Ivan Turok

Ivan Turok
University of the Free State; HSRC · Economics and Finance

PhD Economics

About

304
Publications
188,196
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Introduction
Professor Ivan Turok is DSI/NRF Research Chair in City-Region Economies at UFS and Distinguished Research Fellow at the HSRC. He is former Editor-in-Chief of Regional Studies and Chairman of the City Planning Commission for Durban. He is an expert adviser to the United Nations, OECD, European Commission and several governments. He has written extensively on urban and regional development and policy in the global north and is now committed to working in the south.
Additional affiliations
January 2016 - January 2021
Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)
Position
  • Managing Director
August 2013 - December 2015
Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)
Position
  • Managing Director
August 2008 - December 2009
University of Cape Town
Description
  • Mellon Fellow

Publications

Publications (304)
Article
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The article explains why and how we have created a new data tool to improve public understanding and analysis of social housing in South Africa.
Article
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The article demystifies the complex process of releasing municipal land for affordable and social housing in cities
Book
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The report demystifies the complicated process of releasing municipal land for social and affordable housing in South African cities and makes recommendations for how the process could be simplified and streamlined to deliver quicker and better outcomes.
Research
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South African cities occupy a tiny fraction of the country's land area, yet they make up the lion’s share of the economy. This map of the month – produced by researchers at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the University of the Free State (UFS) – explores methods for representing the significance of cities for jobs. The map below use...
Article
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Social housing offers a way of promoting upward mobility and urban integration by improving people’s access to economic and social opportunities. These are prominent goals of South Africa’s social housing programme. In practice, household advancement tends to be taken for granted rather than deliberately pursued or monitored. We review survey data...
Article
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The government's response to Transnet's latest request for a bailout should be to tell it to dispose of its surplus property. This would release funds to invest in operational improvements and unlock strategic sites for the development of housing, which would spur construction activity and jobs.
Article
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Outlines an agenda for analysing the relationship between urbanisation and development, including a review of the main arguments for and against a positive connection.
Article
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NGOs have a valuable role to play in solving the issues of small-scale rental housing
Article
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The growth of small-scale rental housing (SSRH), especially in South Africa’s larger cities, offers enormous economic and social opportunities, despite its informal and, in many cases, unauthorised character. A growing network of city officials, practitioners, civil society organisations and researchers have made great strides to document the dynam...
Data
In order to bring a thorough and comprehensive understanding of social, economic and environmental sustainability challenges faced by cities and local communities in the developing countries, the SHLC team conducted a major household survey followed by a neighbourhood focus group interview in seven Asian and African countries from late 2021 to earl...
Article
Trade in services has grown more rapidly than trade in manufactured goods in recent decades. Countries from the Global South are chiefly responsible for this shift. The research note draws attention to service investment that originates in Southern economies and is directed at markets of the same (sub)continent. Such dynamics have been neglected by...
Article
Urbanisation is a worldwide phenomenon, yet its patterns vary significantly from one region to another. While the rate is slowing down in the Global North, the opposite is happening in parts of the Global South. This paper assesses the trajectory of urbanisation in Southern Africa over the last 40 years. This is one of the fastest urbanising region...
Article
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A new urban economic dataset
Article
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Neighbourhoods affect people’s livelihoods, and therefore drive and mediate intra-urban inequalities and transformations. While the neighbourhood has long been recognized as an important unit of analysis, there is surprisingly little systematic research on different neighbourhood types, especially in the fast-growing cities of the Global South. In...
Article
The coronavirus pandemic has had devastating effects on urban lives and livelihoods throughout the world. A major concern in the global North has been the hollowing out of central cities caused by remote working. The consequences for cities in the global South extend further and deeper because their economies are weaker, social and spatial inequali...
Article
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Social housing has the potential to contribute to economic inclusion and urban integration if it is well-located. However, this is complicated by economic forces that shape land and property markets and constrain the ability of social housing organisations to afford suitable sites for development on the open market. The paper shows how South Africa...
Article
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The poor performance of the South African economy has been widely analysed, yet this disguises considerable internal variation, both between sectors and regions. Most disaggregated analysis focuses on national industry trends and neglects the role of geography. We undertake a shift-share analysis with multifactor partitioning to decompose the growt...
Article
There is growing scepticism about global value chains because of their association with an unequal global trading system. Regionally coordinated and integrated production in Asia appears to have served as a better mechanism for promoting economic prosperity than direct integration into global markets. This is founded upon regional cooperation on in...
