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.
Date of publication:
June 2025
