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Purpose Acknowledging that housing forms a large part of households’ and country’s long-term wealth, the South African Government has implemented various housing-related policies towards that end. Among these, the government has extended transfer duty exemption to house buyers – both individuals or natural persons and companies or other parties – to enable them buy houses of their choices since January 1950 to date. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between historical transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) over a longer period, where a comprehensive data set on house sales and other predictors was available. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses multi-year data on repeat house sales from 2010 to 2020 and other macro- and socio-economic variables to test the relationship between transfer duty exemption and housing demand in the CoJ, a core part of Gauteng province, South Africa. After cleaning the original data, final analysis was based on 139,121 repeat sales transactions. Data was analyzed in R. Findings Findings suggest that, when macro-, socio-economic and yearly effects are controlled, transfer duty has a damping effect on housing demand in the CoJ. The results were consistent across all the estimated models. While the motivation behind the implementation of transfer duty exemption in South Africa continues to encourage home ownership, these findings are unexpected because they do not offer support to that policy intention. These unexpected results are partly explained by the prevailing complexities of the housing market and related policies and the progressive tax regime. However, there are welfare effects that all buyers achieve across the housing market ecosystem. Originality/value This paper extends work on housing markets research in South Africa through the investigation of mortgage-based housing market in the CoJ that presents one of the densest, developed, bustling and growing housing market in the country. It also presents a fertile ground where all the effects of all the housing policies coalesce – in the statistical sense, one can control the effect of some aspects of housing policies, while appropriately testing the link between a specific policy (in this case, transfer duty exemption) and housing dynamics.

PurposeThere are multitudes of sites and buildings offering various services to their occupiers. Studies highlight that companies choose sites and buildings that enable business’ growth and competition. The purpose of this paper is to explore occupiers’ perspectives on headquarters (HQs) site selection preferences with reference to the public listed firms in South Africa’s eight metropolitan municipalities.Design/methodology/approachA literature review was conducted to understand site selection preferences in other countries to inform the current study. Empirical data were collected using a sequential mixed-method approach using interviews and a survey. Semi-structured interviews were conducted first with the executives/management and also personnel who are involved in site selection decisions. Purposive sampling technique was used to select one company per industry to be interviewed. The information gathered from interviews informed the survey that was distributed online using Qualtrics software to all public listed firms located within the eight metropolitan municipalities in South Africa. Thematic analysis was used for analysing the interviews, whereas self-explicated conjoint model was used for the survey.FindingsThe results reveal that HQs as occupants of space prefer facilities that have good security and security systems, backup generators, air conditioning, parking facilities, energy management, access to the internet, efficient water supply, quality meeting places, cleaning services, the condition of the premises and disabled-friendly facilities. In addition to these preferences, HQs also prefer sites that are accessible. From this study, aspects that are unique to South Africa’s case are around security and security systems. The higher the crime levels, the higher is the demand on HQs to provide security and security systems for not only for their premises but also their employees. The current water and energy outages are also affecting HQs resulting in companies preferring facilities with an efficient water supply and having backup generators.Research limitations/implicationsThe research only focussed on public listed firms located within the eight metropolitan municipalities. The findings may/may not apply to the HQs of non-listed firms and also to those situated outside the metropolitan municipalities. Owing to this, the results cannot be generalised. Further studies are needed to explore preference by industry with larger sample size.Practical implicationsThis study provides insights on HQs site selection preference levels from the context of South Africa as a developing country. The insights would be useful to companies within the South African context to better understand their contextual dynamics and for companies seeking to do business in developing countries. Apart from companies, this study would also be beneficial to policymakers in creating enabling policies for companies, property developers to build facilities that embrace aspects preferred by occupants and investors to understand the preferences of HQs in the selection of sites for their operation.Originality/valueIn a developing country such as South Africa, there are limited studies on HQs site selection preferences; therefore, this study is one of the few studies bridging the knowledge gap. This study adopts a marketing approach to understand corporate real estate phenomenon.

Despite implementation of several government policies since the dawn of democracy in South Africa, income distribution remains skewed in the country. This paper explores income distribution in the ...

