Browsing by Author "Geyer, H. S."

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    Business clustering along the M1-N3-N1 corridor between Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa
    (CONSAS Conference, 2016) Pillay, Xaven; Geyer, H. S.
    As a communication axis between Pretoria and Johannesburg the Old Pretoria Main Road always served as a linear force of attraction of urban development. This force was subsequently strengthened, first by the construction of the M1 and N1 motorways and later by the N3. Anecdotal evidence points to these sections of the motorways being one of the fastest-growing urban corridors in South Africa. Using available aerial photography, together with the information from zoning and cadastral data, footprints of buildings within a 500 metre buffer from the centre line of the corridor were established. These footprints were used to identify 15 areas in which significant clusters of industry, commerce and services occur. A survey, combining different sources of information was subsequently conducted to distinguish between different groups of businesses along the corridor. Based on this information the types and rates of business clustering along these sections of the corridor from 2001 to 2012 were determined.
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    Do social grants contribute to the jobless population growth in the former South African homelands?
    (University of the Free State, 2018) Geyer, H. S.; Ngidi, Mawande; Mans, Gerbrand
    The former homelands and tribal authorities have large populations and high densities with low levels of economic activity and low employment. Population growth in these settlements is in contrast to expectations of population declines, due to urban migration. A possible reason could be the high level of dependency on social grants in the former homelands. The article analyses population growth rates, economic growth rates and the ratio of social grant recipients within former homeland settlements between 1996 and 2011. By using weighted multiple regression tests, the article determines whether the phenomenon of population growth, in the absence of significant economic activity, is linked to welfare transfers. The results indicate that population growth is the product of increases in age cohorts qualifying for social grants in rural areas, due to high birth rates and pensioner in-migration from urban areas. By contrast, other age cohorts show population declines.
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    Negotiating grey spaces: A southernised relational analysis of customary land-use regulation mechanisms in peri-urban Informal mixed-use developments - A case study of the Helderberg District in Cape Town
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12) Geyer, H. S.; Donaldson, Ronnie; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Geography and Environmental Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study investigates the phenomenon of mixed-use development in informalised public housing (Colloquially referred to as RDP housing) developments in the Helderberg region of the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. This settlement is ironically termed the Location by its residents. There is an irony that these informal mixed-use developments have several attributes of smart growth, such as high densities, affordable housing, accessibility, employment opportunities, etc., in contrast to zoned formal settlements that mostly do not have these characteristics. Informal mixed- use developments occur without the influence of zoning, but is informally regulated through customary land management systems (CLMS). Another irony is that these ‘smartified’ settlements are by no means ideal spaces to live and are generally regarded as unsustainable modes of living due to its informal nature by formal actors. This study investigates these paradoxes in terms of Relational theory and Southern theory, analysing how space is actively produced, organised, and regulated in the everyday life politic of the actor. The study analysed three research problems: Is informal mixed-use development smart, i.e., sustainable? How are these settlements regulated in a CLMS? And how can we plan and zone for these settlements? The study used an ethnomethodological research method to analyse these problems using in-depth interviews. The research results indicate that the mixed-use informalisation of RDPs creates a juxtapositional and contradictory urbanism, a Heterotopia. Informality creates liveable, polymorphic spaces from the marginalised and segregated Location. It develops several smart growth characteristics, not for aesthetic reasons but to make space functional and personal for the subaltern. This creates a new mode of urbanism that gives the actor the freedom to produce their own urban, but it also disconnects the actor from the city as an informal with an uncertainty of rights and standing, it limits the accumulation of wealth, and it creates dangerous and unhealthy living conditions. The Street, a local CLMS self-regulates informal mixed land-uses in the Location. These highly organised, democratic, and transparent organisations record their transactions in ‘black’ books. The Street layers authorities and procedures to create an open and idiosyncratic method of negotiating informal land-use externalities. This system is based on the principles of Ubuntu, which customarily defines propertied relations and incentivises self-regulation of land-uses, enabling the Street committees to provide several voluntary magisterial functions. It provides de facto security for informal land uses, but also complements and reinforces the role of the state in certain limited functions. However, this is also an imperfect system that struggles to regulate non-privatised externalities and accommodate ethnic plurality. The Street committees are also often dysfunctional or corrupt. The combination of informal mixed-uses and CLMS creates a legal grey zone in the Location with alternate zonings, legislations and polycentric authorities and a hybridity of regulations. This peri-urbanisation of the Location unmaps space and protects tenure but does not provide enough legitimacy for novel policing through zoning. This delegitimises zoning but it also creates a new role for planning and zoning, away from traditional socio-technical management by specialists to a more pragmatic and selective enforcement of zoning based on common law and substantial relations tests, in close collaboration with the Streets. Although this is by no means without its challenges, continually operating within a criticality of instabilities and crises, it does, however, strengthen the role of the state as a final and objective authority and benevolent provider of services. The Location thus has the best of both worlds: a formally zoned substructure and a peri-urbanised informal top structure that provides citizenship and agency to the subaltern.