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Why Won’t Downtown Johannesburg ‘Regenerate’? Reassessing Hillbrow as a Case Example

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Abstract

This paper argues that neighbourhood change in Hillbrow is not concomitant with the linear processes of urban decline and economic resurgence. Instead, neighbourhood change is shaped by situated histories, politics and economics, in addition to the activities of diverse local actors. It also argues that despite severe physical decay, a history of being redlined and limited public sector support for the provision of public services, Hillbrow remains a resilient port-of-entry neighbourhood to Johannesburg for many residents who desire to engage in local and transnational economies. Current debates on urban land markets, therefore, necessitate an awareness of the roles that port-of-entry neighbourhoods facilitate in (mega)cities, and alternative urban planning responses to conventional regeneration strategies that are based on liberal market rationalities alone.

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Notes

  1. These landlords were all White as Black South Africans were precluded from owning property in designated White Group Areas.

  2. ACTSTOP constituted 50 members of Johannesburg’s legal fraternity who volunteered their time to defend Hillbrow’s residents charged with transgressing the Group Areas Act.

  3. The Group Areas Act was only abolished in 1990.

  4. The scrapping of the Influx Control Act allowed black South Africans to move freely between urban centres (Morris 1999).

  5. The City of Johannesburg defines ‘bad buildings’ as ‘properties where little or no investment is being made in maintaining the building, either because (i) the owner has abandoned the building or the building has been hijacked, and so there are no clear landlord/caretaker structures or arrangements in place; (ii) residents are not paying rents and so owners do not have the means to pay for building upkeep; (iii) residents are paying, but the payments are not being utilised by the owner or manager to maintain the building or pay Council rates and service charges, often leading to disconnections of services, with a resultant compounding of the problem’ (CoJ 2007, p. 49).

  6. In 2011, the city of Johannesburg replaced the Better Buildings Program with the Inner City Property Scheme (CoJ 2011).

  7. The pro bono Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) based at the University of the Witwatersrand sought to defend residents’ rights to live in the inner city by arguing that the Inner City Regeneration Strategy ignored the state’s obligation to safeguard residents rights to live in the inner city (see Winkler 2012).

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  1. School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, University of Cape Town, Centlivres Building, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa

    Tanja Winkler

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  1. Tanja Winkler
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Correspondence to Tanja Winkler.

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Winkler, T. Why Won’t Downtown Johannesburg ‘Regenerate’? Reassessing Hillbrow as a Case Example. Urban Forum 24, 309–324 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-012-9178-5

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