The City of Cape Town owns the most vacant and underutilised public land in the municipality at 67,558,651m² - this is the same size as roughly 9,500 soccer fields!

The Western Cape Provincial Government and national government each own roughly 20,000,000m² of vacant and underutilised public land in Cape Town - this is the same size as roughly 1300 Grand Parades!

Combined, all spheres of government own at least 128,723,055m² of vacant or underutilised land in Cape Town - this is roughly the same size as the entire country of Lichtenstein!

On average, land parcels owned by the national government are much larger than those owned by the City of Cape Town or Western Cape Provincial Government.

Interestingly, sites owned by State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and multiple spheres of government are even bigger than those owned by the national government. The average size of land parcels owned by SOEs is 141,297m² and the average size of land parcels owned by multiple spheres of government is 212,027m². This land belongs to the public and should be used to benefit all of us!

Of the 5 largest land parcels included in the map, one is owned by the Province, one is owned by the City, one is owned by national government, one is owned by Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), and one is co-owned by the Province and national government.

There are at least 2787 parcels of vacant and underutilised public land that we could find

The City owns 1945 parcels of vacant and underutilised land, the Province owns 522, national government owns 215, SOEs own 58 and 37 parcels are owned by multiple spheres.

The government severely underestimates the value of land that it owns. More than 300 parcels of public land are formally recorded as having a value of R0, while more than 1,000 parcels of public land are valued at R1,000. Even then, the total value of public land recorded in this map is just under R35 billion! This is the same amount as the annual housing budget for the whole of South Africa!