the gauteng spatial development framework - Gauteng Online

With Johannesburg as the city system at the core of Gauteng accounting for some 4.5million people, there is increasingly little to distinguish it from the expanded northern systemof Tshwane (with Pretoria at the core) or its southern system of Emfuleni (Vanderbijlparkand Vereeniging). Johannesburg and Pretoria are more appropriately thought of as thecentral foci of an expanded urban system of some 11 million people and thus hold somevaluable lessons and observations.It is possible, from an apparent apartheid spatial legacy of 'non-sense', to derive clues thatpoint towards a sustainable proposition of 'sense' (what, in the context of the abnormalitiesspawned by apartheid, represents that most extraordinary thing of all-normality).One of the most debilitating legacies of apartheid still felt on a day-to-day basis in SouthAfrican settlements is that of the distorted spatial pattern of our cities. Indeed, possiblyone of the most serious abiding concerns for planning for, to all intents and purposes, theforeseeable future (certainly for the 2055 horizon of the current provincial planning initiative)is that of integrating the dislocated, marginalised pattern of dysfunction into a structureof normality. In order to assess whether meaningful re-integration is indeed possible, it isnecessary to search out the clues in 'Making sense of Nonsense'SECTION 2: THE GSDF AS A CONCEPTBefore the advent of 'grand apartheid', one saw the emergence of an extended urban areacomprising Johannesburg at the core, Pretoria to the north and Vereeniging (later consolidatedwith Vanderbijlpark) to the south. A cruciform system of development axes consolidatedinitially in an east-west format coincidental with mining and later, as infill, between thethree major urban nodes represented by Pretoria, Johannesburg and Vanderbijlpark.Two types of satellite nodes are discernible: those strongly within the influence of a majorcentre such as Johannesburg or Pretoria and having relatively incomplete or less complexurban profiles (Florida, Randburg, Sandton, Germiston, Alberton). Those further removedfrom the dominating influence of a primary core allowing for a more complex urban profile(Kempton Park, Roodepoort, Halfway House [now Midrand] and Boksburg). A seeminglyshotgun-scatter of these urban nodes was, however, driven effectively by market needsand conventional patterns of settlement in a consolidating city context.Figure 2-11: Gauteng's urban system advent of apartheid25 GAUTENG SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK 2011 GAUTENG GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT AGENCY