Peripheries and rural / urban transitions – understanding the region’s small-towns and peri-urban areas

Small towns on the edge of the city region, large peri-urban and commercial farming areas, and huge swathes of zones of displaced urbanisation in ex-Bantustans are all poorly understood. Yet there is evidence that they are undergoing rapid change. Some small towns and extended informal settlements on the edge seem to be attracting more migrants, leading some academics to call them ‘estuary zones’ where people who are between urban and rural lives try to access the benefits of the region’s core, while negotiating its costs. But there is also some data that indicates the depopulation of these peripheries, as people leave farms and declining small towns to get closer to opportunities in the larger economic centres of the GCR. This project will be run in conjunction with the NRF Chair for Planning and Modelling in the Wits School of Architecture and Planning, and others with interests in this research area.