Since the repeal of the Group Areas Act three decades ago, South Africa's oncedivided spaces have merged, and race-based restrictions on political participation have been eliminated. The result is that the territories to which people belong have transformed, and in many cases have increased in scale. This editorial introduces a special issue on the scale of belonging, which consists of a series of case studies in Gauteng Province. It considers the possibilities, complexities and limits of this aspect of spatial transformation. It provides two cross-cutting themes running through the articles. The first is that scales of belonging are produced by state practices, the private sector and ordinary users of space. The second is that actors invest in particular scales preferentially, either for their immediate benefit or for the benefit of society as a whole. Keywords Apartheid city • Urban spatial transformation • South Africa • InclusionOn 28 June 1991, the South African parliament repealed the Group Areas Act, along with other 'racially based land measures' (Fig. 1). For much of the twentieth century, white minority governments insisted that individuals living in South Africa were not a single people but belonged to different ethnically and racially defined nations, and allocated each their own national territories. As a result, the state maintained that most people who lived in urban areas did not truly belong to them, and

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Richard completed an honours degree in Geography at the University of Natal (1994) and a PhD at the University of Wales-Swansea (2012). He worked as a researcher at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on contract from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2014, he held an academic position in the School of Development Studies, initially on Senior Lecturer level and then at Associate Professor level. He joined the Gauteng City-Region Observatory in 2015 as a Principal Researcher. He has published on the dynamics of race and urban desegregation, gated communities, social movements, participatory processes, local democracy, cross-border migrants, urban developers, megaprojects in the human settlement sector, the middle class and development, cash transfers, governance and development, and industrial restructuring.

Richard completed an honours degree in Geography at the University of Natal (1994) and a PhD at the University of Wales-Swansea (2012). He worked as a researcher at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on contract from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2014, he held an academic position in the School of Development Studies, initially on Senior Lecturer level and then at Associate Professor level. He joined the Gauteng City-Region Observatory in 2015 as a Principal Researcher. He has published on the dynamics of race and urban desegregation, gated communities, social movements, participatory processes, local democracy, cross-border migrants, urban developers, megaprojects in the human settlement sector, the middle class and development, cash transfers, governance and development, and industrial restructuring.

Richard completed an honours degree in Geography at the University of Natal (1994) and a PhD at the University of Wales-Swansea (2012). He worked as a researcher at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on contract from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2014, he held an academic position in the School of Development Studies, initially on Senior Lecturer level and then at Associate Professor level. He joined the Gauteng City-Region Observatory in 2015 as a Principal Researcher. He has published on the dynamics of race and urban desegregation, gated communities, social movements, participatory processes, local democracy, cross-border migrants, urban developers, megaprojects in the human settlement sector, the middle class and development, cash transfers, governance and development, and industrial restructuring.