Policy and Other Outputs

Practice note on including children in spatial planning and design development processes

A collective of concerned individuals convened by the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits University has co-produced this Practice Note on including children in spatial planning and design development processes. GCRO's Melinda Swift contributed as part of the collective.

There is much work required in Africa to bring the child’s voice into civic processes, and many contextual considerations to take account of, especially in relation to the poverty, vulnerability, and environmental deprivation of many children on the continent. There are some indications, however, of a growing awareness in places of the value of engaging children.

South Africa has a National Plan of Action for Children in South Africa which was coordinated by the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, and approved by Cabinet in 2013. It is an important document indicating South Africa’s acceptance of international treaties including the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child but does not address in detail the question of children’s participation in public policy and planning. However, the National Planning Commission, which prepared a National Development Plan (or NDP) in 2012, has launched an initiative called the Children’s NDP. This is an innovative initiative aimed at affirming children’s citizenship and agency.

The case for children’s participation relates to all forms of future-oriented policy making and planning. This Practice Note however deals specifically with the children’s participation in spatial planning and design development processes that help shape the future form of our towns and cities and is targeted at government officials and private sector professionals in the built environment sector. The Note provides a bit of theory, an introduction to some precedent on engaging children, and some guidance on the process and content of child-friendly planning and design.

Rapid research paper: COVID-19 governance, leadership and decision-making in Gauteng

The onset of the pandemic prompted one of the most ambitious efforts at adaptive governance of the democratic era in South Africa. Extraordinary measures were put in place to achieve cooperative governance vertically across the spheres of government, and horizontally across the functional departments. Many important and innovative measures were achieved in this process, impelled by the sense of urgency and common purpose inspired by the fact of the pandemic. Simultaneously, and predictably, the ability to achieve the full intended adaptive response was conditioned by a number of existing factors and structural realities in a complex city region and a transitional society.

In mid-2020, shortly after the first COVID-19 wave, GCRO was asked by the Gauteng Provincial Government's Office of the Premier, working with the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC) to contribute to a 'deep dive case study' on Gauteng's response to the pandemic. GCRO was requested to look at aspects of governance, leadership and decision-making. This component of the case study was completed in January 2021 and integrated with other sections exploring, inter alia, the Province's health response, economic response, communications, and so on. The integrated case study was counted as a background document in South Africa's Covid-19 Country Report (2021) (1st edition), launched on 30 June 2022.

Observations emerging from this case study – noting important adaptive achievements as well as significant limitations – provide valuable insight into some of the conditions that enable and support effective approaches to adaptive governance in a sub-national context..

GCR Water Security Perspective

The water crisis experienced in Cape Town between 2016 and 2018, as well as other areas in South Africa, has raised questions around water security in the Gauteng City-Region. Cape Town has shown how quickly a large metropolitan area can enter a crisis if it is not prepared. As the GCR's population and economy continue to grow there is a need to continually review whether the region is water secure enough to sustain its people and ongoing prosperity.

In light of this the Office of the Premier in the Gauteng Provincial Government asked the GCRO to assist it in developing a Water Security Perspective for the Gauteng City-Region. The aim was to develop a perspective that frames the water challenges facing Gauteng, and the ways in which these challenges can be addressed. This would then lay a foundation for more detailed water security planning. GCRO worked with a team of water specialists including Pegasys Consulting and Mike Muller from the Wits School of Governance. The Water Security Perspective was completed in July 2018. Minor adjustments have been made to the version downloadable here, dated August 2019.

Gauteng can only claim to be water secure when all its residents have affordable access to safe and reliable water supplies, are not at risk of flooding, and have access to safely managed and dignified sanitation services. This will not be achieved by action in the water sector alone. The Water Security Perspective for the GCR outlines the region's sources of water and the hydrological systems on which these depend. It considers how the region's wastewaters are managed and the implications this has for adjacent parts of the country. It then considers the performance of the key institutions that supply, purify and distribute our water, and identifies some of the emerging challenges that face the GCR if it is to achieve, and then sustain, water security.

See GCRO's project page on ongoing water security research, here.

The Gauteng City-Region Observatory: A Case Study

This case study on the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) discusses the collaboration between provincial government and partner universities and was commissioned by the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency to inform the development of similar policy research initiatives elsewhere in the country. The study outlines the purposes driving the formation of the GCRO, the principles informing its constitution and the ways in which it has delivered on its mandate since 2008.

The case study shows what is possible to achieve when using the resources in academia to support the development agenda of the public sector, and when there is commitment from government to generating evidence for policy-making. An important element of the partnership is dedication to building in-depth knowledge and identifying long-term trends. The GCRO is an exemplar of how the use of data and research can be increased in policy development and implementation. While the government partners are the primary clients, the research outputs are publicly available.

Gauteng 2055: A discussion document on the long-term development plan for the Gauteng City-Region

Between 2011 and 2013 GCRO provided research support to the Gauteng Planning Commission (GPC) for an emerging long-term development strategy for the city-region, known as G2055. During this time GCRO supported the preparation of a G2055 Discussion Document, providing maps, data and drafting on specific sections. The G2055 Discussion Document was launched on 24 May 2012.