Small Atlas of Johannesburg
|Urban Morphology Impasses and Paradoxes
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Map 13: Density and Employment Distribution
1In the region of Gauteng, 50% of jobs are situated in areas where density is less than 10 people per hectare. In Johannesburg, the gap between place of work and place of residence (as seen on Map n°12) is a major issue provoking a fragmentation of the market, decreasing its efficiency and, as a result, the benefits to be drawn from it by households and companies. Spatial scattering plays a counter-productive role and is extremely detrimental to the poorest households. Unlike in very large cities where the job market is a theoretical advantage for poor households compared to smaller cities, the disconnection of job areas and residential density creates a real dilemma for town planning. Urban tendencies have created a scenario where infrastructure and services are increasingly becoming unavailable for a growing number of households. Intermodal and regional integration is de facto a challenge for the first agglomeration of South Africa. Today, the need to build public transport infrastructure is vital. The long-term projections of the BRT development (see map below) are a first response, but it will not be sufficient on its own to modify the efficiency of the city, if the issue of urban forms is not the subject of large investments.
2Today, in addition to social problematics, and beyond these, there are new issues linked to the search for a city which is more sustainable and consumes fewer resources.
3Moreover, the poorest populations must be able to move around as far as housing possibilities are concerned, i.e. to be able to settle in the urban area of their choice, depending on the specific needs of each household. What is important is not necessarily to be close to one’s place of work, but to have practical and affordable access to the rest of the city. Yet, today, access to property – a primordial issue in public policies – acts as an important brake on household mobility.
- 1 Défis posés par le development des villes du Sud: le diagnostic spatial d'une ville, Alain Bertaud, (...)
4The contradiction between the national housing objectives and the tools used to fulfil them, has influenced the spatial structure by imposing the location of the built space and the intensity of the construction. In parallel, the lack of infrastructure has also contributed to spreading the space built along the highways, with private property development only taking place at an approximate distance of 1 km to 2 km of primary infrastructures1.
5Business density on the map opposite, reflects the distribution of jobs: the number of businesses for 1,000 inhabitants reveals deep spatial inequalities within the city.
Number of businesses per 1,000 inhabitants, within the ten suburbs representative of the new forms of urbanisation

Map 14: Policies Dealing with Future Grid Issues
- 2 La difficile définition de la justice spatiale à Johannesburg, Claire Bénit, les annales de la rech (...)
6In South Africa the right to a number of services, which includes housing and water in particular, is recognised by the Constitution. The State has to take “reasonable measures, considering the available resources” to enforce these rights. This mission aims at ensuring that all city dwellers, even and perhaps especially the less creditworthy – who are often neglected by the private sector – have access to basic urban services. Any action in this direction then comes under “general interest”, as defined by the public authorities which are the only ones with a sufficient global view and technical understanding to guarantee the rights of each citizen2.
7While it was deemed that municipalities were in a better position to appreciate the needs of users, the State entrusted them with a central role in delivering basic services such as water, electricity, drainage and refuse removal. As early as 1994, the South African government made of the supply of drinking water one of the pillars of its development strategy, together with social housing, electricity and free primary healthcare.
8Within the framework of its policy, Johannesburg has chosen to extend infrastructure networks in general by intending 80% of its budget for them.
9First in line is electricity which is a real issue on the scale of the city. Situated in the most electricity-hungry region of South Africa, due to the high concentration of population and industries, the city faces a capacity shortage and faces periodic electricity cuts in many areas. The critical points of the city are situated mainly in sectors with high urbanisation, which makes grid issues even more glaring as new constructions develop.
10Moreover, thousands of residents are connected illegally to the electricity grid, due to lack of formal connections. The price of electricity has increased significantly in the past five years. The distribution system is confronted with the multiplication of illegal connections to the grid and with meters being blocked by users, also to avoid paying. The authorities have recently intensified the fight against consumers who do not pay, by spotting those with illegal connections and cutting their supply.
11Conversely, the share of the budget allocated to rubbish removal is very low (only 2.4%), and was not actually catered for before 2013. The City-owned company responsible for refuse removal, Pikitup, works independently and levies money directly from residents.
- 3 According to interviews with the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA).
12The less significant increase in the budget share allocated to water has been attracting attention, especially with the difficulties encountered in this domain. Johannesburg Water has experienced many drawbacks to its projects, due in part to non-payment from some residents. In addition, while water is an increasingly rare resource in Gauteng, its demand is increasing. It will be in short supply in the near future, which raises much concern. Areas requiring an upgrade within the next 5 years include the new urbanisation areas south of Soweto, and areas situated in an east-west belt, north of the N1. However, it seems that this projection remains largely overestimated, considering the available funds and the budget weight which funding Rea Vaya3 represents. The network is getting old and is degrading; the saturation of the system no longer makes it possible for new urbanised areas to be integrated.
