Neighbourhood change and spatial inequalities in Cape Town

Christopher D Lloyd,Saad Bhatti,Michael Noble,Gerbrand Mans,David Mclennan

doi:10.1111/geoj.12400

Abstract

AbstractCapturing the dynamics of population change in urban areas necessitates access to geographically fine‐grained and temporally consistent data for several time points. Such data are generally not available and they must be created using standard population data which cannot usually be compared across time periods. In this paper, the focus is on changing spatial inequalities in Cape Town, South Africa. This paper details an approach to generation of gridded population counts (250 m by 250 m) for two census years – 2001 and 2011. Census data for Small Area Layers (SALs), Spot Building Count (SBC) data, and Open Street Map (OSM) landuse data were used to construct a grid of populated cells to which population counts are then reallocated. The reallocation of population counts from SALs to grid cells was undertaken using area‐to‐point kriging – an approach which is informed by the spatial variation in the population groups of interest as measured using the variogram. A case study based on population grids of unemployment rates shows how the grids can be used to chart changes and also to measure spatial inequalities across the city at two time points. The advantages of grids for capturing fine‐scale complexities and correctly accounting for physical separation between communities are demonstrated and the results show, while the broad patterns of inequality are consistent across time, there are pronounced increases in inequalities in some neighbourhoods. These areas – and what leads some areas to fall further behind – should be the subject of attention by policy‐makers.

Highlights

The demise of Apartheid in South Africa meant the removal of racially discriminatory restrictions on population movement, which accelerated migration from the former homelands to the major cities, in Gauteng and the Western Cape
This paper focuses on the analysis of changing deprivation and spatial inequalities in Cape Town between 2001 and 2011
The main focus in the present paper is on rates rather than counts, and the strong spatial structure of deprivation in most areas of Cape Town suggests that splitting source zones into grids cells, as is done here, will lead to spatially accurate distributions since kriging disaggregates to smaller areas while accounting for differences between neighbouring areas

Summary

Introduction

The demise of Apartheid in South Africa meant the removal of racially discriminatory restrictions on population movement, which accelerated migration from the former homelands to the major cities, in Gauteng and the Western Cape. To assess the nature of changes in spatial inequalities (and population change more generally) it is necessary to have data which are closely comparable –with common variable definitions and common geographical areas. The paper first outlines some approaches to standardising data by creating population surfaces (grids) so that small areas can be compared across time.

Results

Conclusion