Sandton City or Joburg City | Photography up north

Sandton city is actually within Joburg (the city) but somehow becomes a city of its own. Words are funny like that, as is modern geography, and modern life. A friend, years back, suggested that one day the world would return to city states – the way Rome was a city state. Somehow, I think he may be right. We have been globalising for years; I can totally see that ballooning effect reversing and us all localising.

In the world’s many burgeoning metropolises (could I write metropoli, #octopi?) you would think perhaps the effect could then spill over to them, and they small become localised, too. Take it a step further, and we shall all return to small “villages” with communities that know each other, like in days long gone by.

History has proven the modern governments of the world (bar none, #maybe #dontquotemeonthis) can surely not succeed in governing many millions of people. Most people cannot govern themselves, let alone another, let alone a thousand folk. My prediction: the world moves towards self-governance. Governments, ironically, even promoting it. We cannot continue as we are, that much I know. Things are escalating every day, in each and every way, and the world is in a word: unmanageable.

This is no more true than in Sandton, Joburg. Flat as a pancake urbanisation, cars everywhere with only a driver, crime without comparison. There will be a day it becomes too much, and for many, probably is already. Who am I? Just a photographer-journalist who observes and writes nonsense on a blog from time to time, but behind the lens is an eye and a mind that thinks: best to move to a small town like Nature’s Valley (when it has fibre), work from home, tend to a vegetable garden, raise kids in safety and leisure, and avoid the unmanageable future as best as possible.