Sprawl Politics: Comparing the City Regions of Paris (France) and Gauteng (South Africa)

Abstract What are the politics of ‘sprawl’? We pose this question in two complex city-regions of similar population and scale: one in the south of the world, centred on Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa (called Gauteng city-region); and one in the north, centred on Paris, France (variously defined as ‘Paris region’, Île-de-France, Grand Paris, etc). Both cases have experienced redesign of the metropolitan or city-region governance in the recent past; in both, there are constituencies arguing against sprawl but continuing practices that produce sprawl. Both city-regions are subjects of continuing research. Whilst two examples cannot exhaust the complex issues in the field, some light may be shed by bringing cases from the south and north into intersection. The underlying conceptual or theoretical questions include: meanings of ‘sprawl’ in diverse contexts; significance of fragmented city-region government; and differences and similarities in urban processes between southern and northern cities.