Article
This paper examines third sector social housing in early post-apartheid South Africa, hence offering important new insights into how institutions in emerging economies shape the implementation and impacts of this approach. Based on qualitative research methods, the paper finds that under conditions of weak formal governance, nascent industry capaci...
Chapter
This chapter reviews the arguments and evidence for the existence of a positive relationship between urbanisation and economic development in South Africa. It identifies the main tenets of agglomeration theory, which stresses the importance of city size, density and connectivity. These ideas are applied to fundamental features of urban development,...
Chapter
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The chapter compares and contrasts the arguments and evidence that the impacts of urbanisation on South African society are detrimental with the contrary proposition that urbanisation has advantages for the economy and human development.
Article
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The need for urban planners and developers to show flexibility and creativity in adapting to the pandemic crisis facing cities
Chapter
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Cape Town is widely considered to be South Africa’s most segregated city. The chapter outlines the history of social stratification and spatial segregation, including the coercion of colonial and apartheid governments to divide the population by race. Since 1994, the democratic government has lacked the same resolve and capacity to reverse this leg...
Article
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COVID-19 has had asymmetrical spatial impacts across South Africa. New evidence from the National Income Dynamics Study: Coronavirus Rapid Mobile (NIDS-CRAM) survey shows that the pandemic and lockdown reflex have magnified pre-existing divisions within cities. Although COVID-19 has severely impacted the whole country, townships and informal settle...
Article
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Global policies promote urban compaction to achieve sustainable development. This article highlights the limits of analysing densification at the city scale and advocates for a more granular approach. The case study of Cape Town shows how overall consolidation has been mainly driven by poor households crowding into already dense neighbourhoods on t...
Article
Like most governments around the world, the South African government adopted a uniform, place-blind response to the coronavirus pandemic, including a hard lockdown. New evidence from a large household survey reveals that the socioeconomic effects have widened pre-existing inequalities between cities and rural areas. More could be done to complement...
Research
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Tradable services — business activities that can be exported or that replace imports — present opportunities to boost economic growth in Africa, both directly and indirectly. South African companies have more experience of trade and investment elsewhere in Africa than is commonly understood. However, their track record in tradable services is ver...
Technical Report
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More could be done to improve the chances of upward mobility for tenants of social housing in South Africa. The social housing policy makes no mention of upward mobility for tenants, even though this is implicit within the objectives of reducing socio-economic and spatial inequalities. We evaluate evidence of tenant- level outcomes from a sample of...
Article
Services are the fastest growing portion of world trade and now account for nearly a quarter of global exports. This presents opportunities for emerging economies to adapt and enter new markets. Many countries in southern Africa have struggled to diversify from a heavy reliance on primary commodities towards manufacturing industries. Tradable servi...
Technical Report
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This is a policy brief explaining why it matters that Covid-19 has hit poor communities hardest, and offering some high level policy recommendations
Article
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The economic and social crisis induced by Covid-19 is unfolding in different ways across the country. New evidence from the NIDS-CRAM survey reveals that the pandemic has widened pre-existing inequalities between cities and rural areas. Within cities it has magnified the gap between suburbs, townships and informal settlements. A premature withdrawa...
Article
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Summarises a technical report on the spatial impact of the Covid-19 crisis in South Africa
Technical Report
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The differential impact of the coronavirus pandemic on different places within South Africa - within urban areas and between urban and rural areas. The focus is on the labour market effects, hunger and social grants. It uses data from the Nids-Cram surveys (waves 1 and 2). The study shows that Covid-19 has amplified spatial inequalities and hit poo...
Article
Territorial collaboration offers a novel way of tackling the widening gap between prosperous cities and poorer regions. Place-based organizations working together and sharing their knowledge, expertise and resources can strengthen productive capacities and improve living standards in less-favoured areas. China has gone further than elsewhere throug...
Article
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Urban density is an important consideration in the coronavirus pandemic, but knee-jerk reactions by the government, companies and citizens are damaging. The solution is not to reduce density, but to manage it in ways that minimise the risks of viral transmission-because density also has major benefits for human wellbeing and economic prosperity. Do...
Article
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Resettling informal communities is not an option because of the damage it causes to livelihoods and social networks. A better approach is for communities to take advantage of the impermanence of makeshift structures to reposition shacks to create space for basic services. This type of re-blocking can be achieved with limited or no relocations.
Data
Final draft of chapter 15 - Conclusion: Moving Beyond the Conventional Wisdom, for Buck, Gordon, Harding and Turok (eds., 2005) Changing Cities, Palgrave Macmillan
