The Urban Development Strategy of 1995 identified four principal city size classes:
- large metropolitan areas (over 2 million people),
- large cities (500 000 to 2 million),
- medium sized cities/large towns (100 000–500 000), and
- medium sized towns (50 000–100 000).
Given its urban focus, the strategy did not include any rural typologies. In 1998, the White Paper on Local Government officially extended the previous narrow interpretation of settlement types to rural settlements, including rural villages of varying sizes. Subsequent reports on human settlements have expanded the settlement typology as follows:
- small towns (fewer than 50 000 people);
- displaced urban or dense rural settlements (fewer than 50 000);
- large rural villages (5 000–50 000 people); and
- small rural villages and scattered settlements (fewer than 5 000).
The map shows the settlement hierarchy for the country.
To understand South African settlement typology, geographic location and distribution also need to be considered. Settlements are defined by their relative location within and adjacent to urban cores, as well as in terms of their economic divisions, whether they are in the core of cities, or on the fringe or periphery, or at some distance from them. In addition to their spatial location, settlements can also be differentiated as planned and unplanned, formal and informal, and comprising a range of housing types.
A planned settlement is one that has taken place within a legal land-tenure framework, and is characterized by the planned provision of services and infrastructure. Under apartheid, planned townships were constructed on the fringes of towns and cities. The services were often basic, but frequently superior to those found in the informald residential areas that have subsequently grown within and around them.
Unplanned settlements evolved as people settled in areas that were closer to employment opportunities. They have occurred in various locations, these being within planned townships, on open land within an urban area, or in peri-urban areas. Peri-urban squatter settlements typically develop on farms or smallholdings situated on the outskirts of cities and towns. These mainly unplanned settlements consist of a range of housing, such as backyard shacks and free-standing structures, normally without services. Some are illegal, while others are on communal land, or on land on which tenure has been secured following settlement.
Planned informal settlements have evolved through site-and-service schemes, where the identification and preparation of land before settlement takes place and includes the provision of basic infrastructural services. There has been wide in situ upgrading of existing informal settlements, which involves the provision of secure tenure and the service infrastructure required to promote the health and safety of people living and working there.