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Continuity or Discontinuity? Evaluating the Changing Socio-Spatial Structure of the City of Tshwane, South Africa

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Abstract

Forced racial-residential segregation is a phenomenon that creates spatial legacies in a city structure which inhibits equal development and access to opportunities. The legacy of apartheid embedded segregation into the spatial structure and the spatial distribution of the urban population of South Africa. The paper makes use of census data to analyse racial-residential (de)segregation on sub-place level in the city of Tshwane to make a relative comparison with the city in its post-apartheid form. The researchers use statistical measures, population shift analysis, relative income distribution and an original segregation-desegregation classification system to position the city within a continuity-discontinuity continuum. The study concludes that the city of Tshwane at present displays the residential pattern of a ‘disconnected continuity’ because it still has high levels of residential segregation which, at one level, can be explained by a spatial pattern which, is in many respects, significantly different and driven by new socio-spatial and planning dynamics whilst, at another level, still retains the legacy of the apartheid city.

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Notes

  1. See Horn (2005) for an in depth discussion on the definitions of ‘segregation’ and ‘desegregation’

  2. The paper applies the population classification of the 2011 population census dividing the South African population as follows: Black-African, Coloured, Indian/Asian and White.

  3. ‘Non-White’ is used as a collective term for Black-African, Coloured and Indian/Asian population groups

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of South Africa, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

    C. Hamann & A. C. Horn

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  1. C. Hamann
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  2. A. C. Horn
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Correspondence to C. Hamann.

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Hamann, C., Horn, A.C. Continuity or Discontinuity? Evaluating the Changing Socio-Spatial Structure of the City of Tshwane, South Africa. Urban Forum 26, 39–57 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-014-9231-7

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