ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Land Use Dynamics
LULCC ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT AND INEQUALITY PARADOX IN ARID GEOGRAPHIES: A CRITICAL GIS APPROACH TO HIGHER EDUCATION CURRICULA
Dr Tolulope Ayodeji OLATOYE
Raymond Nkwenti FRU
Sol Plaatje University, Kimberley, South Africa
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
This study investigates Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) in the Northern Cape, South Africa, which coincides with severe environmental degradation paradox, revealing how infrastructural 'development' constructs a resource mirage that spatially engineers environmental collapse and entrenches social inequality, necessitating the very critical scholarly interrogation this study provides. If left unchecked, this engineered spatial inequality will culminate in the Northern Cape's ecological bankruptcy, rendering its landscapes uninhabitable. The study employed a Critical GIS framework grounded in Spatial Justice Theory, which was informed by a mixed-methods analysis integrating multi-temporal Landsat imagery (2004-2024) and a systematic literature review (SLR) following PRISMA protocols to deconstruct the political ecology of development in arid geographies. The results reveal a landscape in acute transition: grassland cover collapsed by 74.4% (277,267 km² to 122,857 km²), while built-up areas expanded by 292% (91 km² to 357 km²) between the period under review. This drastic vegetation loss of approximately 100,000km2 between 2014 and 2024 and concentrated urban growth along resource corridors starkly visualize development inequality. Consequently, the study recommends a radical, place-based higher education model that integrates land rehabilitation curricula, partners with municipalities for sustainable town planning for community-led economic diversification.
Summary
Keywords
Arid Geographies, development inequality, environmental degradation, Geographic information systems (GIS), Geospatial technologies, Land use land cover change (LULCC), Spatial justice, Sustainable planning
Received
24 December 2025
Accepted
20 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 OLATOYE and FRU. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Dr Tolulope Ayodeji OLATOYE
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.