Segregation research about South African cities prompts us to reflect on the achievements and limits of spatial transformation (Hamann, 2024). Maps and segregation indices illustrate the remarkable transformations in inner cities and in former whites-only suburbs, and they also show how townships remain racially homogenous (Hamann and Ballard 2017). Interpretations of such patterns assume that racial integration increases with the income level of a residential area (Ballard, Hamann, and Mkhize, 2021). Since it has been more than three decades since racial segregation was a requirement of law, enduring racial patterns are largely the result of affordability. In Gauteng, the pace of desegregation of former whites-only suburbs is closely linked to their class-based nature, where access now depends on income more than anything else (Crankshaw, 2022). Affluent suburbs are 'desegregated' because higher higher income job categories have deracialised, while townships are segregated because most low-income earners are black/African.