The spatial and social logic of the Minibus Taxi network: how access may support social inclusion in Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT

With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations in 2015, aspirations towards creating more inclusive and sustainable cities became global standards of urban development. This presents an almighty challenge for policymakers and urban planners, particularly in the rapidly developing cities of the global South, which have historically been known to possess higher levels of segregation and inequality. This article focuses on an analysis of patterns of accessibility, created through different systems of transport, in relation to potential opportunities they may provide for interaction between different social and racial urban population groups, using Cape Town in South Africa, as the primary case study. It examines the relationship between specific social and spatial variables and the geographic positioning of stops and stations of the public Railway, MyCiti Bus Rapid Transit systems and the paratransit, privately-owned Minibus Taxi system. A relational approach was required in order to address both the physical and social aspects of this paper, thus drawing on the discursive and analytical techniques offered by space syntax. The Minibus Taxi system, born out of the informal sector in South Africa, has widely been stigmatised as “chaotic” and “haphazard”, however the empirical evidence shown by this analysis of accessibility, suggests that it possesses an inner spatial and social logic.