The Suitability of the Proposed New Coastal ‘Smart City’ Between Port Saint Johns and Margate on the Wild Coast in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Following the announcement by the President of South Africa in his 2019 and 2020 state of the nation address, he put emphasis on the role that can be played by smart cities in managing the urbanisation challenges faced by South African cities. Subsequently, the Minister of Corporate Governance and Traditional Affairs, Dr Dlamini Zuma, announced that Port Saint Johns was identified as one of the beneficiaries of the Smart City Programme. The smart city project is envisioned by the South African government as a means to address the high rate of unemployment, reverse rural-urban migration in which people move out from the areas to the country's bigger cities, tap into the underdeveloped tourism industry in the Wild Coast, and lastly speak to the issue of apartheid planning that saw the majority of the nation's cities grow along racial lines. The government has not identified the exact location where the 'smart city’ will be located. The aim of the research was to conduct a suitability study of the proposed smart city by establishing the socio-economic profile of the area, suitability mapping of the current land uses, land cover, road network, geology settlement pattern and environmentally sensitive areas. The study employed the GIS multicriteria evaluation approach to finding a suitable location for the proposed smart city (if any exists).