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The deindustrialisation of Johannesburg has taken a particular spatial form. Service-sector businesses are increasingly located in the mostly White northern suburbs, whereas the mostly Black southern suburbs bear the brunt of unemployment and increasingly resemble an excluded ghetto. Some authors argue that Johannesburg's post- apartheid spatial order is just as racially unequal as it was during apartheid. This study tests this argument by using the results of the 2001 population census to examine the extent to which edge city development in Johannesburg is characterised by racial residential desegregation. The results show that the northern suburbs are undergoing fairly substantial desegregation. To the extent that this trend continues, the geography of apartheid racial divisions will be eroded and Johannesburg's racially mixed edge city will become an exception among world cities.

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Backyard accommodation is widespread in South African cities; a phenomenon that is rare in most other parts of the world. Such a 'solution' is an outcome of past and present policies and this article demonstrates that over the years there have been certain similarities in government policy between Chile and South Africa, the only other country with significant numbers of families living in backyard accommodation. However, Sowetan backyard dwellers are different from their contemporaries in Chile. Sowetans do not usually have family relationships with people in the main structure. They also live in significantly worse conditions, in terms both of the quality of the structure and the services available. The backyard dwellers are not likely to disappear quickly. As such, there is a vital need to develop some kind of response to improve their current living conditions. The government is correct to argue that it is seeking to help those in the backyards through its housing subsidy programme, but to presume that a subsidized home is going to be available to most backyard families in the next ten years is surely wishful thinking. As such, something should be done to improve living conditions in the backyard shacks and to do this it is important to know who is living there. The article provides the empirical information that will allow an appropriate policy to be defined. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.

Scholars argue that persistent racial inequality in Cape Town is caused by deindustrialization, which has led to high unemployment among blacks (Africans, coloreds and Indians) and the polarization of the occupational structure into a class of mostly white, highly paid managers and professionals and a class of mostly black, low-paid service-sector workers. This study shows that deindustrialization has not produced a large class of black low-wage service-sector workers. Instead, it has produced a professionalizing occupational structure alongside high unemployment. Although whites benefited from the growth of the professional and managerial jobs, these occupations have been substantially deracialized. The consequence for the racial geography of Cape Town is that the city is becoming divided into racially mixed middle-class neighborhoods and black working-class neighborhoods characterized by high unemployment.