Data
Final draft of chapter 14 - How Urban Labour Markets Matter, for Buck, Gordon, Harding and Turok (eds., 2005) Changing Cities, Palgrave Macmillan
Data
Final draft of chapter 5 - Integrating Cities, for Buck, Gordon, Harding and Turok (eds., 2005) Changing Cities, Palgrave Macmillan
Data
Title page and Contents of Final draft: Buck, Gordon, Harding and Turok (eds., 2005) Changing Cities, Palgrave Macmillan
Data
Final draft of chapter 1 - Introduction: Cities in the New Conventional Wisdom, for Buck, Gordon, Harding and Turok (eds., 2005) Changing Cities, Palgrave Macmillan
Research
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We propose an alternative to ‘de-densification’ via relocations which is mooted by some in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. We essentially argue that: a) conventional multi-storey housing is not feasible at scale b) informal settlement layouts need to be reconfigured to liberate space for circulation, access to services, public fa...
Article
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The Philippines have developed a system of neighbourhood government that other countries could usefully learn from. The barangays give ordinary citizens a voice in decision-making and assist in devolving power from the centre. They also improve the responsiveness of basic public services to local needs. Above all, the institution recognises and leg...
Article
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The drawbacks of crowded informal settlements stand in stark contrast to the theoretical promise that urban density is the key to building more productive, sustainable and resilient cities. African cities cannot be expected to prosper while the majority of residents live in sprawling informal settlements with no prospect of improvement beyond the p...
Article
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Informal rental housing is growing rapidly in cities of the global South. Changing needs and circumstances of diverse urban populations produce new forms of rental accommodation and landlord–tenant relations. Focusing on the case of backyard renting in South Africa, this paper illustrates how informal rental is undergoing a dynamic process of expan...
Article
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India’s capital city Delhi is facing an unprecedented public health crisis that is not receiving sufficient government attention. Rapid urbanisation is part of the challenge. For too long public authorities have neglected the needs of its expanding poor communities for decent and dignified living conditions. Meanwhile, affluent groups benefit from...
Technical Report
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Tradable services present opportunities to boost economic growth in Africa, both directly and indirectly. The experience of South African companies has been patchy, with examples of success and failure. Their services have been geared more towards consumers rather than expanding productive capacity or improving urban infrastructure. There has been...
Article
The relationship between urbanisation and development is a vital policy concern, especially in Africa and Asia. This article reviews the arguments and evidence for whether rapid urban population growth can help to raise living standards. The main finding is that the development effects of urbanisation and the magnitude of agglomeration economies ar...
Article
There is considerable policy interest in supporting township economies at present. This is important considering their history of marginalization and the extent of unemployment and poverty. However, the short-term injection of additional resources could simply leak out unless more conducive conditions are created for enterprises to grow and develop...
Article
Central cities are vibrant and productive places because of the dense concentration of people, firms and supporting facilities. Yet their dynamism can be undermined by congestion, social tensions and poor urban management. South Africa’s four major city centres experienced tumultuous changes during the transition from apartheid and the exodus of ma...
Chapter
Tradable services hold a considerable yet untapped potential to contribute to economic development in Africa. This chapter assesses the importance of tradable services to the province of Gauteng, which is South Africa’s economic heartland. Refering to secondary data sources, the authors show which services are most significant and to what extent th...
Chapter
The concluding chapter returns to the five critical research issues identified in the introduction to the edited volume. It summarises how the book’s chapters have advanced our knowledge on these issues, puts the findings into a broader context and then suggests topics for follow-up research. Particular attention is drawn to four ideas. First, poli...
Article
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Rwanda’s has made remarkable all-round progress over the last 25 years. This is usually attributed to a determined national government under single-minded leadership. This paper draws attention to two local drivers of Rwanda’s socio-economic development: community participation and a positive approach to urbanisation. Popular involvement in communa...
Book
Development largely depends on how given places participate in global economic processes.The contributions to this book address various features of the integration of sub-Saharan Africa into the world economy via value chains, so as to explain corresponding challenges and opportunities. The book deals with five issues that have not been covered ade...
Chapter
The introductory chapter illustrates the relevance of (research on) global value chains (GVCs) in sub-Saharan Africa. It provides an overview of the state of the art, and outlines the structure of the edited volume. Five key features of GVCs are identified, and the respective chapter contributions summarised: first, governance institutions and thei...
Article
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The dangers of incentivising cities to compete for mobile investment through subsidies and deregulation. The article also puts forward an alternative approach to local development.
Article
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Rwanda’s has made remarkable progress over the last 25 years. This short article draws attention to two local drivers of Rwanda’s socio-economic development: community participation and a positive approach to urbanisation. Popular involvement in communal projects has fostered social solidarity and dialogue between citizens and public officials. The...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Services are the fastest growing portion of world trade and now account for nearly a quarter of global exports. This presents opportunities for emerging economies to adapt and enter new markets. Many countries in southern Africa have struggled to diversify from a heavy reliance on primary commodities towards manufacturing industries. Tradable servi...
