The role of secondary cities in managing urbanisation in South Africa

Following on from earlier work dealing with the role of metropolitan municipalities in managing urbanisation, this article assesses the role played by secondary cities in this regard. Although secondary cities have largely provided adequate infrastructure in line with the demands of population growth, three differences between metropolitan municipalities and secondary cities should be noted. First, on most indicators, secondary cities have more outliers than do metropolitan municipalities. Second, household incomes in secondary cities remain lower than those in metropolitan municipalities. Third, the ability of secondary cities to provide basic infrastructure does not differ much from that of metropolitan municipalities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that, in terms of certain indicators, secondary cities have managed to deliver these faster than their metropolitan counterparts. We argue that the progress made in secondary cities during the period under consideration cannot be separated from the fact that the economic growth in more than 50% of secondary cities has been linked either to mining or to another dominant economic driver.