Key Challenges and Potential Urban Modelling Opportunities in South Africa, with Specific Reference to the Gauteng City-Region

Abstract

Urban growth and land use change models, supported by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software and increased digital data availability, have the potential to become important tools for monitoring and guiding urban spatial planning and development. Five broad categories of urban models are utilised internationally, that is, land use transportation models, cellular automata, system dynamics, agent-based models and spatial economics/econometric models. This paper provides a broad overview of South African modelling projects that monitor or simulate urban spatial change. The review identified a variety of government and academic urban modelling initiatives. These initiatives mostly track trends, rather than simulating future scenarios, and analyse historical land cover change using GIS and remote sensing software. There is a risk within Gauteng, however, that out-dated data, different population projections, duplicated tools, limited spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and a lack of resources; could compromise urban spatial change modelling efforts within government institutions. As such, the paper discusses key challenges and opportunities for modelling urban spatial change, with specific reference to the Gauteng City-Region – the heartland of the South African economy and the Southern African region.