The Greater Gaborone City-Region (GGCR) is an emerging city-region within the South Eastern Planning Region of Botswana. It is still not yet recognised as a city-region for planning and development purposes by non-governmental organizations, private and public sectors. It is for this reason that the publication “Planning And Governing In An Emerging City-Region Context: A Case Study Of The Greater Gaborone City-Region, Botswana” seeks to make a case for its recognition and provides a strategy for its planning and governing.
The city-region is focused on the capital city of Gaborone; hence it is mono-centric in form. Within its periphery are the tribal capitals of Molepolole, Kanye, Mochudi, Ramotswa, Tlokweng and the modern town of Lobatse (see Map 1). All these towns are expected to further grow and develop into important political and economic centres with a great influence on Gaborone. The population of the Greater Gaborone City-Region is forecast to be around 1.3million people by the year 2027.
Like all other city-regions worldwide, the Greater Gaborone City-Region is faced with its own regional challenges and problems. These among others are: shortage of serviced land for residential, industrial and commercial purposes, reliable water supply, equity in the provision and maintenance of physical infrastructure, management of solid waste disposal, provision of housing to accommodate the growing city-region population, traffic congestion, integration of transportation with land use, management of natural resources, etc. It is therefore envisaged that these problems and challenges will worsen or heighten in the face of increasing population growth and urbanization if no attempt at a collective city-region-wide planning and governing approach is made to address them. The focus of the collective city-region-wide planning and governing approach would be to achieve the over-arching goal of governing together to flourish locally in order to be economically competitive globally. The end result of this would be a strategy or vision which would have to be developed by the city-region community as a whole for its common economic, social and ecological destiny with an agreed institutional arrangement and bundle of resources to drive it.
The imperative need for this destiny cannot be overemphasised as city-regions worldwide, have not only become important political centres within the globalised world economy, but have also become important mega sites and arenas for economic competiveness, social and ecological interactions and gigantic urban-technopoles – centres of innovation, creativity, information, knowledge, and technology. How our emerging Greater Gaborone City-Region fits within this situation, is what “Planning And Governing In An Emerging City-Region: A Case Study Of The Greater Gaborone City-Region, Botswana” seeks to portray as already indicated.
This website therefore seeks to:
- (a)Promote the spirit of city-regionalism (thinking and acting regionally) within the Greater Gaborone City-Region.
- (b) Act as an online information resource centre for both local and international audience.
- (c) Promote research by both local and international researchers on various subject matters within the city-region.
- (d)Promote dialogue and understanding of important and common issues/problems/challenges within the city-region.
- (e) Contribute to the marketing of Botswana and indeed the Greater Gaborone City-Region to the global economic village.
Our joint journey to a brighter tomorrow as the Greater Gaborone City-Region Community (individuals, private, public and non-governmental sectors, researchers, etc.) therefore starts right here. Please join us!
