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Context map of Johannesburg with South Africa and Gauteng province (Gauteng City-Region Observatory 2010).
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In 2013, the Mayor of Johannesburg announced the ambitious Corridors of Freedom (CoF) initiative to transform the city’s socio-spatial structure. The CoF were constructed to be an inclusionary form of transit-oriented development (TOD). Using a 1,200 respondent survey, over 75 interviews, documentary analysis, and attendance at public participation...
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... For instance, a study in Arizona found that only a small proportion of TOD projects offered affordable housing for low-income families (Ewing et al., 2022). However, not all TOD initiatives lead to gentrification; in Johannesburg, inclusive policies within TOD strategies have successfully mitigated displacement pressures (Harrison et al., 2019). Therefore, strategic policy interventions are crucial for moderating rising property values and preventing the exacerbation of social inequities. ...
... A Gauteng-centric agenda is aptly represented by the ongoing Corridors of Freedom project, which is not a housing project but incentivizes infill housing development along its axes for inclusionary, transit-orientated development. The unrealized Sino-South African Modderfontein with smart city aspirations is also well represented [22,56,65,75,79,109,112,116,120]. Other Gauteng projects like Fleurhof are discussed by Hofer et al. [23], Mooikloof Megacity by Seseni [121], and Vaal River City by Howe [56], whilst Turok [60] mentions the Syferfontein, Droogeheuwel, Golden Highway, Boiketlong, and Sterkwater megaprojects briefly. ...
... In other post-2014 examples, the prospective location of new Gauteng cities on environmentally sensitive land as large greenfield projects drew attention [43]. The Corridors of Freedom's aims to reduce vehicular traffic and carbon emissions through transit-orientated development were also noted by several scholars [22,43,54,109,112,116,120]. However, no plans for a deliberate eco-city driven in all aspects by the green agenda for inclusionary or state-subsidized housing have been reported in the literature. ...
South Africa is a leader in the scholarship on green urbanism in the Global South, but academic progress has not translated to broad implementation. Notably, government-subsidized housing projects have produced peripheral developments featuring low build quality, conventional gray infrastructure, and deficient socio-economic and environmental amenities. Declining delivery and increasing informal settlement spawned a 2014 shift to housing megaprojects to increase output and improve living conditions, socio-economic integration, and sustainability. The shift offered opportunities for a normative focus on greener development mirrored in the discourse surrounding project descriptions. Yet, the level of enactment has remained unclear. In reflecting on these points, this paper employs environmental justice as a theoretical framework and completes a comprehensive review of the academic literature on housing megaprojects and the depth of their greener development commitments. A three-phase, seven-stage review protocol retrieves the relevant literature, and bibliometric and qualitative content analyses identify publication trends and themes. Results indicate limited scholarship on new megaprojects with sporadic and superficial references to greener development, mostly reserved for higher-income segments and private developments. In response, this paper calls for more determined action to launch context-aware and just greener megaprojects and offers corresponding guidance for research and practice of value to South Africa and beyond.
... Polycentric TOD as an emerging concept showcases essential benefits including, 1) spatial equity and inclusion (Harrison, et al. 2019). By decentralizing amenities and economic opportunities connecting to other CBDs, polycentric TOD can provide a closer public transport hub to marginalized communities and can also reduce spatial inequality and enhance greater access to services and jobs for residents. ...
... In global north the 'excluded' refers to the minority groups that have poor or inferior access to mainstream resources and opportunities available in established urban centres. In contrast, in the global south, those that are marginalised constitute the majority of the population (Harrison et al., 2019;Madell & Karam, 2022). The provision of affordable housing in well located areas of cities and is referred to as inclusionary housing and is an intractable challenge in both the global north and global south, due to the exclusionary nature of the housing market in city locations with good access to urban opportunities (Adabre et al., 2021;Madell & Karam, 2022;Turok et al., 2024). ...
Globally, housing forms an integral part of accessing the wide range opportunities that cities offer, however, inequality can be exacerbated when significant segments of the inhabitants are excluded from the real estate market or through inaction by the state. The need for affordable housing in cities with hyper-property markets is of global concern for public sector authorities that are pursuing goals of socially just and economically inclusive cities. In the global south, inclusionary housing policies and associated practices have emerged as important tools to increase access for those excluded from the opportunities available in towns and cities. In South Africa, the post-1994 democratic state has continued with the apartheid era practice of providing subsidised housing for the majority urban residents on the outskirts of towns and cities, thereby further entrenching poverty traps and racially based separate developments. Contrary to practice, the state’s well-documented policy position is to reverse the legacy of apartheid through spatial transformation so that cities and towns become economically more inclusive and socially just. It is argued that this requires prioritising the provision of affordable housing in urban centres of towns and cities that offer meaningful working, residing, shopping, recreational and other social opportunities. Although inclusionary housing policy has emerged internationally as an important mechanism to spatially transform urban areas, this forms only one component of a wider range of other possible public interventions. These framework mechanisms could include broader housing development policies, legislation and programmes as well as the urban development policies, spatial planning and land use management practices and incentives. Other incentives that can be used as leverage include the use of publicly owned property (land and buildings), capital infrastructure and development incentives. The public sector can offer both direct and indirect financial assistance and tax incentives to support an inclusionary housing policy. Critically, this should be contingent on the public sector understanding the feasibility, risk and benefits associated with housing projects pursued by private sector real estate developers.
