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Research Themes
GCRO has arranged its project work into a number of thematic focus areas. There are nine themes that organize our applied research. Each theme is made up of a number of current and completed research projects. While a specific project is always located within one theme it may also connect across to the issues and concerns of other thematic focus areas. A further area is called ‘Government support’ and covers the work we do in response to requests from local, provincial or national government. Work in this area entails either larger policy support projects or forms of ad hoc assistance for data or analysis.
Click on any of the themes to see more detail and a list of the current projects associated with it. Click on a project to be taken directly to its page.
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Understanding Quality of Life
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This research theme aims to understand quality of life as a multidimensional measure of well-being that can inform local and provincial government policy and decision-making. GCRO's flagship Quality of Life Surveys are at the core of our work in this thematic area.
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Urban Data Science
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This research area encompasses exploring, interrogating, and experimenting with novel data collection methods and data-driven analytical approaches and more innovative data visualisation and communication platforms to better understand the GCR and translate insights into consumable formats for better decision-making.
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Poverty, Inequality and Social Mobility
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While poverty and inequality are well recognised as critical challenges facing our society, research tends to focus on analysing the state of problem, and policy tends to focus on ameliorating the effects of poverty. Rarely does research or policy consider the processes that enable people to move out of poverty, or that reduce inequality over time. In the context of the GCR – which is potentially a ladder of prosperity, but one that not everyone manages to climb – projects in this theme look to understand the processes and underlying structural conditions that enable or inhibit social mobility.
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Social Change
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The social change theme considers the transformation of social stratification, patterns of behaviour, culture, language, attitudes and institutions. Projects in this theme focus on segregation and desegregation, gender, faith based spaces, spatial symbolism in street names and graffiti, and the nature of social change itself.
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Governing the GCR
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Research in this theme focuses on two dimensions of government and governance in the GCR. The first relates to the macro-scale concerns of how to build more integrated and coordinated city-region governance, and improved associative governance with the private sector, civil society and communities. The second focuses on more micro-scale issues and uses an ‘ethnography of the state’ lens to study governing practices, processes and systems in the city-region.
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Histories & Futures
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How does the Gauteng City-Region’s past continue to shape its future? Through primarily comparative analysis, this research theme seeks to understand the trends and dynamics shaping the city-region and how these might position the GCR as an object of study in broader academic discourses.
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Spatial Transformation
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The spatial transformation thematic area examines the complex space of diverse socio-spatial relations and urban landscapes that make up the Gauteng City-Region with the objective of contributing to the major international debates on the political economy of urban development.
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Inclusive Economies
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All stakeholders recognise that an “inclusive economic development” paradigm is required to address low and imbalanced economic growth in the GCR. Inclusive economic development will require a dramatically different growth path, and research in this theme aims to contribute to thinking on how to forge this. While GCRO’s research into the conditions for a more inclusive economy is wide ranging, there is a specific focus in this theme on the particular ‘city region / regional economics’ issues of the GCR’s economic geography.
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Sustainability and Just Transitions
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This theme explores the interlinked socio-ecological dynamics that determine the city-region’s ability to transition towards environmental sustainability while addressing poverty and inequality.
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Government Support
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As an institution focused on applied research GCRO hopes that all of its efforts will be useful and relevant to government in some way, supporting processes of decision-making and policy implementation with much needed data and analysis. However, in addition to this generic role, GCRO also works directly for and with government on request, either on an ad hoc basis, or on larger and longer policy support projects.
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