ABOUT

Cities are the engines of growth in the South African economy and metros have to take a wide view of their competitive advantage as a city, in order to optimise this potential. The economy as a whole depends on it. Yet, within every metro, there is significant spatial inequality in the spread of economic opportunity, with townships often marginalised from the benefits of growth in the wider city as well as constrained in their ability to contribute to growth.

This arises from a number of linked apartheid legacies, often compounded by current planning choices, that have the effect of concentrating unemployment and poverty within townships. Within the wider context of economic development strategies for the city as a whole, a particular policy focus and set of strategies is therefore needed on a spatial basis, that takes account of the specific and differentiated challenges facing these areas: as part of city-wide strategy.