... The proposed transformation of the built environment and associated visuals were not particularly spectacular, yet a highly ambitious societal metamorphosis was being promoted. From the outset, the CoF were underpinned by a strong moral and developmental agenda with the objective of bringing the poor and economically marginalised, thus far confined to living on the badly serviced urban peripheries, closer to the urban core in the belief that it would improve their access to economic opportunities and, subsequently, to a better life (Harrison et al. 2019). If the CoF initiative seemed morally indisputable, given its aspiration to producing an alternative vision of the 'good city' alongside a more integrated and just society, the actual support for and success of the implementation was always more uncertain. ...
... The CoF' s initial blueprint aimed to engineer the connection of several areas of the city via long transport arteries and transform these (pre-existing) neighbourhoods by promoting mixed-use developments and increased levels of accommodation density (Harrison et al. 2019). A bus-rapid-transit system (BRT), known as Rea Vaya, was gradually rolled out along selected routes, after being initiated in response to the FIFA World Cup in 2010 (see Todes 2014; and Wood 2015 for a discussion of the origins of the BRT). ...
... This relied on a significant political initiative centring financial planning control in the Spatial Planning department (Pieterse 2019; Interview with City Official, 8 May 2017). Medium-term plans for investment in bulk infrastructure were put in place in support of the intensified development (Harrison et al. 2019). ...
How to reinvent Johannesburg, a metropolis whose geography of inequality has remained stubbornly entrenched since the end of apartheid? By launching the ‘Corridors of Freedom’ (CoF) initiative in2013, the municipal government decided to take bold and deliberate steps towards conceiving and promoting a more inclusive and people-centred city. The goal was to disrupt the prevailing spatial and social pattern by connecting different parts of the city via a large public transit network and altering these same areas through increased levels of (affordable) accommodation, density, and mixed-use development. Cutting across the existing urban fabric and affecting a significant number of distinct neighbourhoods, both in terms of socio-economic and racial characteristics, this ambitious project, unsurprisingly, triggered a wide spectrum of reactions. To successfully embed thisinitiative required securing support (or countering opposition) from both the majority poor and black electorate demanding accessible housing and jobs, and the highly mobilised middle-class groups on whom the City authorities were financially dependent. Taking the CoF public participation process as analytical entry point, we reflect on the diverse power relations of ‘building consensus’ across highly divided neighbourhoods and populations to take forward this large-scale urban transformation. While there was widespread agreement on the broad vision outlining the need for transformation, interpretations of the ‘good’ or ‘desired’ city, views on priorities to be considered, and acceptance of required adjustments, varied greatly. Through this case, the paper offers insights into the uneven landscape of politics associated with large-scale urban developments which stretch across highly differentiated urban areas. We note the initial scope for building shared visions and a ‘consensual arena’ between state and society across such diversity, but as the project unfolded the varied challenges of implementation at scale saw a diversity of forms of power relations shaping the dynamic processes of urban development along the multifaceted landscape of the Corridors. Initially, a powerful vision, innovative technologies of planning and fast paced consultation sought to corral actors into a tight delivery schedule driven by electoral cycles. But over time actors engaged in persuasion, contestation and collaboration, as well as moments of violence and heated disruption as the development process unfolded. Drawing theoretical insights from the geographies of power and learning from analyses of the close entwining of state-citizen relations in South African urban politics, the paper suggests that in assessing the politics of large-scale developments, an agile analytical lens is needed to reflect on the diversity of power relations associated with governance and decision-making, as well as engagements and contestations, in the light of shifting political terrains, and diverse urban environments.
... With its aim of breaking the legacy of apartheid spatial planning, this flagship project meant to address some of the city' s most enduring and stubborn spatial inequalities (Crankshaw 2022). This was to be achieved through the provision of increased densities and inclusionary, affordable (formal) housing in the more central parts of the city (Harrison et al. 2019), and multi-functional sites and corridors made accessible for all via a bus-rapid-transit system, the project' s operational spine (Pieterse 2019;Harrison and Todes 2020;Wood 2022;van der Walt and Pretorius 2023). In effect, the initiative was designed and driven by the then mayor, Parks Tau, and a small group of experienced and relatively powerful, yet under-staffed planners (Harrison and Rubin 2020). ...
