This seems to be a significant topic of discussion in the South African forum. Should developers refurbish the CBD of towns and small cities or develop the suburbs with businesses and malls?

Note: Exclude Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, and Port Elizabeth from this debate.

My opinion is probably going to be against many forumers here, but I say develop the suburbs. For starters, malls and office parks generally cater to the middle and upper classes who live in the quiet suburbs. The suburbanites generally do not want to go into the chaotic old CBD to do their shopping, but rather in an enclosed mall close to their house. So look at it from a developers perspective, do they want to build their mall in a decaying CBD, or in the suburbs were their clientele will most likely live. Don't blame developers for urban decay in CBD's but rather local government for letting their CBD go the dogs. In order for a nice, new development to talk place in the CBD, the rest of the CBD has to be up to par, not to mention have a lower crime rate.

This seems to be a significant topic of discussion in the South African forum. Should developers refurbish the CBD of towns and small cities or develop the suburbs with businesses and malls?

Note: Exclude Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, and Port Elizabeth from this debate.

What other cities are there? :? :D

I'm kind of wondering the same thing..

Yes there will be development in the small towns, but they will take their town planning lead from what is happening in the larger cities such as DBN, CPT, JHB etc...

What other cities are there? :? :D

Well..Rustenburg, Bloemfontein, Pietermaritzburg, Polokwane, Kimberley, East London, Stellenbosch, Newcastle, etc

lol

^^Both should happen, the development of surburban nodes will continue as the SA dream is essentially a more budget version of the american dream and with an exploding middle class movement towards the burbs will continue. We should however learn lessons from mistakes Americans made i.e. Authorities should constantly prioitise investment in the CBD's and trasnport links, and strive to make the whole urban structure more efficient. Thus we should continue to invest a lot of cash into mass transit and such..

For e.g. although the Jozi CBD is rundown more than a quarter of SA/JSE market cap is still domicilled there. So there is still a lot of wealth in the CBD's.

It depends. Pietermaritzburg and Kimberley are fairly compact and have historic CBD's that are worth preserving and investing in as they largely define the city. Whereas somewhere like East London is very spread out with several suburban commercial hubs and not as centered around the CBD so suburban development makes more sense. Neither should be neglected but cities develop differently.

Rustenburg CBD is absolutely horrible imo.

Rustenburg CBD is absolutely horrible imo.

+1