Building from Scratch

New Cities, Privatized Urbanism and the Spatial Restructuring of Johannesburg after Apartheid

Bibliographic Data

ID4383208
AuthorsC W Herbert (0000-0003-3650-7797, Department of Sociology University of Michigan 500 S. State Street Ann Arbor Michigan 48108 USA), M J Murray (0000-0002-4448-281X, University of Michigan)
Year2015
Volume39
Issue3
Pages471-494
Publication date2015-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-2427.12180
OpenAlexW2143265122
LanguageEN
Citations received49
References cited52

By the start of the twenty-first century, the once dominant historical downtown core of Johannesburg had lost its privileged status as the center of business and commercial activities, the metropolitan landscape having been restructured into an assemblage of sprawling, rival edge cities. Real estate developers have recently unveiled ambitious plans to build two completely new cities from scratch: Waterfall City and Lanseria Airport City (formerly called Cradle City) are master-planned, holistically designed 'satellite cities' built on vacant land. While incorporating features found in earlier city-building efforts, these two new self-contained, privately-managed cities operate outside the administrative reach of public authority and thus exemplify the global trend toward privatized urbanism. Waterfall City, located on land that has been owned by the same extended family for nearly 100 years, is spearheaded by a single corporate entity. Lanseria Airport City/Cradle City is a planned 'aerotropolis' surrounding the existing Lanseria airport at the northwest corner of the Johannesburg metropole. These two new private cities differ from earlier large-scale urban projects because everything from basic infrastructure (including utilities, sewerage, and the installation and maintenance of roadways), landscaping, security services, the regulation of common spaces, and selling and branding the city are firmly in the hands of private profit-making corporate entities and outside the mandate of public authorities

Archaeology · Business · Downtown · Economic growth · Economy · Geography · Landscaping · Metropolitan area · Political science · Real estate · Restructuring · Sewerage · Urbanism · Engineering · Local Economic Development and Planning · Public Administration · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance · Architecture · Finance

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