Consolidating homegrown property empires and transforming a local state: The multiple trajectories behind commercial cityscapes in Johannesburg after apartheid

A period of rapid socio-spatial change unfurled in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the 1990s and 2000s. One ascendant face of the transitioning City became its pronounced office buildings and shopping centres sprouting near suburban areas and existing corporate nodes. In seeking to understand how this happened, and the attendant relationship between the local state and commercial real estate, this article identifies and explains two contextual processes: the construction of homegrown commercial real estate oligopolies, and post-apartheid local state transformations. Rather than externally driven financialisation, or a municipality captured by real estate developers, this article argues that “multiple trajectories of socio-spatial change” manifest Johannesburg’s commercial cityscapes after apartheid. South African companies with racialised gains expanded global financial markets, while Johannesburg’s municipality-in-transition tangoed with economic growth. The findings of this article contribute to ongoing efforts to demystify corporate actors in commercial real estate and understand the local state in relation to capital. It reaffirms the ongoing value of conjunctural and contextually grounded analysis when seeking to understand geographies of power through the built environment – and points to the utility of mobilising multiple trajectories of socio-spatial change in such attempts.