax in the 1980s, among other things because courts were not able to handle all the cases, and when the Act was abolished even more disadvantaged black people moved into the City Centre, often taking over whole buildings by overfilling them with people that the previous middle-class white tenants found unacceptable neighbours. This is not only true of previously established residential areas such as Hillbrow on the periphery of the CBD but also of former office blocks in the heart of the CBD, that were converted to residential accommodation as businesses fled the centre in the late-1980s and 1990s. A crime wave swept through the city as businesses left the CBD, which made walking around the area dangerous. Many businesses and people fled the Central Business District and surrounding areas such as

Braamfontein Braamfontein ( English: ''blackberry spring'', or more prosaicly ''blackberry springs''; also known as Braam) is a central suburb of Johannesburg, in South Africa, seat of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and some of South Africa's major c ...

, Hillbrow, and Yeoville for more secured houses or offices in the Northern Suburbs. By the late 1990s, the Central Business District was a no-go zone and a virtual ghost town. All its former glory was lost, and the city was shattered by the loss of the Carlton Hotel. The situation has improved since. The provincial government of

Gauteng Gauteng ( , ; Sotho-Tswana languages, Sotho-Tswana for 'place of gold'; or ) is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province by land area in South Africa. Although Gauteng accounts f ...

is based in the CBD as are several large banks.

Gentrification

There have been significant movements to redevelop the city centre. The Johannesburg city government installed

CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of closed-circuit television cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signa ...

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

s all over the Central Business District, which decreased crime dramatically. Several historical buildings have also been developed and turned into

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

s, which developers hope will draw new residents to the area. The process of gentrification and redevelopment is ongoing as of 2016.

References

External links

Johannesburg Central Business District Redevelopment Plan
{{Greater Johannesburg, communities

Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...