In less than a century, the jumble of shabby tents and lean-tos that constituted Johannesburg’s first settlement has grown into a modern metropolis of towering office buildings, high-rise apartments and sprawling suburbs. Its rapid development has been in no small measure the result of the fabulous wealth that lay in the goldrich deposits of the now-famous Witwatersrand basin. The story of gold is also the story of Johannesburg, and in a fascinating series of photographic juxtapositions, Johannesburg Then and Now chronicles the city’s expansion from dusty mining camp to economic powerhouse. Rare archival photographs, dating from the 1880s to the 1940s, are contrasted with vivid scenes of the modern city, providing a hitherto untold portrait of the Place of Gold. Where possible, the modern-day photographs have been shot from the same locations as the originals. Detailed captions provide fascinating comparisons between the old and the new, while also illuminating features that have remained the same. Johannesburg Then and Now is a superb collection of images and text that will delight both local residents and visitors. Sales points: Fascinating portrait of early and modern Johannesburg; Rare archival photographs (1880–1950), many never published before; Informative and well-researched text; Beautiful and elegantly designed coffee-table book; Excellent gift and keepsake; Companion volume to the successful Cape Town Then and Now.

Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis is a pioneering effort to insert South Africa’s largest city into urban theory, on its own terms. Johannesburg is Africa’s premier metropolis. Yet theories of urbanization have cast it as an emblem of irresolvable crisis, the spatial embodiment of unequal economic relations and segregationist policies, and a city that responds to but does not contribute to modernity on the global scale. Complicating and contesting such characterizations, the contributors to this collection reassess classic theories of metropolitan modernity as they explore the experience of “city-ness” and urban life in post-apartheid South Africa. They portray Johannesburg as a polycentric and international city with a hybrid history that continually permeates the present. Turning its back on rigid rationalities of planning and racial separation, Johannesburg has become a place of intermingling and improvisation, a city that is fast developing its own brand of cosmopolitan culture. The volume’s essays include an investigation of representation and self-stylization in the city, an ethnographic examination of friction zones and practices of social reproduction in inner-city Johannesburg, and a discussion of the economic and literary relationship between Johannesburg and Maputo, Mozambique’s capital. One contributor considers how Johannesburg’s cosmopolitan sociability enabled the anticolonial projects of Mohandas Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Journalists, artists, architects, writers, and scholars bring contemporary Johannesburg to life in ten short pieces, including reflections on music and megamalls, nightlife, built spaces, and life for foreigners in the city. Contributors: Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge, Lindsay Bremner, David Bunn, Fred de Vries, Nsizwa Dlamini, Mark Gevisser, Stefan Helgesson, Julia Hornberger, Jonathan Hyslop, Grace Khunou, Frédéric Le Marcis, Xavier Livermon, John Matshikiza, Achille Mbembe, Robert Muponde, Sarah Nuttall, Tom Odhiambo, Achal Prabhala, AbdouMaliq Simone

An interdisciplinary account of the life of Johannesburg, South Africa's "global south city" Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global South city. Global South cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global North’s anxieties about the South: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, intersections, affects and experiences that mark the contemporary urban? Scholars, visual artists and storytellers, all look at unexamined aspects of Johannesburg life. From peripheral settlements to the inner city to the affluent northern suburbs, from precarious migrants and domestic workers to upwardly mobile young women and fearful elites, Anxious Joburg presents an absorbing engagement with this frustrating, dangerous, seductive city. It offers a rigorous, critical approach to Johannesburg revealing the way in which anxiety is a vital structuring principle of contemporary life. The approach is strongly interdisciplinary, with contributions from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, urban geography, migration studies and psychology. It will appeal to students and teachers, as well as to academic researchers concerned with Johannesburg, South Africa, cities and the global South. The mix of approaches will also draw a non-academic audience.

As a boy growing up in 1970s Johannesburg Mark Gevisser would play 'Dispatcher', a game that involved sitting in his father's parked car (or in the study) and sending imaginary couriers on routes across the city, mapped out from Holmden's Register of Johannesburg. As the imaginary fleet made its way across the troubled city and its tightly bound geographies, so too did the young dispatcher begin to figure out his own place in the world. At the centre of Lost and Found in Johannesburg is the account of a young boy who is obsessed with maps and books, and other boys. Mark Gevisser's account of growing up as the gay son of Jewish immigrants, in a society deeply affected - on a daily basis - by apartheid and its legacy, provides a uniquely layered understanding of place and history. It explores a young man's maturation into a fully engaged and self-aware citizen, first of his city, then of his country and the world beyond. This is a story of memory, identity and an intensely personal relationship with the City of Gold. It is also the story of a violent home invasion and its aftermath, and of a man's determination to reclaim his home town.

This dazzling portrait of Johannesburg is "one of the best things ever written about a great, if schizophrenic, city, and an utterly true picture of the new South Africa" (Christopher Hope).

Who bears witness to our lives? As a young girl, Razina Theba makes her way every day to the tiny family flat on Vorster Street in Fordsburg. It is here, just outside of the Johannesburg city centre, where she grows up, playing in the Yard with countless cousins, learning to enjoy perfect syrupy paan and the best way to brew chai for her bajee. It is also where she observes her family's harassment by the Security Branch, as well as her parents' determination to make their business at the Oriental Plaza a success. In A Home on Vorster Street, Razina witnesses the ebb and flow of a tight-knit neighbourhood trying to survive the forces of apartheid and, ultimately, where she learns of the value of family love and the enduring comfort it provides. At times funny and charming and, at others, painful and tender, this dazzling collection of stories is a spirited exploration of a colourful Indian-Muslim family bound by loyalty to their culture, community, religion and each other.

With the spread of capitalism - a socio-economic system that produces both wealth and poverty simultaneously - the spatial dynamics of the "global(izing)" city are creating more division between social classes, not less. This means that in the 21st-century, large cities around the world exhibit intensifying spatial inequality taking the form of a wealthy, privileged urban core ringed by a periphery of lower-income denizens far removed from the city’s resources and amenities. This trend toward swelling socio-spatial division is especially pronounced in cities purporting to be "global", or in the case of Johannesburg, South Africa’s financial capital, a "world-class African city." Ironically, Johannesburg’s historical legacy of immense spatial inequality thanks to apartheid is the direction in which most "global(izing)" cities such as New York, Cairo, London, Shanghai, New Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Berlin, and São Paulo are headed. The globalization of neoliberal urban policy has made the city less welcoming, liveable, accessible and friendly for lower-income city residents. This book asks if Johannesburg can unstitch its complex urban fabric to create a city with more democratic public transport, affordable housing in desirable locations and safe, socially and racially integrated public spaces. These pithy, solidly researched, accessibly written essays are instructive for all those who are interested in questions of spatial justice, urban development, history and planning and the general goal of making cities more livable and accessible for urban dwellers of all income levels.