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Mean streets: Louis Botha Avenue connects the CBD to the northern suburbs, making it an attractive option for job-seekers looking to live near work opportunities. Credit: Charles, CC BY 2.0

Louis Botha Avenue runs from the inner city suburb Yeoville, snakes through Orange Grove and ends in Alexandra township, a stone’s throw away from Sandton. Many photographers have captured the township and the Sandton CBD in the same frame, foreshortening the shacks with the gleaming buildings of what’s often called Africa’s richest square mile. Thousands of township residents make the short commute to Sandton, and back, every day. Under the tenure of then-Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau, Louis Botha was reimagined as how a single road could tie transport, housing, employment and infrastructure together, but that vision appears now largely dead on the vine.

Johannesburg launched the Rea Vaya bus rapid transit system in 2009 to great fanfare. In the years since, progress has slowed to a crawl. The BRT routes were also meant to unlock affordable housing and retail outlets along its routes.