Finding our rhythm: Pathways and futures for the Gauteng City-Region
This Occasional Paper is the outcome of a scenario building process led by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) on behalf of GCRO. While taking the national Indlulamithi Scenarios as a starting point, it presents an outlook tailored to the particular trends and dynamics shaping Gauteng. Based on a consultative process that elaborated 26 key variables clustered into Key Driving Forces, the paper sets out three scenarios, named after popular songs from the period before the dawn of democracy. It concludes with a proposed development path for Gauteng to achieve its ideal scenario.
Date of publication:
December 2025
‘Township economies’: Uses, meanings and key debates in the Gauteng context
This paper presents multiple meanings of ‘township economies’ and the implications of key debates around framing township economic development. Overlaps in various national and provincial government strategies have included government procurement in townships, settlement upgrading, promoting entrepreneurship and creating a conducive regulatory environment for productivity. These efforts notwithstanding, the paper points out the need to include township development within broader national policy and encourages discussion on important concerns such as bringing jobs to people or people to jobs.
Date of publication:
September 2024
Author(s):
An analysis of microscale segregation and socio-economic sorting in Gauteng
This Occasional Paper analyses racial segregation and socio-economic sorting in Gauteng at the microscale. The three inquiries highlight continued segregation, but also nuances in the nature of desegregation in the Gauteng province at various macro- and microscales. The analysis reveals barriers and opportunities for future spatial transformation and highlights the potential role of public and private housing expansion in shaping equality of opportunity.
Date of publication:
April 2024
Author(s):
Linked to project(s):
Micro-scale segregation and socio-economic sorting in Gauteng (2024)
Adventures in city data: An ethnographic story
This GCRO Occasional Paper presents an ethnographic account of a decade-long journey in city economic data collation. The paper recounts the collaborations of the National Treasury’s Cities Support Programme (CSP) with Statistics South Africa, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), to collate anonymised and geocoded data that would enable an alternative mapping of the space economies of South African cities. Despite many practical and governance constraints, the collaborations ultimately bore fruit in the establishment of a secure administrative data centre at the National Treasury. This in turn led to the milestone publication of the 2021 City Spatial Economic Data Reports. This ethnographic account concludes by reflecting on possibilities for further improving the integrity of this vital city spatial economic data resource, and to enhance its use in credible, evidence-based urban analysis.
Date of publication:
December 2022
Linked to project(s):
Gauteng's urban space economy (2023)
Spatial trends in Gauteng
This Occasional Paper examines six spatial trends in Gauteng: urban sprawl, uneven densification, residential building growth, the reproduction of a property affordability gradient, socio-economic segregation and the reproduction of a mismatch between residential and economic areas. These spatial trends are the physical manifestation of a remarkable variety of actors responding to a wide variety of opportunities, incentives and disincentives; and they have important implications for spatial transformation. While it might be possible to name post-apartheid urban ideals, these six spatial trends underscore the disbursed nature of the energies producing urban space, and the need to understand and work with these energies in directing spatial transformation.
Date of publication:
December 2021
