It is the densest collection of skyscrapers in Africa, however, due to white flight and urban blight, many of the buildings are unoccupied as tenants have left for more secure locations in the Northern Suburbs, in particular Sandton and Rosebank.

[citation needed] Under apartheid, the Central Business District was classified as a whites-only area, meaning that black people were allowed to work and shop there but could not live there.

Application of the Group Areas Act became very lax in the 1980s, among other things because courts were not able to handle all the cases, and when the Act was abolished even more disadvantaged black people moved into the City Centre,[2] often taking over whole buildings by overfilling them with people that the previous middle-class white tenants found unacceptable neighbours.

A crime wave swept through the city as businesses left the CBD, which made walking around the area dangerous.

The Johannesburg city government installed CCTV cameras all over the Central Business District, which decreased crime dramatically.