A Review of Literature on Transformation Processes in South African Townships Ulrich Jürgens & Ronnie Donaldson # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Abstract The paper provides a literature review of research published on South Africa’ s black townships in order to answer certain questions: how have the townships changed? In what directions are they changing? Which groups in the townships benefit from these changes? Which groups of actors who push for change in the townships can be identified? To what extent are these residential areas becoming multifunctional, shifting from their role as dormitory settlements to providing their residents with a higher quality of life than in the past? What new social and ethnic antagonisms arise in turn? The paper reviews township literature in four periods: up to the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s and 2000s (the bulk of the review is however on the last 20 years). Keywords Urban transformation . South African black townships . Urban reconstruction . Research agenda Introduction Nearly 20 years after the end of apartheid, the mosaic of ethnic and social space in South Africa between ‘black and white’ and ‘rich and poor ’ appears to have taken on a new form. Many variations in this transition from apartheid to post-apartheid cities can be observed: from almost European-looking to a very African cityscape, from urban centres with merely a local or national resonance to those of global signifi- cance. New forms of living together by people previously forced to segregate by law Urban Forum DOI 10.1007/s12132-012-9149-x U. Jürgens Department of Geography, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany e-mail: ngg02@rz.uni-kiel.de R. Donaldson (*) Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa e-mail: rdonaldson@sun.ac.za