Urban growth and land use change models, supported by Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
software and increased digital data availability, have the potential to become important tools for
monitoring and guiding urban spatial planning and development. Five broad categories of urban
models are utilised internationally, that is, land use transportation models, cellular automata,
system dynamics, agent-based models and spatial economics/econometric models. This paper
provides a broad overview of South African modelling projects that monitor or simulate urban
spatial change. The review identified a variety of government and academic urban modelling
initiatives. These initiatives mostly track trends, rather than simulating future scenarios, and
analyse historical land cover change using GIS and remote sensing software. There is a risk within
Gauteng, however, that out-dated data, different population projections, duplicated tools, limited
spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and a lack of resources; could compromise urban spatial change
modelling efforts within government institutions. As such, the paper discusses key challenges and
opportunities for modelling urban spatial change, with specific reference to the Gauteng CityRegion
– the heartland of the South African economy and the Southern African region.