The role of secondary cities in managing urbanisation in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Following on from earlier work dealing with the role of metropolitan municipalities in managing urbanisation, this article assesses the role played by secondary cities in this regard. Although secondary cities have largely provided adequate infrastructure in line with the demands of population growth, three differences between metropolitan municipalities and secondary cities should be noted. First, on most indicators, secondary cities have more outliers than do metropolitan municipalities. Second, household incomes in secondary cities remain lower than those in metropolitan municipalities. Third, the ability of secondary cities to provide basic infrastructure does not differ much from that of metropolitan municipalities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that, in terms of certain indicators, secondary cities have managed to deliver these faster than their metropolitan counterparts. We argue that the progress made in secondary cities during the period under consideration cannot be separated from the fact that the economic growth in more than 50% of secondary cities has been linked either to mining or to another dominant economic driver.

KEYWORDS:

• Secondary cities
• urbanisation
• infrastructure
• housing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 While we use the term secondary cities, because our article emphasises these cities in relation to the eight metropolitan municipalities in South Africa, we acknowledge that there is merit in the use of terms such as intermediate cities or small cities in the international literature.

2 South Africa has eight metropolitan municipalities, as indicated in Figure 1: Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, Johannesburg, eThekwini, Nelson Mandela Bay, Mangaung and Buffalo City. Originally, only the first six were declared metropolitan municipalities. In 2011, Mangaung and Buffalo City were added.