Professor Ivan Turok NRF Chair in City-Region Economies University of the Free State, South Africa RSA Ambassador to South Africa Former Editor-in-Chief of Regional Studies 2025 RSA Distinguished Service Award
Across the world, regions are shaped not only by their present-day borders but also by layers of past governance, political ambition, and entrenched planning legacies. Nowhere is this more visible than in cities of the global south where the informal economy forms the backbone of everyday life. In Johannesburg, the inner city’s pavements and public […]
Takudzwa Mutize is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of the Free State, South Africa, and a Fellow in the Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) for 2025 – 2027. His research focuses on education and labour economics, regional development, and urban competitiveness. Recent publications include “Attracting […]
South Africa’s post-apartheid development landscape remains profoundly shaped by its inherited spatial and institutional architecture. Derived from my PhD study, Bell (2025) argues that underdevelopment conditions, stemming from apartheid’s racial capitalist project, created spatial and institutional constraints in Gauteng’s periphery. These conditions limited equitable urban and industrial transformation, and persist today (Ashman, 2022; 2023). Understanding […]
Economic diversification involves shifting away from a dominant sector to cultivate multiple industries that generate diverse income streams. Relying heavily on a single resource sector increases an economy’s vulnerability to the global commodity market and amplifies the risk of unemployment. South Africa’s North West Province is bordered by Botswana, Limpopo, the Free State, and the […]
Dr Liza Rose Cirolia is a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. Her research areas include urban statecraft, sub-national finance, and the techno-politics of infrastructure. Her current research is invested in understanding the reconfiguration of large technical systems and global networks in the context of concurrent transitions underway in […]
I am delighted to have been asked to be the South African ambassador for the RSA. My sphere of expertise is urban and regional economics/planning with a focus on urbanisation and the development of cities. As an ambassador, I seek to have an overview of urban and regional research in (South) Africa and to promote […]