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<\/a><\/p>\nThe Gauteng City-Region Observatory has published a new map highlighting the province’s fast-growing residential areas – including housing, gated estates and informal dwellings.<\/p>\n
The map shows the way in which gated communities and boomed-off areas (marked in blue) occur in a wide band across the city-region, stretching from the east of Pretoria, through Centurion and into the northwestern parts of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
“These relatively low-density developments, largely for more affluent residents, have increased significantly in recent decades,” the GCRO said.<\/p>\n
“Meanwhile, informal residential buildings occupied by poorer residents (marked in dark grey) are mostly located in and around townships that were planned under apartheid.”<\/p>\n
The GCRO said that the growth of informal accommodation is largely accounted for by the construction of backyard dwellings adjacent to formal township houses, making townships some of the densest settlements in the city region.<\/p>\n
Informal dwellings also occur on previously vacant land as informal settlements, it said.<\/p>\n
“This juxtaposition of blue and dark grey areas on the map shows dramatically how the privately-led production of housing on opposite ends of the affordability spectrum remains segregated on the regional scale.<\/p>\n
“On the local scale, gated communities and informal accommodation tend to be socially separated, but the two forms do spatially and functionally co-exist in some places, for example when informal housing develops close to employment opportunities.”<\/p>\n
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