"In this meticulously researched account of Johannesburg's socio-spatial history, Martin J. Murray gets beneath the surface of the city's chaotic present to discover the inertia of long-term deployments. He finds that ingrained habits of urban planning and real estate entrepreneurship have always been mobilized in the city as twin mechanisms of change and renewal across moments of territorial mutation. This exposes post-apartheid transformation as a re-articulation of old orders and habits and makes an important contribution to revising the idea of decisive historical rupture at the end of apartheid."--Lindsay Bremner, Professor of Architecture, Tyler School of Art, Temple University "Martin J. Murray navigates the slippery interfaces where mega-development, social progress, dystopian dread, racial enclaving, and mobilities of all kinds intersect, revealing both an alarming disposition to Africa's most heterogeneous city and a rough-hewn humanity despite the odds. At each step of the way, Murray is precise and impassioned in this no-holds barred analysis of the lengths politicians, businesspersons, planners, entrepreneurs, and developers will go to hold a city a down." AbdouMaliq Simone, author of For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities
