Johannesburg the Segregated city

Town & regional planning in Johannesburg

Central Business District

Within months of its establishment, Johannesburg experienced a surge of building activity, and by 1898 the present fabric of the city centre had already been defined. Most office and financial activity became located south of Market Square, bringing together banks, broker’s offices, auctioneers, and other financial institutions.

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Pritchard and Eloff Streets had already entrenched themselves as the town’s main shopping areas, stretching from the centre to the more fashionable residential suburbs of that time. The importance of Eloff Street was reinforced after 17 March 1890, when Park Station was established upon its axis, thus providing new arrivals to the town with an avenue of transition from the quiet lawns of its northern residential area through to the dusty bustle of the business centre. Doctors and nurses began to group their practices in an area around Jeppe Street, north of Von Brandis, a trend which was maintained until the end of the 20th century. A brewery, a mill and several workshops, which were established south and east of the town centre, heralded the direction of future light industrial, warehouse and motor workshop developments. Residential areas dominated the north and north-eastern sectors, and although these have long vanished, they established a trend which has persisted to the present day.

The end of the South African war resulted in renewed economic activity, and in the construction of a number of major buildings. Among them were the Corner House and the Carlton Hotel, both being the first of many steel-framed structures to be erected in the town. They were also the forerunners of more intense vertical development in the business centre. Other notable projects to be completed soon after were the Law Courts on Von Brandis Square and the City Hall on the eastern portion of Market Square, opposite the Rissik Street post office.

By the end of the 1920s, the town’s economy had tightened considerably and, with the exception of some activity in the commercial and retail areas, there was a marked decrease in construction. World War I, the 1922 General Strike and the 1929 Stock Market collapse all played a role in prolonging this era, and it was not until 1932, when South Africa went off the Gold Standard, that Johannesburg’s growth recommenced. Recovery was not slow and in the years just prior to World War II the city’s building industry experienced one of its most productive periods. Development took place in most parts of the central area, further reinforcing land use patterns established before 1898. Also, during this time the Victorian character of the city began to change, as many historical landmarks of old Johannesburg fell prey to land economics, changing land use patterns, and a need to find expression, through modernity, for the strength and vitality of its capital-driven economy.

The years immediately after 1945 saw only a limited amount of development, due to the imposition of building restrictions necessitated by material shortages, as well as to the curtailment of capital expenditure. In spite of this, conditions favourable to the building industry were rapidly re-established, and by 1952 new projects in the residential, retail and office sectors were springing up in the CBD.

This period also saw the first commercial and office developments taking place in Braamfontein, thus extending the central core northwards over the railway lines. After 1902, this area had begun to develop as a working class suburb, consisting largely of dwellings and small retail businesses, and during the 1930s it had seen the construction of some medium-rise residential buildings, as well as a few small industrial intrusions. The Town Planning scheme of 1946 gave business rights to a large part of this suburb and, by 1950, property investors had begun to show interest in its development.

Areas associated with the central core, but peripheral to it, were located in four smaller segments. The first lay in a narrow belt north of the railway line and comprised those parts of Braamfontein and the central area still zoned for residential purposes, including the Civic Theatre, the new municipal Civic Centre, Joubert Park and the Art Gallery. Some office development had already taken place in the area and this pattern continued until it was incorporated into the fabric of the larger Braamfontein-CBD area.

The second was one of the oldest sections of the city, and could be found to the west of the central area stretching down to the historic Fordsburg dip, the site of Johannesburg’s first mining camp. It included developments dating back to the beginning of the century, such as the power station, the public transport yards, the market and abattoir, as well as a number of allied trades which, by their very nature, tended to inhibit new developments. Planning proposals put forward at the time sought the relocation of these facilities to sites further out of town, making the whole area available for urban redevelopment. Unfortunately the imposition of an extensive, and visually overpowering, two-tier motor-way structure through this area during the 1970s proved to be a powerful limiting factor to its revalidation, and the first redevelopments only began to take place during the late 1980s.

A third peripheral segment was the site of a small outcrop of the Main Reef located immediately south of the CBD which, once mining operations had ceased, was developed to house light industrial and storage activities. This character has been maintained to the present day, and it still accommodates a number of small workshops connected with the motor trade. However its land is heavily undermined and will not permit high-rise building development of the kind found elsewhere.

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