Just to the east of Johannesburg, South Africa, the City of Ekurhuleni is positioning itself to become Africa’s first ‘aerotropolis’ – a self-contained commercial and residential district built around its hub airport of OR Tambo International.

Since 1994, South Africa has been the main engine of economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and with Johannesburg the centre for exports, mining and a key region for the country’s manufacturing industry, the district of Ekurhuleni seems the natural choice for the continent’s first airport city.

While size is not always a prerequisite for an airport to be transformed into an aerotropolis, a gateway the size of OR Tambo does provide a crucial advantage over rivals in terms of connectivity and access to both global and local markets.

With more than 18 million passengers passing through OR Tambo each year, the gateway serves the entire African continent and boasts links to major cities throughout the world, thanks to a host of routes operated by legacy carriers.

Additionally, on the domestic front, a number of smaller airlines connect various South African towns and cities via the airport, and more than 18,000 people are currently employed by companies operating both inside and outside the terminal buildings.

Ekurhuleni officially incorporated the ‘aerotropolis concept’ into its Municipal Spatial Development Framework (MSDF) in April 2011 as part of the Ekurhuleni Integrated Development Plan (IDP).

It was during his State of the City Address last year that the city’s executive mayor, Mondli Gungubele, officially announced the airport was to be transformed into an integrated urban, commercial and multi-modal zone.

“If rail, road and sea travel constitute the tried and tested modes of transport of a bygone era, research shows that air travel is the future,” he stated.

“The main virtue of air travel is convenience and accessibility; if you have the infrastructure, you are able to cut the time it takes to ferry goods and services across time zones, on schedule and on time.

“It is in this capacity and by virtue of our being home to what is arguably the busiest airport in Africa, OR Tambo International Airport, that Ekurhuleni is by and large a city poised for bigger things in the future, and the obvious envy of many cities on the continent and internationally.”

While the blueprints for the Ekurhuleni aerotropolis are yet to be announced by city officials, it is expected that it will be built around the city’s traditional economic strengths, of time-sensitive manufacturing, e-commerce, telecommunications (hence its title of ‘Digital City’) and logistics.

By offering a wide selection of road, rail and air links, Ekurhuleni could become an attractive home for company headquarters allowing staff convenient access to the airport’s global route network.

Under existing plans drawn up by operator Airports Company South Africa, industrial buildings and warehouses, hotels, retail outlets, entertainment complexes, and offices and high density residential areas will be developed in clusters around the airport’s central terminal in a project dubbed ‘Aerotropolis East’. 

While still at an early stage, the Ekurhuleni aerotropolis planning process has also identified the need for new land-based transport strategies and interventions.

These include the rapid implementation of the Ekurhuleni Integrated Rapid Public Transport Network (IRPTN), as well as a new OR Tambo Public Transport Network and the construction of key national and provincial routes.

For example, there is talk of extending the large-scale rapid transit Gautrain railway system which links Johannesburg, Pretoria and OR Tambo to include the aerotropolis development. 

But what drivers of economic growth exist in and around Ekurhuleni that will ensure that its transformation into an aerotropolis is crowned with success?

Other than the key fact that the municipality is home to OR Tambo, one example is that just five minutes from the gateway sits the Albertina Sisulu Corridor.

Straddling the R21 freeway, which runs through Ekurhuleni, the corridor links Johannesburg, OR Tambo International Airport and the city of Pretoria.

This corridor offers myriad investment and development opportunities in a wide range of sectors, including telecommunications and business outsourcing, import and export, manufacturing and processing, transport-related services, office and retail space, as well as agriculture, eco-tourism and conservation, which could be leveraged by the airport.

Often referred to as Africa’s workshop, Ekurhuleni also has the country’s largest concentration of industry for the production of goods and commodities. In fact, manufacturing in Ekurhuleni accounts for 28% of its total production output, and just below 20% of the GDP of Gauteng. 

The region also boasts a network of roads, airports, railway lines, electricity grids and telecommunications, which rivals that of many cities in developed Europe and North America.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s largest railway hub – Germiston – links Ekurhuleni to all the major population centres and ports in Southern Africa, providing further links which freight companies could find attractive.

Additionally, many of the country’s modern freeways and expressways criss-cross one or other parts of Ekurhuleni, connecting it to virtually all provinces and to many of the country’s major cities. 

Elsewhere, the Maputo Corridor development – South Africa’s most advanced spatial development initiative – connects Ekurhuleni with the capital of Mozambique and, in turn, Southern Africa’s largest Indian Ocean port. 

It is also linked directly via rail, road and air to Durban, South Africa’s biggest and busiest port.

Gungubele said: “Our strategic approach to economic growth and development will be realigned to new realities, challenges and opportunities. 

“At its centre, we will announce definite plans for the reorientation of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality into an aerotropolis, which can be defined in two inter-related ways: one, a new urban form placing airports in the centre with cities growing around them, connecting workers, suppliers, executives and goods to the global marketplace. 

“The other defines an aerotropolis in mainly infrastructure terms, thus an aviation-linked urban infrastructure consisting of an airport core, light industrial space, hotel/retail/entertainment complexes and ocean ports, fully integrated across global supply chain networks. 

“In both cases, we are certain that our business community is bound to locate a role for itself in the Ekurhuleni of the future, which we are hard at work busy constructing.”

For the next five years the City of Ekurhuleni plans to optimise on its main airport, together with other key development nodes, including the identified industrial development zones under the development of the Aerotropolis Strategy, to reduce poverty and boost the economy following the global economic downturn.

“This will entail investment on new economic infrastructure to support logistics, distributions and related green industries. This will be coupled by the optimisation of the broadband ICT infrastructure to realise the vision of the Digital City and to reposition the metro as a visionary smart city that is globally competitive,” explained Gungubele.

The City of Ekurhuleni has only just started on its journey to becoming an aerotropolis, but has already made a successful bid to host the Airport Cities Conference and Exhibition (ACE) in 2013.

Although it could take decades for the full aerotropolis to evolve following this model, one thing is certain: Ekurhuleni will have much to demonstrate when it hosts this event next year.