Post-apartheid urban geography: A case study of Greater Johannesburg's Rapid Land Development Programme

This article addresses the twin issues of urbanisation and the eradication of the socio-spatial patterns of apartheid in South African cities through the presentation of a case study - the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council's Rapid Land Development Programme (RLDP), initiated in 1995. This has been one of the few housing delivery programmes in the country since 1994 which has attempted to address these two issues simultaneously (the Marconi Beam Development in Cape Town being another). The significance of the RLDP lies not only in its marginal success, but also in its failures. It brought to the surface the intractable ideologies and vested interests behind the patterns of property ownership in South African cities, as well as the lack of policies or procedures to challenge them. As a result, urban development in general, and in Greater Johannesburg in particular has, since 1994, reinforced rather than confronted apartheid geography.