13The management of stormwater is also a crucial problem for the city. First of all because densification reduces rainwater infiltration into soils, increasing runoff. Moreover, run-off water infiltrates the many galleries of abandoned mines and fills up with polluting and toxic elements (sulphate, heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, etc.). If nothing is done rapidly to improve the drainage system and treat the toxic waters of abandoned mines, these could contaminate the ground water and, by overspilling, cause damage to the environment and population. The central government, which is aware of the situation, is currently using State funds to finance an emergency programme to treat the waters contained in abandoned mines, waiting to mobilise the funds required for developing a permanent solution.
Map 15: Urban Needs: The Difficult Coordination of Public Action
14The city is facing the consequences of sprawling urbanisation. It seems that understanding in detail how the different scales of governance relate to the gaps between policies and practices is crucial to analysing the capacity of the city to regulate the diverse private initiatives and to establish a planned and coherent urbanisation on the whole of the territory.
15The difficult coordination of public interventions is particularly glaring considering the urban needs. Service infrastructures are experiencing difficulties as reflected in the bad service quality and insufficient servicing rates. The responsability of these difficulties is often analysed as a failure of public management. However, one cannot leave the context aside: that of population growth first of all which, on its own, represents a formidable challenge for urban management; then that of urban sprawl, relaying capacity imperatives on the metropolitan scale.
16The private sector has an enormous influence on the development of the city, imposing its morphological and spatial structures. The deployment of new urban zones takes place over territories that are increasingly remote from centres where structural problems are the heaviest for the city. The interests of the public authorities and promoters differ as soon as one takes long term temporalisation into account. Even if private contractors pay for the installation of basic services in the complexes they build, the city still has to manage in general the ensuing service charges (e.g. road networks, waste removal, water treatment management and production of electricity). Additional costs related to technical constraints also burden network prices over a large part of these territories. Moreover, the development of low density residential areas with few roads has a high impact on traffic jams, leaving the city to manage traffic and under-sized roads on the metropolitan scale.
17In parallel, the city must integrate, into the metropolitan space, dense housing areas stemming from massive national house building programmes intended for the disadvantaged populations, and located in the outer suburbs. These new problematics complicate the action of the city. Upgrading these suburbs is a challenge for Johannesburg as it is trying to eliminate deep wounds left by decades of unequal management.
18Despite the importance of the funds invested in the former townships and new RDP areas, suburbs in the south are not catching up with those in the north.
19During the last 20 years, public action has been neglecting existing wealthy suburbs, limiting investments to the maximum within these sectors. Yet, today, the networks of these urban areas (in light orange on the map) have aged and must be rehabilitated (networks and roads). An action plan will have to be elaborated in the near future.
20Today, a research programme has been launched by the city to gradually reduce informal housing. The objective is to improve the standard of living of the poorest with multiple objectives: moving populations settled in dangerous areas (for reasons linked to the geology or liability to flooding) and formalising informal settlements.
21Finally, rehabilitating the city centre is a challenge that will depend highly on strong political will, on the long term mobilisation of investments and on operations of urban reassessment, in order to attract new private investors to create assets with a growing value.
22The many problematics to be taken care of by the city involve many scales and represent particularly different imperatives. Limited budgetary means are imposing a prioritisation of objectives which is becoming increasingly difficult to plan. It seems very clear that the rapid increase in urban areas will need to be controlled rapidly in order to optimise the efficiency of public investments.
Notes
1 Défis posés par le development des villes du Sud: le diagnostic spatial d'une ville, Alain Bertaud, consultant, Banque Mondiale, 2000.
2 La difficile définition de la justice spatiale à Johannesburg, Claire Bénit, les annales de la recherche urbaine n°99, 2005.
3 According to interviews with the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA).
Table des illustrations
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Titre | Map 13: Density and Employment Distribution |
Crédits | © Karen Lévy for the AFD |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/africae/docannexe/image/3490/img-1.png |
Fichier | image/png, 254k |
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Titre | Location of Businesses in the Metropolitan Area |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/africae/docannexe/image/3490/img-2.png |
Fichier | image/png, 408k |
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Titre | Number of businesses per 1,000 inhabitants, within the ten suburbs representative of the new forms of urbanisation |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/africae/docannexe/image/3490/img-3.png |
Fichier | image/png, 62k |
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Titre | Map 14: Policies Dealing with Future Grid Issues |
Crédits | © Karen Lévy for the AFD |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/africae/docannexe/image/3490/img-4.png |
Fichier | image/png, 607k |
![]() | |
Titre | Map 15: Urban Needs: The Difficult Coordination of Public Action |
Crédits | © Karen Lévy for the AFD |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/africae/docannexe/image/3490/img-5.png |
Fichier | image/png, 247k |
© Africae, 2014
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