The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) is generally credited for better capturing the various components of poverty. Where such indexes have a spatial component, opportunity arises for analyzing changes in the spatial concentration of multidimensional poverty over given periods across space. Using current available MPI data for Gauteng province, South Africa, we apply spatial statistical analysis techniques to measure the degree of spatial concentration, spread and orientation of poverty across the various wards. Results reveal distinct variations in concentration, spatial spread and orientation of poverty across the province. These results open up possibilities of spatially targeted state interventions for reducing poverty.

South Africa boasts an advanced real estate market compared toot her African countries. A recent study showed that the real estate sector has strong linkages toot her leading sectors in Gauteng’s regional economy; its contribution through multiplier effects because of these inter-sectoral linkages is enormous. The real estate sector directly contributed substantially to economic development; constituting 17% of regional employment and 16.6% (159,968.1 million Rand) of the region’s total GVA (Vom Hofe and Cheruiyot 2018). Moreover, with past evidence, especially where initial shocks in the real estate markets–following the 2008/09 financial crisis–led to massive macro-economic instabilities and economic decline, motivate for a need to understand in more detail the size and inter-sectoral linkages of real estate sector if regional economies are continually to formulate economic resilient strategies. This paper will use Quantec economic data as well as employ principal component analysis to decompose Gauteng’s SAM to measure the size and identify inter-sectoral linkages of real estate sector. Possible policy recommendations will be suggested.

The Gauteng City-Region (GCR) forms the economic heartland of South Africa, and the African continent, contributing slightly over a third and a tenth to gross domestic product (GDP), respectively. This area is arguably one of the most economically-active regions on the continent and has been recognized as a global city-region comparable to many of its counterparts worldwide. This chapter aims to explore the city-region’s economic viability and functioning as compared with and in relation to other city-regions by looking at past and current rankings that measure the city-region’s viability and performance as an actor within global financial networks and global capital flows, among others. As an African city well represented in global indices, Johannesburg, a proxy for the GCR in this chapter, is undeniably a global city. While some of the measures have recognized Johannesburg as having global promise, other assessments of the city’s prospects have not been overly favourable. With ambiguities sometimes prevailing on how these measures are calculated, it must be stressed that rankings can be effective or ineffective, depending on what it is that corporates and city governments choose to focus on. When “read correctly, they can be an important tool for cities wanting to strengthen their ability to compete globally. Read incorrectly, they are little more than fodder for civic bragging rights” (Leff and Petersen 2015, p. 3).

This volume offers new research and fresh insight into city-regions and changing space economies in the Global South. The research presented in this volume focuses on the largest agglomeration in a country and on a continent bedevilled by a myriad development challenges. The space economy of the Gauteng City-Region, which contributes slightly more than a third to the South African national economy and a tenth to Africa’s gross domestic product, has been interrogated in this publication by various authors through an economic geography lens in order to make sense of the spatial dualism that exists in Gauteng’s regional economy. From the comprehensive analysis across the various chapters in the book volume, this chapter highlights various lessons needed to make the regional economy competitive, inclusive and resilient. The chapter also presents some of the factors that may shape the magnitude and direction of economic growth and development in the GCR going forward.

Reducing income inequalities remains one of the key challenges facing South Africa twenty years after democracy. While these inequalities are very clear along racial lines, they are also very stark spatially. For example, research in 2000 showed that 82% of South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) was concentrated in 20% of the country’s major urban areas and 20% of urban areas had an average per capita income of R25,277, compared with an average per capita income of R5,452 for the poorest 20% of places. In Gauteng, over 80% of regional GDP is generated in the three metro areas of Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Ekurhuleni. However, neoclassical growth theory predicts that poor localities, or regions, will grow faster than rich ones, leading to economic convergence over time. Using ward-level median household income calculated from census data for 2001 and 2011, this chapter tests this assertion in the ten-year period between the censuses. The chapter employs spatial econometric techniques to generate exploratory spatial data analysis and measure unconditional (or beta) convergence parameters. While exploratory spatial analysis did not clearly indicate either unconditional convergence or divergence, spatial models suggested a divergence rate of 0.7% between the two censuses. The growth rate of divergence is significantly clustered, with the north-west and south-west of Gauteng having experienced clusters of higher growth rates of ward-level median household income. There are also pockets of high growth rates of median household income in central Tshwane, Midvaal, and Merafong City. Clusters of high growth rates are also visible in the suburbs around Sandton, Midrand, Bryanston, and Fourways. Pockets of low growth rates of median household income are visible in the areas around Ennerdale and Poortje in the south of Johannesburg. Implications for policy are suggested regarding spatial targeting efforts by government.

