ABSTRACT
This chapter compares different services and forms of infrastructure in Cairo and Johannesburg as a way of examining the spatiality of urban inequality in African cities. The study asks what are the primary factors contributing to inequality, how spatial configurations and inequality correlate, and what is the connection between informality and inequality. It argues that there is a recursive relationship between service provision and inequality: that lack of public services is not only a manifestation or measure of inequality, but also a producer of social inequality, embedding and entrenching inequality within cities through a set of provision practices. While the study reveals the continued prevalence in both cities of decidedly spatial inequality, a key finding was that the scale at which one maps location and access to infrastructure is extremely important in terms of revealing the private or public nature of those services as well as their quality. These findings underscore the importance of taking intra-urban inequality into account when monitoring and reporting on urban development policy agendas, and the necessity of using city-level and localized data and indicators that can better indicate where interventions are most needed to combat the multigenerational and long-term impacts of service deficits.
