Strategic Plans

GCRO Five-Year Strategic Plan 2025-2030

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) plays an important role in advancing urban research to support informed decision-making in the greater Gauteng City-Region (GCR). Since its establishment in 2008, the GCRO has built a reputation as a leading institution for evidence-based research on urban governance, spatial development, and socio-economic trends.

This five-year strategic framework (2025-2030) forms part of a set of three documents. The other two are an internal Self-Review Report, which includes contributions from all staff, and an External Review Report developed through interviews with external stakeholders. Together, these documents reflect on the GCRO’s work and operating environment over the past five years, from both internal and external perspectives, and offer a perspective on key opportunities for the future.

This new five-year strategic plan – covering the period April 2025 to March 2030 – was developed through an extensive process of engagement. This included interviews with external stakeholders, internal interviews, and breakaway sessions with staff, as well as the review of institutional documents. This process informed both the internal Self-Review Report and the External Review Report. Several additional documents were also consulted, including the GCRO’s 2019-2024 Strategic Framework, past annual plans, the MISTRA Scenarios, the GCRO Team Charter, and a book chapter by Götz et al. (2023) titled ‘Empowering smart cities through community-centred public-private partnerships and innovations.

A key part of the process was an internal two-day breakaway session held on 26-27 November 2024. This session had two main purposes. The first was to review the GCRO’s performance over the last five years (2019-2024), and the second was to look ahead and imagine what the GCRO of 2030 might look like. The outcomes of this session highlighted important insights that helped shape the new strategy.

Further chapters of the GCRO Strategic Plan include the GCRO 2025/26 Annual Plan, Research Projects, and Budget. The GCRO Board approved all plans on 5 May 2025.

GCRO Five-Year Strategic Framework 2020–2025

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) has been operational since December 2008. In the five years since the last phase of strategic planning, there have been several significant developments in both the external context in which the GCRO is embedded and within the GCRO itself. Three extensions of the GCRO’s conditions – size, complexity and reach – have together required rethinking our internal organisation in several ways. Accordingly, the Board has approved the new Strategic Framework for the 2020–2025 period, which reflects the decisions made to manage these changing conditions.

This Strategic Framework covers the period from April 2020 to March 2025 and identifies nine goals to guide the GCRO on its journey to 2025. Broadly, the GCRO system is about the co-production and dissemination of knowledge to address the pressing needs of the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) – socio-economic, environmental, etc. And, in addition to the nine goals, this new framework details nine thematically focused programmes of research for the next five years, namely poverty, inequality and social mobility; quality of life; spatial transformation; inclusive economies; the governance agenda for the GCR; histories and futures of the GCR; sustainability and just transitions; social change; and data analytics, informatics and visualisation.

GCRO Self-Review Report 2019

This organisational self-review report was written in July 2019 in preparation for a five year review of the Gauteng City-region Observatory (GCRO) by an external panel whose work started in August 2019. It marks a particular moment of reflection, assessing the period 2014 to mid-2019. It has not been subsequently updated with more recent progress and developments.

GCRO 3-year Strategic Plan 2011-2014

This three year strategic plan covers the period from 2011/12 to 2013/14. Building on initial work such as the OECD Territorial Review of the GCR, the first Quality of Life Survey in 2009, the launch of an interactive GIS website, and significant government support such as on the Green Strategic Programme, this plan envisages substantial growth in the organisation over the three year period.

GCRO Strategic Plan 2010-2011

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) has been operational since December 2008, when an Executive Director was appointed; by May 2009, most of the current staff (research, technical and administrative) were in place, and a Research Director was appointed in July 2009. The Board approved a Strategic Plan for the final third of 2008/09 (December 2008 to March 2009) and a full Strategic Plan for the 2009/2010 year (April 2009 to March 2010).

This Strategic Plan covers the period April 2010 to March 2011. At that stage, GCRO will have completed the first three-year funding and operational cycle, and the next three-year cycle will be ushered in with a more detailed, longer-term Strategic Plan. At that stage, both the Board of the GCRO and the Research Advisory Committee (RAC) will make inputs regarding a research agenda for the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) generally, and more specifically for the GCRO.