Annual Reports

GCRO 2023/24 Annual Report

During the April 2023–March 2024 financial year, the Gauteng City-Region Observatory celebrated its 15th anniversary. This milestone was celebrated at an event on 16 November 2023 at the GCRO's office in Braamfontein, where a catalogue of GCRO's past publications was launched.

One of the GCRO’s major undertakings of the 2023/24 financial year was the fieldwork for the 7th Quality of Life survey. Together with a fieldwork team, the GCRO conducted more than 13 700 interviews across Gauteng over a half-year period. The results of this survey, which provide key insights into the state of the province, will be launched in the 2024/25 financial year.

GCRO 2022/23 Annual Report

This Annual Report covers the April 2022-March 2023 financial year, which is at the mid-point of the 2020/21 to 2024/25 five year strategy. Having spent much of 2020 and 2021 working remotely, GCRO staff returned to the office in the 2022/23 financial year. Office life has been enlivened by a series of staff appointments that bring essential capacity to key areas of work, not least to the Quality of Life Survey and the ‘Inclusive economies’ research programme. The freedoms brought by the easing of lockdowns facilitated the GCRO’s work of providing an interface between the worlds of research and government. Notably, the GCRO partnered with the Gauteng Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) and Urban Planning to organise a symposium at the University of Johannesburg on spatial transformation in August 2022. In addition to hosting events of this nature, the GCRO published a number of outputs, including a provocation on displaced urbanism, a research report on urban imaginaries, an occasional paper on using tax data for economic analysis, nine articles in the map of the month series, one vignette, and various journal articles and book chapters.

GCRO 2021/22 Annual Report

2021/22 marked the second year in the GCRO's 2020/21 to 2024/25 five year strategy. The year continued to see COVID-19 related disruptions to normal operations, with most staff continuing to work at home for extended periods. However, it also saw many exciting developments and achievements. Rashid Seedat took over from Dr. Rob Moore as Executive Director in June 2021, entering at a point of high energy as GCRO prepared for the launch of the sixth iteration of the Quality of Life Survey. QoL 6 (2020/21) results were released to a large online audience in September 2021. The event was followed by significant media interest, five OpEds published by GCRO staff, and multiple presentations of the findings to government. Another highlight of the year was three well-attended webinars, co-hosted with the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), responding to the impacts and implications of the July 2021 violence.

GCRO 2020/21 Annual Report

This Annual Report covers the April 2020-March 2021 financial year. This period saw three important events in the life of the organisation. First it marked the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which dramatically transformed not only the way GCRO did work, but also the focus of the Observatory's work over the year. For almost the whole of 2020/21 nearly every staff member was engaged either in direct support to government in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, or in producing outputs that helped to deepen public understanding of the pandemic's impact. Second, the year saw the completion of most of the fieldwork for the sixth iteration of the Quality of Life Survey. Third, this was the last year in the five-year tenure of Dr Rob Moore as Executive Director of the GCRO.

GCRO 2019/20 Annual Report

This Annual Report covers the 2019/20 financial year, the final full year in the GCRO's five year strategic plan - approved in late 2014 - for the period 2015/16 to 2019/20. This was a year of major strategic planning for the organisation, as we took stock of the last five years of work, and developed new plans for the 2020/21 to 2024/25 period. GCRO also saw major introspection on it's organisational structure, working practices and production processes, and identified a host of new innovations. In the last month of the financial year COVID-19 hit South Africa, bringing a key new point of focus to GCRO's work..

GCRO 2018/19 Annual Report

The fourth year of GCRO 2015/16 to 2019/20 five year strategic plan saw a range of significant achievements, including: the launch of results from the fifth Quality of Life Survey (2017/18) in November 2018; a major exhibition - We are here - at the Metropolis Annual General Meeting in Johannesburg; the completion of a pilot firm level survey; major support to a GPG end-of-term review process; and the finalisation of a number of GCRO publications. Sadly, the year also saw the retirement of GCRO's long-standing finance and admin manager, Adele Underhay, who had been with the organisation since its inception.

