Nelson Mandela Bridge neglect

[Letter16]

Originally Posted by Frantic777

Well then I enjoy your take on subjectivity, but taking it down to the level of the poorest and then looking at what is mediocre and badly run and saying it is good, those are not the standards this country should be run on. We should aim higher than this. Why must we be accepting of badly run municipalities because in the eyes of the poor they are well run. Why not aim for excellence? This is a defeatist viewpoint.

And YES people do start blogs about the decay in the CBD and I can understand why. Some of those people grew up in JHB and lived in the CBD maybe even for decades. Some people were just as excited about the CBD's boom times as we now get with Sandton.
Imagine then how bad it must be for those people when everything they attached pride to now is a dump. Oh how angry we would become if a place like Sandton goes down, im sure quite a few people here would then also start blogs...

being poor or having less money does not handicap one from having a concept of excellence in the same way as having money doesn't specially enables someone. people, rich and poor, know what they want expect and what is good or excellent. peoples opinions carry the same weight regardless of how much money they have. to me anyhow. so i can see how a resident of soweto or brickfields can say how their local government has been good or excellent(symantics) especially when taking into account what things were like in those places 10 years ago. that someone that lives in sandton might not witness the same upward trend is informed by their immediate environment.

if joburg had a sparking cbd which was socially non inclusive and stood as an island amidst a generally decaying city; it wouldn't be worthwhile to hold it up as an example of the city as a whole.

in the same way, saying that joburg is a failed city and focusing on the cbd and a narrow socio-economic band for its comment is also not complete.

what is good, bad or excellent is also a matter of subjectivity and cities can be all those things at once. depends where you look look and who you talk to

[waltjie]

Hahahaha! Jakes1, Dude you should become a poet! I swear to God! Some of the things you come up with!

[dysan1]

Its totally subjective and no one will ever win as clearly those here with strong views fail to read either sides opinion with any measure of respect.

The question is how we each judge success. Is cape town better off as a city than joburg because it has turned around its city centre, but has townships in a far worse state of affairs than most of joburgs? We will never agree as some will only care about a pristine cbd and frankly not care about the township, while others will champion that a city needs to focus heavily on improving the lives of those at the bottom end first before getting shiny city centres.

You guys will continue to go in circles here. But the naivety of some is frightening for educated people.

[kulani]

Originally Posted by Jakes1

From all my statements. Pleaaaase don't read into it that I am denying frustrations with the city's performance. I curse every single time I have to drive down Oxford and the bloody lights are out again (the horrors of suburbia). But I also refuse to discount ALL successes just because the city is not performing. Private investors like Adam Levy and others have had massive impact on the central parts of town. But some people don't want this. They want the entire place to be magically transformed overnight. Joburg CBD can swallow PTA, DURBAN, CTN, PE. It is HUGE. Braamfontein on its own rival most other cities entire CBDs. So now we just chuck that out? Because it doesn't fit into your greater scheme of reductionist paranoia.


Oh, and for vacancy rates: Read this document. Joburg CBD is at 17%, CT at 10%. Not the 85% dramatic empty ghastly chicken-run that you painted.
http://www.rode.co.za/news/research/...e_2012-Mar.pdf

Just my 2 cents on this. Things are far from perfect in Joburg, but the city is making great strides. ROME WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY.

An example of things that are improving. Almost all the lights are WORKING now on Oxford street, all the way from Rosebank to Parktown. I would say 96% of the lights are working with the few that are off, mainly because of malfunctioning of the actual wiring on the lamp post. This is true of many areas in and around Joburg including Rivonia rd, Bowling,Witkoppen, Louis Botha, Corlett drive, Jan Smuts, William Nicol, Commissioner street, Rissik street, Simmonds street, Harrison street, M1, M2, N1, R21, N3 etc.

if you see lights that are not working today, chances are they will be working in the next 3-4 weeks. I have been observing this and the Joburg Power guys are really working hard to switch on the lights.

The R24 from Gilloolys Interchange to OR Tambo continues to disappoint though under Ekurhuleni municipality.

[kulani]

Originally Posted by Letter16

How you see joburg is subjective. Just wish people would allow others to see it through their own eyes

Yes people can see Joburg differently depending on their socio-economic condition. But more importantly, they can also see it differently because of what they have experienced in their lives or not. What they have been exposed to.

Two examples i want to give:-

Ask my uncle about downtown Joburg. He is 67 years old and used to work and live at Wits university from 1967 - 1993, he is black, poor and definitely not in the middle class. He now live back in our village in Limpopo, where he came from. He will tell you "it is filthy and looks like a village". I am quoting his exact words when he came to visit me early this year after 19 years of being away from Joburg.

Take another example, a resident of Alexandra, Joburg who regularly gets in a mini bus taxi in Alexandra and wait for an hour before it gets full and depart to randburg, may not be bothered at all with the time it takes to commute from Alex to Randburg, because that is what they have always experienced and seen. So it would seem the mini bus taxi is functioning well. As long as they make sure they budget 2 hours to travel from Alex to Randburg, everything is fine. But take someone from Accra, Ghana (i recently hosted a friend from Accra and i also worked there for 2 years), they will be so surprised that it takes this long to get from Alex to Randburg and you actually wait inside the mini bus taxi for so long. Because in Accra, they just stand on the street and a cab clearly marked in orange colours which is affordable passes every 5 minutes. They just hop in and 10 -15 minutes later, they have arrived where they are going.

[musiccity]

What is wrong with the South African forum? Practically every other forum on SSC is positive, progressive, and forward thinking. Yet so many here whine and complain and are extremely pessimistic. If someone has a passion for their city (which is the point of SSC) like Jakes they are shot down then lit on fire. It is ridiculous.

If some of you hate Joburg so much why not move to my city of Nashville. It is a friendly city that is far far away from the doomed apocalypse of Johannesburg.

[Jakes1]

I am trying to understand why neigbourgoods market is a 'tourist attraction,' as cited by some, when it is mostly Joburgers that go there? Thousands of people flocking downtown every weekend - but please ignore. Because it is still not as awesome as a stripmall in bryanston.