Gauteng City-Region Hinterland Visits

Babelegi- Hammanskraal Areas

On April 10, 2025, Dr. Ngaka Mosiane (GCRO Senior Researcher) was joined by Rashid Seedat, the Executive Director of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), Professors Arabindoo and Harrison, and their younger sons on a trip to the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) hinterland. This excursion included significant sites such as the Babelegi industrial area—a former industrial decentralisation hub for manufacturing—and the Hammanskraal region, one of the former displaced areas that are now reinventing themselves into self-sustaining centralities. Professor Arabindoo’s research also focuses on these kinds of areas in the Indian context through the ‘master plan’ development approach.

_{Babelegi- Hammanskraal Areas}

Similarly, Professor Harrison has recently developed research interests in these kinds of areas in the broader South African context. He is co-leading an international team of scholars who are using the idea of ‘extended urbanization’ to explore the areas located outside the apparent edge of the metropolitan centres. Those areas are not only functionally linked to their metropolitan core areas, but they are also developing into potentially self-sustaining centralities. It is notable that while in some contexts, such as India, the master planning tool is used to frame the development interventions, South Africa uses development devices such as ‘spatial development frameworks,’ integrated development plans, and the District Development Model.

_{Rashid Seedat, Phil Harrison; Pushpa Arabindoo, Taishan Harrison, Neelen Arabindoo, and Dr. Ngaka Mosiane.}

_{Mabopane Station Precinct}

On April 15, 2025, Dr. Ngaka Mosiane led a team of researchers to the Mabopane Station Precinct. They are all interested in the GCRO Spatial Transformation theme. The team included Professor Amira Osman, the SARChI DST/NRF/SACN Research Chair in Spatial Transformation (Positive Change in the Built Environment) at the Tshwane University of Technology’s Architecture and Industrial Design department. Other team members were Dr. Wendy Tsoriyo, Simphiwe Mlambo, and Kutlwano Ramphele. The team is working on a paper titled "A Critical Review of Global Liveability Indices: An Alternative Approach Developed Through the Exploration of Mabopane Station Precinct." This paper will be submitted for publication and presented at the Livable Cities conference in Barcelona, scheduled for July 6-18, 2025. Additionally, the team will produce a Provocation on "Collaborative, Transdisciplinary Methodology Towards Transformed Thinking and Practice in the Built Environment for the Realization of Spatial Transformation."

_{Spatial Transformation Research Team}