Reforming city-region governance in Gauteng

This chapter analyses inter-governmental collaboration and its potential to advance a cross-cutting regional approach for the Gauteng city-region. Given the persistent challenges of aligning functions across spheres of government, the chapter argues that major policy arenas – public transport, environment and land use, and economic development – could be more effectively balanced through a “territorial” approach, in which various levels of the state work together to maximise economic competitiveness. After reviewing the main financing and planning tools of different levels of government, a section on inter-governmental co-ordination highlights gaps across and between different national and sub-national levels. The chapter recommends a three-pronged city-region governance strategy, consisting of: i) harnessing financial tools to expand infrastructure and economic opportunity across the city-region ii) embedding the city-region concept into metropolitan transport and environmental policy and iii) strengthening citizen engagement. A multi-scalar approach is applied for policy analysis, encompassing the national level (South African National Performance Management System), the provincial scale (the Gauteng Provincial Government’s Employment, Growth and Development Strategy, GEGDS), the municipal level (integrated development plans, IDPs), and the neighbourhood level (ward-based committees).