Landscapes of peripheral and displaced urbanism

This Research Report focuses on the peripheral and historically displaced areas in the north of the Gauteng City-Region, both within the boundary of the Gauteng province, and beyond. Over its history, this subregion has become home to hundreds of thousands of people, situated peripherally to and displaced from the core urban areas of the GCR. Some parts of this sub-region have significant local economies, for example based on mining. Others were historically suppliers of labour with limited to no discernible economies.

This research situates the trends and dynamics shaping the Gauteng City-Region within its wider frame, from the extended the platinum belt in the northwest, to the historical labour reserves, some with former industrial decentralisation points, in the north and north-east. In this research we analyse how those areas were formed and how they are changing. We examine for instance their demographic reconfigurations; how they are sustained by long-term commuting patterns to the core urban areas of Gauteng; as well as the investments of migrant worker wages and, correspondingly, emerging local economies. We also try to understand government’s plans for these areas; how these plans articulate with the long-term spatial and other strategies for Gauteng as a whole; and who these plans are being mediated by local realities and initiatives.

The report is based on the premise that ‘landscape’ study approach – involving both careful empirical analysis of specific places over an extended period, as well as new theorizing of the urban processes shaping them – is helps to elucidate the global and generalisable and the local and idiosyncratic forces (including government policy) producing this region’s settlement forms. 

The Research Report is the product of a collective effort, with different authors variously contributing eight chapters.

Contents:

Chapter 1: Gauteng City-Region’s changing urban cores, peripheral and displaced landscapes, by Ngaka Mosiane and Jennifer Murray, locates the report by providing a summary of the different chapters and outlining the wide-ranging research methods applied in the case studies. The final section of the chapter uses an ‘urban-core index’ to analytically and spatially situate the northern parts of the city-region within the extended GCR context, and lay a basis of understanding of the socio-economic reality of the study areas in relation to the city region at large.  

Chapter 2: The landscape idea: its peripheral, displaced and other forms, by Ngaka Mosiane, Avhatakali Sithagu and Mamokete Modiba, focuses on the conceptualisation of the landscape as a natural phenomenon with immutable features, but also with mutable qualities. The chapter also draws on southern urbanism scholarship to bridge the gap between the distinct ideas of livelihoods and ‘the landscape’ (a form of which is displaced urbanisation). Bridging this gap is useful for creating a fertile ground for discussing landscapes of ‘displaced urbanisms’.

Chapter 3: Writing peripheral areas and city-regions, by Sally Peberdy, extends the landscape discussion to the periphery, specifically placing the idea and experience of the periphery in a set of global debates. This chapter underscores the multiplicity of actors, including ordinary people, in the production of city-regions. Additionally, peripheral areas are discussed in terms of scale and perspective. Some scholars see peripheries as core to the residents living in them, while proponents of city regionalism tend to privilege the metropolitan core areas as sites of innovation, competitiveness and other aspects of viable economic development, in turn relegating the peripheries to sites of welfare, basic service provision and skills improvement. This bias tends to diminish the peripheries’ lived experiences and potential contribution to regional development.  

Chapter 4: Complexities of peripheral spaces, by Sally Peberdy and Jennifer Murray is based on data-driven analysis, drawn from a quantitative survey of 979 household members across nine study sites in the northern periphery of the GCR. The survey covered a range of indicators, including demographics, living conditions, employment, amenities, community, and governance. In a similar fashion to the GCRO's Quality of Life Survey, the data highlights the many dimensions of the current socio-economic, spatial, and political conditions of the landscapes of peripheral and displaced urbanism. Through the data, the chapter identifies key challenges that the residents face and explores the similarities and difference in their circumstances (in some cases compared with the peripheries in the Gauteng province). 

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on Rustenburg in particular, operationalising the idea of the landscape as practice (lived and worked on), including the top-down exertion of power, both of capital and the state. They respectively draw from historical and contemporary materials on Rustenburg to demonstrate how a landscape is remade.

Chapter 5: Remaking the historical Rustenburg landscape, by Ngaka Mosiane, describes the interdependent relationships in Rustenburg’s changing landscape, economies, livelihoods and social identities – as the landscape changed so did the colonial economy that took on a range of forms, and in turn so too did livelihood practices and associated social identities. The chapter provides thick descriptions of the drivers of change, including land dispossessions and the 1887 and 1895 Plakkers Wet (squatter laws). It shows how the identities of black Africans also changed during each time-period – to Christians, commercial farmers, labourers and economic subjects. 

Chapter 6: Remaking contemporary Rustenburg landscapes, by Ngaka Mosiane and Cathy M. Dzerefos, explores the continuing remaking of the Rustenburg landscape following the earlier processes examined in Chapter 5. It links those forces of change to Rustenburg’s municipal management, financial performance, economic production, trade, and employment, that are both the content of the landscape and the interventions of power. Their material concretisation in the built environment expresses the wishes, desires and fears of those in power. However, the hegemony of those landscapes is not absolute – ordinary people are able to cope with their marginality, rework their living conditions as they exploit the fissures of dominant socio-economic and political forms, and even overcome their constraints.  

Chapter 7: Mobility for spatial- and self-development in the former KwaNdebele bantustan, by Ngaka Mosiane, focuses on mobility as a key aspect of socio-spatial and economic development. Mobility is the lifeblood of the northern GCR, which both perpetuates these areas’ marginality and turns them into localised and transversal spaces of self-realisation. The chapter also puts the spotlight on the significance of the interrelation between mobility and land-use in areas of displaced urbanisation, as they are being changed into areas of displaced urbanism.

Chapter 8: Land occupation strategies in the informal settlements of Mabopane and KwaMhlanga, by Avhatakali (Taki) Sithagu, examines land occupation strategies in the former bantustans of KwaNdebele and Bophuthatswana. It specifically compares informal settlements within and around Mabopane and KwaMhlanga as toeholds into the GCR’s core areas. The chapter brings into sharp focus how the multi-layered land administration systems interact with land occupation strategies. Land access in Mabopane is under a formal legal tenure regime, wherein land occupation strategies are overseen by municipal officials and illegally driven by communities. By contrast, land access in KwaMhlanga is largely controlled by traditional authorities. Here traditional leaders treat their customary land system as legitimate, with communities having faith in the hybrid land administration system (legal and extra-legal). 

Taken together, the chapters bring into sharp focus the ways in which ordinary people have been reshaping their lives, in the process reconfiguring historical landscapes of displaced urbanisation into landscapes of 'displaced urbanism'. The governance systems, government strategies, and land tenure and administration regimes are complex and diverse, but so are ordinary people’s experiences and responses. They do not simply receive landscapes made for them by history and current government plans – they are actively remaking these landscapes. The result is a variegated landscape of displacement, poverty and minimal and deteriorating socio-economic development; but also intriguingly of emerging affluence, status and good quality of life, reflected in remarkable home-building architecture and investments in newly vibrant local economies.

Recommended citation: Mosiane, N. and Murray, J. (eds) (2025). Landscapes of peripheral and displaced urbanisms. Gauteng. GCRO Research Report # 14, Gauteng City-Region Observatory, Johannesburg, March 2025. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.36634/SHGX2848

This Research Report is an output of GCRO's Landscapes of peripheral and displaced urbanisms project in the Spatial Transformation research theme.