This chapter investigates industrial clusters as building blocks of the Gauteng economy. As economic clusters are regarded as critical masses that are spatially concentrated, are somehow related, and impact one another as a result of their complementarities or similarities, such clusters reflect synergies between industries, suppliers and the public sector. The competitive advantages of such clusters are driven by agglomeration economies that ensure that firms benefit through availability of intermediate resources, relative lower costs of inputs, and increased multifactor productivity of management innovation, labour and capital inputs, for example. By applying principal component analysis to the Gauteng Social Accounting Matrix (GSAM), we identify six key industrial clusters for the Gauteng region. We further highlight inter-industry linkages within the dominant service clusters in the regional economy by means of a multiplicative decomposition model, the structural path analysis (SPA). These clusters are dominated by the Services and Trade cluster, which by itself, provided 68.5% of Gauteng’s regional employment, and contributed 55.9% to GVA, in 2015. These results will assist the relevant decision-makers in formulating and implementing appropriate strategies for economic growth and employment creation, leading to sustainable economic development in the Gauteng regional economy.

With unresolved discourses prevailing in mainstream economic thought, including in economic geography, city-regions and their changing space economies is the central theme of this volume. The chapter focuses on key and competing theoretical and conceptual issues of the space economy of global city-regions more broadly, and of South Africa and the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) specifically. The chapter offers the GCR as a microcosm of the South African national economy in the form of evident significant placed-based variations in the intensity and character of economic structure that stimulate growth and despair. This exploration is useful since the GCR shapes the national economy significantly in various ways as well as playing a vital global role in such areas as capital and financial flows, international migration, and research and innovation.

This study explores the commonly held view that high time–distance accessibility to major concentrations of economic activity is positively correlated with economic performance. The study reveals the difficulty of exploring the correlation in a complex space economy where there are multiple nodes of economic concentration. Although we cannot conclude definitively on this correlation nationwide, we are able to show positive relationships within sub-national economies, and also in relation to particular dimensions of accessibility, such as time–distance to major mobility corridors and immediate spatial proximity to metropolitan economies and international border crossings.

South Africa in general, and the Gauteng City-Region in particular, are grappling with rising service delivery protests and increasing levels of dissatisfaction with government performance. Besides internal government performance measures, citizen satisfaction surveys are useful in providing citizen-based measurement of satisfaction with service delivery and the performance of government. With 27 490 respondents across Gauteng, the 2013 Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) Quality of Life (QoL) survey provides an interesting snap shot of attitudes towards government. A spatial statistical approach is applied to the 2013 QoL survey data to analyse patterns of dissatisfaction with the performance of local government. The analysis reveals spatial clustering in the level of dissatisfaction with the performance of local government. It also reveals percentage of respondents dissatisfied with dwelling, mean sense of safety index, and percentage agree the country is going in the wrong direction, as significant predictors of the level of local dissatisfaction. Other predictors include the percentage of respondents that think lack of maintenance is the biggest problem facing the community, and percentage agree that politics is waste of time. These results imply the need for incorporating spatial analysis and targeting in the formulation of policy aimed at improving government performance.

The preferences of location for corporate headquarters (CHQs) vary across different contexts. We reviewed the location preference levels among the South African CHQs located in different metropolit...

With an increasing focus on the need to enhance government performance across the world, this paper explores dissatisfaction with the performance of three spheres of government in the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), South Africa. This paper uses the 2013 Quality of Life (QoL) survey data to examine spatial patterns and correlates of dissatisfaction with government performance as well as whether significant correlates that explain dissatisfaction with government performance vary across the three spheres of government. Results show significant spatial clustering in the levels of dissatisfaction across all three spheres of government, with more significant clustering in the local sphere, followed by the provincial and national spheres. The central core of Gauteng exhibits the lowest levels of dissatisfaction, whilst a clustering of high levels of dissatisfaction occurs in the southern areas. While spatial analysis revealed variation in the correlates across the three spheres, common correlates were also discernible. These include: the percentage of respondents dissatisfied with their dwelling, average sense of safety, average score access to services, percentage of respondents who agree politics is a waste of time, and percentage of respondents who agree that the country is going in the wrong direction. The disjuncture between perceptions of government performance and satisfaction with services is evident in this paper’s results.