Abstract Central cities are vibrant and productive places because of the dense concentration of people, firms and supporting facilities. Yet their dynamism can be undermined by congestion, social tensions and poor urban management. South Africa’s four major city centres experienced tumultuous changes during the transition from apartheid and the exodus of many property owners, investors and occupiers to the suburbs. Buildings decayed, infrastructure collapsed, public health and safety deteriorated, and governance was disrupted by unauthorised activities. Despite the general neglect, signs of recovery have emerged and gathered momentum in recent years. The revival is fragile, partial and patchy in most cases, and dwarfed by scale of new investment in outlying economic nodes. The paper uses a resilience framework to examine how enterprising organisations have spurred regeneration by identifying opportunities for the adaptive reuse of redundant buildings and public spaces for affordable housing and social amenities. It also compares the extent, character and causes of the rebound across the four cities, demonstrating elements of continuity (bounce-back resilience) and transformation (bounce-forward resilience) in each case. Cape Town is characterised more by continuity and Johannesburg more by decline and transformation, with Pretoria and Durban in between. City centre recovery is attributed to a combination of pioneering private and public sector actions, albeit disjointed and uneven in their effectiveness. The paper concludes that central cities are relatively open incubators of economic and social progress, but also cauldrons of competing interests which create many dilemmas for decision-makers to negotiate, and which require coordinated attention and determination to realise their potential.

中文翻译：

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恢复核心？南部中心城市衰落与转型

摘要 中心城市由于人口、企业和配套设施的密集而成为充满活力和生产力的地方。然而，他们的活力可能会因交通拥堵、社会紧张局势和城市管理不善而受到削弱。南非的四大城市中心在从种族隔离过渡和许多业主、投资者和居住者向郊区迁移的过程中经历了动荡的变化。建筑物腐烂，基础设施倒塌，公共健康和安全恶化，未经授权的活动扰乱了治理。尽管普遍被忽视，但近年来出现了复苏的迹象并增强了势头。在大多数情况下，复苏是脆弱的、局部的和不完整的，而且与边远经济节点的新投资规模相比相形见绌。本文使用弹性框架来研究进取型组织如何通过识别适应性再利用冗余建筑物和公共空间的机会来促进经济复苏，从而促进经济适用房和社会便利设施的再生。它还比较了四个城市反弹的程度、特征和原因，展示了每种情况下的连续性（反弹弹性）和转型（反弹向前弹性）的要素。开普敦的特点更多是连续性，约翰内斯堡更多的是衰落和转型，比勒陀利亚和德班介于两者之间。市中心的恢复归功于私营和公共部门开创性行动的结合，尽管它们的有效性是脱节和不平衡的。论文得出结论，中心城市是经济社会进步相对开放的孵化器，