The City of Johannesburg’s Corridors of Freedom (CoF), launched in 2013, were intended to cut across the economically and racially divided city using infrastructure and interventions in the built environment around new transport nodes. Undertaken in haste for political reasons and projected to be delivered as swiftly as possible, those driving this mega project oversaw substantial consultation exercises, but provided relatively few spaces for direct engagement to shape the project. This paper presents the experiences of a team of engaged-researchers, a long-standing NGO in partnership with University-based scholars jointly investigating the CoF development process. Interested in the ways in which the CoF initiative sought to ‘stitch’ the city together, our contribution to the project was to engage with different communities, clarify their different experiences with participation in the Corridors development and explore the possibility of collaboration across these different communities. Using the conceptual framework of stitching and suturing, the paper, in two parts, interrogates the roles that engaged partners can have in complex and diverse communities and our ability to support engagement. We reveal the limitations of engaged research when faced with political and institutional cycles that do not synchronise with the research projects, and point to the cleavages and disruptions that result when the local state does not systematically incorporate the needs and lived realities of its residents.
... TOD initiatives can influence the residential mobility of disadvantaged populations, changing community dynamics [2,33,34]. For example, limited affordable housing in TOD projects for low-income households was observed in Arizona [35], while inclusive policy frameworks in Johannesburg mitigated gentrification-driven displacement [36]. Strategic policies are necessary to balance property value increases with gentrification concerns, preventing the exacerbation of social inequity. ...
In response to the global trend of urbanization, there has been an increasing focus on transit-oriented development (TOD). However, the prioritization of economic factors in the establishment of TOD often takes precedence over concerns for social equity. This research seeks to address this gap by examining the economic performance and demographic characteristics of 46 rail transit station areas (RSAs) in the city center of Dalian. The study employs the Gini coefficient and affinity clustering to assess the overall economic performance and inequality among different resident groups within RSAs. Furthermore, regression analysis is utilized to identify the key variables influencing economic performance equity in these areas. The results indicate significant disparities in economic dimensions among different resident groups, with station areas in commercial centers and functional core zones demonstrating higher economic performance. Housing prices and job–housing density are identified as crucial factors influencing consumer behavior across various station areas. Despite the presence of employment opportunities and urban development features in RSAs, differences in socioeconomic status and accessibility to public facilities significantly impact resident social equity. These results can assist policymakers in evaluating disparities in the allocation of RSAs among different regions and demographic groups. This study adds to the existing knowledge on equity in the economic performance of RSAs and supports the development of inclusive TOD strategies specific to different locations and populations.
... The City purports public transport as a means of achieving economic growth targets, as well as a measure of improving social justice. Documents on the City's flagship corridor development initiatives explicitly discuss 're-stitching the city back together' (Harrison, 2016;Harrison et al., 2019) to overcome the legacy of apartheid. Aligned with this framework, a significant portion of transport infrastructure investment in Gauteng has focused on supplementary transport systems such as the Gautrain -a rapid rail service connecting the major economic nodes -and the BRT system. ...
... Although sensitive to inequality and a supporter of microentreprise as a way out of poverty, his awareness grew incrementally, one crystallising moment being a Wits report on the Corridor of Freedom. The report had been contracted by the City explicitly to support the Planning Department in running the Corridor Project (Harrison et al. 2019). The report expressed robust criticism of the exclusionary effects of the Corridor's interventions ('you are actually chasing the poor out of the suburbs'), especially around the Louis Botha Corridor (Applebaum 2017). ...
... The main opposition party to the ANC. 2 Corridors of Freedom is a transit-oriented development project, aiming at interconnecting different areas of the sprawling city through bus rapid transit, and densifying the urban fabric(Harrison et al. 2019). 3 The JDA is the development arm of the city, works closely with the Department of Development Planning, peopled by activists with a strong sense of the urgency of post-apartheid transformation of the city (Rubin, Chapter 4, this book). ...
This chapter explores how the concept of institutionnal activism gains meaning in post-apartheid Johannesburg city administration. A concept that has been discarded for some time in social movements literature, but has regained currency in North American feminist literature and in Brazilian academia inspired by Lula's legacy, it has seldom been explored at the local, city level, except in the work of North American Planner Pierre Clavel, unpacking what makes cities 'progressive'. The chapter, after examining the various and situated definitions of 'institutional activism', reflects on what makes institutional activism specific as a form of activism, through analysing the practices of three City officials' attempts to push for progressive change in post-apartheid Johannesburg.
... They experience long, costly, and hazardous commutes to the main economic nodes. A bus rapid transit system was introduced to promote densification, but it has had little impact on spatial patterns (Harrison et al., 2019). The ruling party (the African National Congress, ANC) has also been losing voter support in Johannesburg, so there has been a political incentive to promote IHP as a way to dilute opposition strongholds in middle income areas. ...
