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

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...

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. It is the densest collection of

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s in

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

, however, due to white flight and urban blight, many of the buildings are unoccupied as tenants have left for more secure locations in the Northern Suburbs, in particular Sandton 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, which is the third-tallest building in Africa, the second-tallest being

The Leonardo "The Leonardo" is a short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. Th ...

in Sandton. Under

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

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

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 video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly tr ...

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

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 structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...

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

References

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External links

Johannesburg Central Business District Redevelopment Plan

Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre 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 with the " cit ...

Johannesburg Region F