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 GeographicInformation Systems (GIS) software and increased digital dataavailability, have the potential to become important tools formonitoring and guiding urban spatial planning and development. Fivebroad 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 paperprovides a broad overview of South African modelling projects thatmonitor or simulate urban spatial change. The review identified avariety of government and academic urban modelling initiatives. Theseinitiatives mostly track trends, rather than simulating futurescenarios, and analyse historical land cover change using GIS and remotesensing software. There is a risk within Gauteng, however, thatout-dated data, different population projections, duplicated tools,limited spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and a lack of resources; couldcompromise urban spatial change modelling efforts within governmentinstitutions. As such, the paper discusses key challenges andopportunities for modelling urban spatial change, with specificreference to the Gauteng CityRegion -the heartland of the South Africaneconomy and the Southern African region.