​​​​The Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO), a collaboration between the University of Johannesburg (UJ), the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the Gauteng Provincial Government, will launch the State of the Gauteng City-Region Review 2011, on Monday, 17 October 2011 at the Chalsty Auditorium, Wits School of Law, West Campus, Johannesburg. The event is scheduled to start at 11:00.​

The State of the Gauteng City-Region Review 2011, the first review since the inception of the Gauteng City Region Observatory in 2008, provides an overview of the key dynamics and trends affecting the economy, society, governance and environment of a city-region that is predicted to be among the largest in the world by 2015.

The assessment contributes to an information base and a platform for debate for all stakeholders in the region – government, business, academics and residents – around how to build on the region’s advantages and address its challenges.

It aims to provide strategic and applied research capacity to monitor the progress of the Gauteng city-region in terms of a variety of social, economic and developmental indicators. The GCRO comprises the functional economy which covers Gauteng but stretches to Sasolburg, Rustenburg, Witbank, Secunda, Klerksdorp and other nodal points that are integrated in the broader city-region.

“South Africa is steadily and speedily urbanising. The opportunities and challenges that face the Gauteng city-region in this regard – as the most powerful commercial centre on the African continent and ranked as a major metropolitan conurbation in the world hierarchy of urban settlements – are critical to track and discuss. This first State of the Gauteng City-Region Review does exactly this,” says Prof. David Everatt, Director of the GCRO.

“The report casts a broad eye over the entire city-region, noting its successes but pointing also to lines of fracture.”

The GCRO acts as an independent repository of relevant data and knowledge and develops, analyses and benchmarks the city-region both over time and in international comparative contexts.

​​In order to accomplish this, the GCRO plays a crucial role in harnessing the region’s available intellectual capital in the interests of the emerging city-region that will maintain a high-level dialogue between the academy and government.