The geography of opportunity: exploratory spatial data analysis in the City of Tshwane
Date
2021
Authors
Molamo, Mapogo
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Abstract
More than 25 years into democracy, South Africans are still being affected by the laws of apartheid. Inequality as established by the apartheid regime still affects black communities especially—socially, spatially, and economically (Berg, 2002). Owing to segregation, up to this day there are places where residences have no access to basic services in any form of (Rodina and Harris, 2016; Williams and Collins, 2001). Though the current government is trying to provide these services in communities, there is still uneven development and opportunities in all South African cities, the City of Tshwane included (Goduka and Hildebrand, 2006). This study explored the geography of opportunity in the City of Tshwane to understand the spatial spread of opportunity. The study was carried out at the main place level and was based on data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA), grocery stores (Pick ‘n Pay and Spar), and the CoT website for all primary care facilities in the metropolitan area. Using exploratory spatial data analysis techniques, the data collected were used to calculate the overall opportunity index for the city and to identify where there are clusters of opportunity or where they are evenly distributed. The study findings illustrate that the spread of opportunity in the City of Tshwane is uneven. The greatest opportunities were found mostly in developed main places and most peri-urban areas were found to have less opportunity. The study also looked at the impact of population, and it can be safely concluded that the size of the population has a directly proportional relationship with the opportunity score. Main places with low population density have a low opportunity while main places with high populations have a high score. The overall index score for the City of Tshwane is 14.16
Description
A report submitted to the School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies, University of Witwatersrand, for the fulfilment of Master of Science in Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing, 2021