For many, Johannesburg resembles the imagined spectre of the urban future. Global anxieties about catastrophic urban explosion, social fracture, environmental degradation, escalating crime and violence, and rampant consumerism alongside grinding poverty, are projected onto this city as a microcosm of things to come. Decision-makers in cities worldwide have attempted to balance harsh fiscal and administrative realities with growing demands for political, economic and social justice. This book investigates pragmatic approaches to urban economic development, service delivery, spatial restructuring, environmental sustainability and institutional reform in Johannesburg. It explores the conditions and processes that are determining the city's transformation into a cosmopolitan metropole and magnet for the continent.

Jo Beall is Reader in Development Studies at the London School of Economics.
Owen Crankshaw is senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cape Town.
Susan Parnell is Associate Professor in Geography at the University of Cape Town.

Part 1: Ways of Understanding Divided Cities - Introduction to a Divided City * Reverberations from a Divided City * Part 2: The Changing Spatial Structure of the City - Beyond Racial Fordism: Changing Patterns of Social Inequality * Post-Fordist Polarization: The Changing Spatial Order of the City * Part 3: Institutional Responses to Urban Change - Decentralization by Stealth: Democratization or Disempowerment through Developmental Local Government? * the Politics of Fiscal Austerity in Creating Equitable City Government * Part 4: Living in a Divided City - the Inner-city Challenge: Locating Partners for Urban Regeneration * Participatory Planning and Informal Settlement Upgrading in Diepsloot * Housing and Service Consumption in Soweto * the People Behind the Walls: Insecurity, Identity and gated Communities * Conclusion: Lessons from a Uniting City * Notes * References * Index