Article
Full-text available
To mark the 40th anniversary of its opening-up policy, China hosted an international forum to share the lessons of its metamorphosis from an impoverished agrarian society to a powerhouse of the global economy. One of the country’s best-kept secrets revealed at the forum was the collaboration fostered between cities and rural areas to induce develop...
Chapter
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The characteristics, causes and consequences of spatial inequalities in South Africa.
Article
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The land question has been reduced to a debate between safeguarding property rights and expropriation. The preoccupation of both standpoints with the issue of ownership has diverted attention from the crucial matter of the use and development of land. Broadening the debate is vital to make sense of the current predicament facing cities, which now a...
Article
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The reasons for the shortage of affordable housing in South African cities
Article
The ‘right to the city’ has influenced the New Urban Agenda and other global and national urban policies. In the process, the meaning has narrowed towards realizing human rights in cities. Pursuing the right to housing in South Africa has established an important duty on the state to ensure universal access to decent accommodation. This has enabled...
Article
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Moving to a city in search of work seems to pay off for many poor people in the countryside. Data that track changes over time indicate that as many as 385 000 people were lifted from poverty between 2008 and 2014 after moving from rural to urban areas-their poverty levels were halved together with a fall in unemployment. Government ambivalence abo...
Article
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How rural-urban migration helps to lift people out of poverty
Chapter
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South Africa is often considered an unusual and extreme case in geography. One difficulty is whether to label this a developing country (like its neighbouring countries), a former colony (like the United States and Australia), or an emerging economy (like the BRICS group), because of its highly diverse and unevenly developed character. South Africa...
Article
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Inclusive development is the seductive idea that a more dynamic and productive economy can go hand in hand with reduced inequality and exclusion. This requires crafting together different values and realities, through cooperation and negotiation between different economic and social interests. This is particularly difficult in South Africa (SA) bec...
Chapter
At a time of extraordinary challenges confronting the world, this book analyses some of the profound changes occurring in the development of cities and regions. It discusses the uncertainties associated with the stalling of hyper-globalization and asks whether this creates opportunities for resurgent regional economies driven by local capabilities,...
Book
At a time of extraordinary challenges confronting the world, this book analyses some of the profound changes occurring in the development of cities and regions. It discusses the uncertainties associated with the stalling of hyper-globalization and asks whether this creates opportunities for resurgent regional economies driven by local capabilities,...
Chapter
Full-text available
Article
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Understanding the underlying causes and consequences of Africa’s rapid urban population growth is crucial to improving long-term prosperity. There are various schools of thought on the matter. The paper discusses three perspectives and then reviews recent papers by Fox et al (2017) and Potts (2017) in the light of these perspectives. The purpose is...
Article
Informal urban settlements determine the well-being of a large section of global humanity. Yet there has been little research on their role in facilitating social mobility. In theory such settlements may foster human progress by linking rural-urban migrants to the services, contacts and livelihoods concentrated in cities. The article uses longitudi...
Article
Universities, knowledge and regional development. Regional Studies. The rapid expansion of universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world in recent decades has been followed by growing scrutiny of their role in knowledge production and regional development. This editorial and the papers in the accompanying theme issue...
Article
There is a robust international debate about how best to tackle spatial inequalities within nations and regions. The paper discusses three contrasting approaches: spatial rebalancing, space-neutral and place-based. They vary in the scope and purpose of government policy, from redistributing economic activity, to facilitating aggregate growth, and r...
Article
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Regional Studies celebrates its 50th anniversary with this special issue. This introductory article reflects back on developments since the journal was started and offers signposts for urban and regional research looking ahead. It outlines the changing global context for regional studies and identifies some of the ways in which the need for regiona...
Article
This article explores two contrasting perspectives on the role of informal settlements in urban labour markets. One proposes that they help to lift households out of rural poverty and onto a path to prosperity through affordable access to urban opportunities. The other suggests that the debilitating conditions confine residents to enduring hardship...
Technical Report
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The building of large numbers of housing units in isolated greenfield locations has had detrimental side effects on our cities over the last two decades. Yet a series of new megaprojects, designed to accelerate the delivery of housing, is now on the cards. Because they are to be built on cheap peripheral land, these schemes threaten to reinforce ur...

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