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Capturing the dynamics of population change in urban areas necessitates access to geographically fine‐grained and temporally consistent data for several time points. Such data are generally not available and they must be created using standard population data which cannot usually be compared across time periods. In this paper, the focus is on changing spatial inequalities in Cape Town, South Africa. This paper details an approach to generation of gridded population counts (250 m by 250 m) for two census years – 2001 and 2011. Census data for Small Area Layers (SALs), Spot Building Count (SBC) data, and Open Street Map (OSM) landuse data were used to construct a grid of populated cells to which population counts are then reallocated. The reallocation of population counts from SALs to grid cells was undertaken using area‐to‐point kriging – an approach which is informed by the spatial variation in the population groups of interest as measured using the variogram. A case study based on population grids of unemployment rates shows how the grids can be used to chart changes and also to measure spatial inequalities across the city at two time points. The advantages of grids for capturing fine‐scale complexities and correctly accounting for physical separation between communities are demonstrated and the results show, while the broad patterns of inequality are consistent across time, there are pronounced increases in inequalities in some neighbourhoods. These areas – and what leads some areas to fall further behind – should be the subject of attention by policy‐makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international literature links mining booms with social disruption. The rapid economic and population growth that mining brings increases urban crime and social problems. But insufficient attention has been paid to the reverse situation: the social disruption that can accompany the closure of a mine. We compare crime statistics for four categories of small city, known in South Africa as "intermediate city municipalities," from 2009 to 2018. Contrary to the findings of international studies, we find that those where mining was in decline had some of the highest crime rates, particularly in the category of sexual offences, whereas those where mining was growing had the lowest. Our research shows that mine decline and closure can contribute to social disruption. We argue that South African government policy has exacerbated this problem in the context of mine decline and that several dependencies created by mining further contribute to the problem. We challenge the assumption that fast population growth and an increase in the male population are prerequisites for social disruption. Our paper suggests the need for modifications to social disruption theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]