The Quality of Life Index 2020/21
The GCRO’s Quality of Life Index is based on a multidimensional understanding of quality of life. It combines 33 variables into seven dimensions, each of which supports the understanding of a particular aspect of wellbeing. These dimension scores are then aggregated to provide a single, overarching Quality of Life Index score out of 100. This visualisation illustrates the Quality of Life Index scores and dimension scores for Gauteng and its municipalities.
Date of publication:
September 2021
Linked to project(s):
Quality of Life Survey 6 (2020/21)Change in exponential growth of confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Africa and Gauteng
This visualisation shows how the growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases has changed over time in the provinces of South Africa and districts in Gauteng. As the first COVID-19 cases were recorded in South Africa, growth was exponential, but the rate of growth has changed over time
Date of publication:
August 2020
Linked to project(s):
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng Advancing data visualisation (2021)Household characteristics in relation to COVID-19 risks in Gauteng
The structure of our households, the infrastructure we have access to, and where we come from, all shape our daily lives, and influence our access to various resources and forms of support. This visualisation explores the relationships between various household characteristics and exposure to factors that are expected to impact vulnerability in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Date of publication:
June 2020
Linked to project(s):
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng Advancing data visualisation (2021)De-densifying Gauteng: A thought experiment
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns that dense urban areas increase the risk of transmission and one of the proposed responses includes de-densifying parts of cities in order to reduce the transmission of the virus. In response, this interactive visualisation represents a thought experiment and an attempt to understand the relationship between density, population size and land area in Gauteng.
Date of publication:
June 2020
Linked to project(s):
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng Advancing data visualisation (2021)100 GCRO Maps of the Month
This visualisation explores the themes and keywords of the first 100 Maps of the Month that GCRO started publishing in September 2009 and provides an abbreviated history of the Map of the Month series and as well as the breath of topics covered in ten years of maps.
Date of publication:
April 2020
Linked to project(s):
Advancing data visualisation (2021)Income vulnerability in Gauteng
Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown have brought about a great deal of fear and anxiety around employment and income in Gauteng. This visualisation looks at the sources of income on which people depend and how they are spatially concentrated.
Date of publication:
April 2020
Linked to project(s):
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng Advancing data visualisation (2021)Gauteng's elderly in the context of COVID-19
In light of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the elderly, the GCRO has used data from our Quality of Life V survey (2017/18) to better understand the lives of the elderly in Gauteng province. This interactive visualisation looks at how the elderly form parts of families and households, and fulfill key caregiving and economic roles in the province.
Date of publication:
April 2020
Linked to project(s):
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng Advancing data visualisation (2021)COVID-19 cases in South Africa by province
The first COVID-19 confirmed case in South Africa was reported on the 5th of March in KwaZulu Natal. This visualisation tracks the number of confirmed positive cases in South Africa per province, as reported by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
Date of publication:
March 2020
Linked to project(s):
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Gauteng Advancing data visualisation (2021)The fabric of the Quality of Life index
Using a series of radial plots, this visualisation presents the scores for each dimension of the Quality of Life index for each iteration of the QoL survey since 2011. We illustrate these scores for Gauteng as a whole, as well as each municipality, for 2011, 2013/14, 2015/16, and 2017/18.
Date of publication:
July 2019
The fabric of the marginalisation index
The GCRO's marginalisation index combines a range of variables measuring various aspects of both subjective and objective marginalisation. It is constructed from responses to 29 Quality of Life survey questions, grouped into 10 different dimensions - relationships; housing; participation; health; connectivity; hunger; crime; alienation; life satisfaction; and government.
Date of publication:
July 2019
The company we keep: The Quality of Life survey compared
This illustration compares the the GCRO's Quality of Life survey with other quantitative surveys in South Africa, according to the relative sample size of each survey.
Date of publication:
November 2018
Linked to project(s):
Advancing data visualisation (2021)Academic outputs using the Quality of Life data
This visualisation demonstrates some of the ways in which the GCRO's Quality of Life survey data are used in academic publications.
