Thanks for elaborating, I couldn't remember any more than the bit about refugees.
Also the dystopian looking concrete tower (Ponte Tower) has been renovated and cleaned now
Is that the infamous one that provided the sort of open center and mixed residential-commercial design that gets mimicked a lot as an arcology/hab-block in cyberpunk stories? If so I remember reading about that, how bad it had gotten and what went into fixing it up and renovating it.
Yeah it's that one. It got pretty bad. There was a large trash pile in the middle a few stories high. Sex trafficking, drugs, criminal gangs, etc occupied most of the building during the early to mid 2000s. If you wanted to solicit a prostitute or get hard drugs like cocaine, tik, heroin, etc that was the place to go. But then the tower fell under new ownership and the criminal and gang activity was kicked out after a few years of legal battles, police corruption, raids etc, and the building cleaned up. The new ownership invested a ton of money into the building. After years of work it's as good as a dystopian looking apartment complex in the middle of Johannesburg can get. Now a local radio presenter even owns an apartment there.
Thanks for elaborating, I couldn't remember any more than the bit about refugees.
Is that the infamous one that provided the sort of open center and mixed residential-commercial design that gets mimicked a lot as an arcology/hab-block in cyberpunk stories? If so I remember reading about that, how bad it had gotten and what went into fixing it up and renovating it.
CW: Criminal activity, drugs, sexual violence
Yeah it's that one. It got pretty bad. There was a large trash pile in the middle a few stories high. Sex trafficking, drugs, criminal gangs, etc occupied most of the building during the early to mid 2000s. If you wanted to solicit a prostitute or get hard drugs like cocaine, tik, heroin, etc that was the place to go. But then the tower fell under new ownership and the criminal and gang activity was kicked out after a few years of legal battles, police corruption, raids etc, and the building cleaned up. The new ownership invested a ton of money into the building. After years of work it's as good as a dystopian looking apartment complex in the middle of Johannesburg can get. Now a local radio presenter even owns an apartment there.