GCRO 2017/18 Annual Report

In late 2014 the GCRO Board approved a new five year strategy for the period 2015/16 to 2019/20. This Annual Report covers 2017/18 financial year, the third year of the five year plan.. After hiring a number of new researchers in late 2016 and moving into new office space in early 2017, the financial year April 2017 to March 2018 saw this increase in capacity begin to bear fruit, with the initiation of a range of newly defined research projects. Considerable progress was made on the fifth iteration of the Quality of Life Survey, although delays in fieldwork will see the survey only concluded in 2018/19. Highlights included the publication of four significant Research Reports, a major exhibition at the Seoul Biennale on Architecture and Urbanism (reproduced as part of the GPG stand at the World Urban Forum in early 2018), strong participation in the African Centre for Cities International Conference, and a Routledge book published on the space economy of the GCR.

GCRO 2016/2017 Annual Report

This Annual Report covers the 2016/17 financial year, the second full year in the GCRO's current five year strategic plan - approved in late 2014 - for the period 2015/16 to 2019/20. This was a year of much growth for the GCRO, as a host of new researchers hired at the end of 2015 began to find their feet, and as we occupied new and expanded office space on the 6th floor of Wits' University Corner in March 2017. Results from the fourth Quality of Life survey for 2015/16, now with 30 000 respondents, were launched in June 2016, and important new programmes of research, including a 'city-region economies' thrust, and within this a pilot firm survey, got underway.

GCRO 2015/2016 Annual Report

GCRO is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government, the University of Johannesburg, the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), and organised local government in Gauteng. This report covers the 2015/16 financial year, the first in the GCRO's current five year strategic plan for 2015/16 to 2019/20. This was a turbulent year for the higher education sector in South Africa, and indeed for South Africa as a whole. It was also a year of much change for GCRO with a number of staff leaving - including GCRO's founding Executive Director Prof. David Everatt - and new talent joining. The year saw a number of important milestones, including the running of the fourth Quality of Life Survey, a complete organisational rebranding and launch of the new website, as well as a significant uptick in both academic output and support work to government.

GCRO 2014/2015 Annual Report

This report covers the April 2014 to March 2015 financial year, a period of intensive strategic planning for GCRO's next five year strategic plan. GCRO is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), local government in Gauteng represented by the South African Local Government Association (Gauteng) (SALGA), the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits). GCRO is an innovative response to the socio-economic, cultural, governance, political, growth and other challenges related to the cluster of cities that makes up the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), the economic engine of South and southern Africa.

GCRO 2013/2014 Annual Report

This report covers the April 2013 to March 2014 financial year and marks the end of the first five year cycle in the life of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s (GCRO) – GCRO was publicly launched on 11 September 2008, but really only became functional in 2009. It is a partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), local government in Gauteng, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), later joined by the Gauteng branch of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).

GCRO 2012/2013 Annual Report

This report covers the April 2012 to March 2013 financial year, the mid-point of the current three-year cycle of work of the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO). GCRO was publicly launched on 11 September 2008.

A partnership between the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG), local government in Gauteng, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), GCRO is an innovative response to the socio-economic, cultural, governance, political, growth and other challenges related to the cluster of cities that makes up the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), the economic engine of South and southern Africa.

GCRO 2011/2012 Annual Report

This report covers the third full operating year of the Gauteng CityRegion Observatory (GCRO) and the beginning of our second three-year cycle of support from the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG). (We were operational for only the final quarter of 2008/2009, our first year, which formed part of the first three-year cycle which ended in March 2011.) GCRO was publicly launched on 11 September 2008.

A partnership between the GPG, local government in Gauteng, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), GCRO is an innovative response to the socio-economic, cultural, governance, political, growth and other challenges related to the cluster of cities that makes up the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), the economic engine of South and southern Africa.

GCRO 2010/2011 Annual Report

This report covers the second full operating year of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), and also the end of the first three-year cycle of support from the Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) (this began in 2008/09, but GCRO was functional for only a quarter of that year).

GCRO 2009/2010 Annual Report

This report covers the first full operating year of the GCRO, with the financial year April 2009 to March 2010 coinciding with GCRO staff joining the organisation and the GCRO notching up some notable achievements, even in these formative months.

GCRO 2008/2009 Annual Report

September 2008 saw the launch of an exciting new initiative – the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. The initiative is exciting for two reasons. First, the Observatory represents a grand experiment: a jointly established research centre that stands between the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand, governed by a Board and jointly supported, financially and in kind, by the Gauteng Provincial Government and the two academies.

We hope that this experiment will show a vista of other possibilities for collaboration across higher education institutions in our country, and other potential partnerships between government and the academy.