Date of publication:
November 2018
Linked to project(s):
Advancing data visualisation (2021)The evolution of the Quality of Life questionnaire
This visualisation goes through the evolution of the GCRO's Quality of Life survey questionnaires, including which how the questions have been used across the various iterations and within GCRO's indexes.
Date of publication:
November 2018
Ten years of GCRO outputs
GCRO has produced, published and presented 782 outputs since our launch on 11 September 2008. This interactive visualisation enables the viewer to explore all our diverse outputs and see how we have grown.
Date of publication:
September 2018
Linked to project(s):
Advancing data visualisation (2021)Shifting borders and building bridges (GCRO Cities exhibition at Seoul Biennale)
Borders are both material and unseen, constructed and imaginary, fixed and fluid. In recent years we have seen the continued relevance of international borders and how these affect the lives of people in different places. While political borders remain as pertinent as ever, this exhibition examines different kinds of ‘urban borders’ in the context of the Gauteng City-Region (GCR).
Cities in South Africa are infamous for their divided and unequal geographies - the legacy of the colonial and apartheid planning policies. Despite significant efforts to integrate the GCR, apartheid’s visible and invisible borders and barriers remain both in the material landscape and in the socio-economic fabric. Although this history is particular to South Africa, the inequality that the city-region faces is mirrored in many other parts of the world.
Date of publication:
August 2017
Transforming transport in the Gauteng City-Region
For October 2015 Transport Month GCRO asks: what is needed to change transport and human settlement planning to radically improve mobility patterns across the GCR? Through a series of maps, data and visualisations, this 'StoryMap' explores how regional mobility patterns reflect stark socio-economic divides, reviews government's current human settlement and transport plans, and concludes with some key considerations for transforming transport in the GCR.
Date of publication:
November 2015
Linked to project(s):
Untangling transport (2021)Getting to work in the GCR
A key factor in understanding a functional city-region is the daily flows of people between its constituent parts. Traffic flow is an important urban efficiency, sustainability and inclusivity concern, as congestion impacts the cost of doing business, air-quality and fuel consumption, and residents' quality of life.
Forty years ago a number of large household travel surveys were conducted for the 1975 PWV Transportation Study. These asked respondents for the starting time of all their trips. As an example of historical transport patterns in the region, results for white and African respondents in the 1974 Pretoria survey are compared in the figures below. The comparison tell us that peak trip start times for whites were between 7am and 8am; it was much earlier for Africans.
Date of publication:
October 2014
FIFA 2010 research into the economic legacy for micro-traders
GCRO conducted longitudinal research amongst a sample of small and micro-scale traders in Gauteng in order to assess the extent to which the 2010 FIFA World Cup had fulfilled their expectations for economic development. We administered a survey questionnaire to a group of respondents over 3 phases of the research. The baseline study of June 2010 was conducted with 209 respondents in order to measure their expectations. The number of respondents was whittled down to 150 in subsequent phases of the research in November 2010 and July 2011.
Date of publication:
June 2012
House Prices, GDP and Civil Cases for Debt, 2007 - 2011
Time-series data collected as part of an analysis of the anatomy and impact of the global financial crisis on Gauteng. In the top graphs the user is able to view values for three indicators, with data segmented for each municipality and for each of the years from 2006 to 2011 (Note: GVA data is only up to 2010). The provincial averages for each variable are shown as ‘Gauteng’. The three variables shown are: Average House Prices; Gross Value Add (used here as a proxy for Gross Domestic Product); and Civil Cases for Debt.
Date of publication:
April 2012
Municipal Finances
The graphs below give an overview of expenditure in Gauteng municipalities between July 2006 and June 2011, for each financial year of the last municipal term of office. The graph at the top allows the user to see, separately or in comparison, the total operating expenditure, total capital expenditure and total combined expenditure for each Gauteng metro, and for the combination of district and local municipalities in Metsweding, West Rand and Sedibeng.
Date of publication:
February 2012
State of the Gauteng labour market
At a time when the world is talking about the prospects of a double-dip recession, and there is a deepening debate within South Africa around what can be done about unemployment rates that have not dropped below 20% for many years, even during the strong growth spurt in the mid 2000s, these graphs give a useful perspective on the state of the labour market in the country’s economic heartland.
Date of publication:
October 2011