The Changing Space Economy of City-Regions: The Gauteng City-Region, South Africa (GeoJournal Library)

This book addresses the South African Space Economy and its stark disparities and dualisms through an assessment of the Gauteng City-Region – the largest economic agglomeration in the country and on a continent bedevilled by a myriad of development challenges. The book’s focus on understanding the overall character of Gauteng City-Region’s Space Economy – through data mining/analysis and mapping – comprehensively supplements the Space Economy literature on the region. It covers the disparities exacerbated by an overlay of apartheid planning ideology and top-down regional development based on selective encouragement of manufacturing investments in growth points or poles and how implementation of past policies intended to cure these disparities have yielded mixed results. This book further offers the Gauteng City-Region as a microcosm of the national economy in the form of evident significant placed-based variations in the intensity and character of economic structure that on the one hand enjoys massive agglomeration economies, while on the other, has high levels of poverty and large numbers of people living below the Minimum Living Level. This book should appeal to urban studies specialists, economists and development studies researchers in the Global South. Front Matter ....Pages i-xxiv City-Regions and Their Changing Space Economies (Koech Cheruiyot)....Pages 1-24 The Economic Drivers of Urban Change in the Gauteng City-Region: Past, Present, and Future (Mfaniseni F. Sihlongonyane)....Pages 25-62 Assessing the Gauteng City-Region’s Global Presence and Positioning Through Current Global-City Measures (Koech Cheruiyot, Anisa Desai, Ezekiel Lengaram)....Pages 63-92 Importance of Industrial Clusters and Inter-industry Linkages for Regional Policy in the Gauteng City-Region (Rainer vom Hofe, Koech Cheruiyot)....Pages 93-129 The Evolution of Manufacturing in the Gauteng City-Region: From De-Industrialization to Re-Industrialization? (Sam Ashman, Susan Newman)....Pages 131-156 Unpacking the Changing Economic Geography of Gauteng’s Tertiary Sector (Christian M. Rogerson)....Pages 157-184 Locating the Informal Sector in the Gauteng City-Region and Beyond (Sally Peberdy)....Pages 185-211 Testing Economic Growth Convergence and Its Policy Implications in the Gauteng City-Region (Koech Cheruiyot, Darlington Mushongera)....Pages 213-239 Revitalizing Gauteng City-Region Township Economies Through Value Chain Development (Phindile Ngwenya, Precious Zikhali)....Pages 241-273 Dualisms in the Gauteng City-Region: Summary and Implications (Koech Cheruiyot)....Pages 275-285