In this paper I develop an alternative way of explaining the decline of the Johannesburg central city and of then looking to its present transformation and future potential. There has been a strongly predominant and blaming set of explanations based on crime and grime, poor service delivery, and lack of control of informal trading during the 1990s. These explanations and especially the conception of the future have relied on American models of inner-city development. It is argued that policymakers have been blinded to local economic potentials that do not exist in American cities. The point is critical owing to the restructuring of the central city's economy. The central city is no longer the metropolitan CBD; it is losing most of its business and financial services and many manufacturing enterprises. It is, however, developing trading networks throughout sub-Saharan Africa and backward-linked small manufacturing opportunities. A new and different economy appears to be emerging.
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