Overview
StreetSignal aggregates public data from government sources and presents it at suburb level. We process raw data files—PDFs, spreadsheets, shapefiles, and GeoJSON—into structured suburb profiles. The site does not rank suburbs, make recommendations, or create composite scores. Each data layer is presented with its source and limitations.
Suburb Boundaries
Source: City of Cape Town Official Planning Suburbs (Open Data Portal)
Count: 744 residential suburbs filtered from 778 total official suburbs
Format: GeoJSON polygons in WGS84 (EPSG:4326) coordinate reference system
Non-residential suburbs (industrial zones, utility areas, nature reserves) are excluded from the site.
Police Station Crime Statistics
Source: SAPS Quarterly Crime Statistics (Q3 2025/2026, October–December 2025)
Coverage: 738 of 744 suburbs (99.2%)
How Suburbs Are Assigned to Stations
Each suburb is assigned to its primary police station based on geographic boundary overlap. SAPS station boundary polygons were used for spatial processing only—the boundary data itself is not redistributed, per requirements under the Spatial Data Infrastructure Act.
Assignment types:
- Single (644 suburbs): The suburb falls entirely within one police station's boundary
- Primary (76 suburbs): One station covers the majority of the suburb's area
- Shared (18 suburbs): Multiple stations serve the suburb with no clear majority
What Is Displayed
The station's actual published quarterly crime figures across 14 categories: murder, attempted murder, sexual assault, rape, common assault, assault GBH, aggravated robbery, common robbery, residential burglary, non-residential burglary, vehicle theft, carjacking, residential robbery, and drug-related crime.
These are station-level totals, not suburb-specific figures. The same station's figures will appear on multiple suburb profiles if that station serves multiple suburbs.
What We Do Not Do
- No per-capita crime rates (population data unreliable at suburb level)
- No composite safety indices or scores
- No colour-coded rankings of crime severity
Every number displayed is a real SAPS-published figure, presented without modification.
Data Approach
All 738 suburbs use station-level data: each suburb is assigned to its primary SAPS precinct based on geographic boundary overlap, and the precinct's full published quarterly figures are displayed. No interpolation, weighting, or estimation is applied — every number shown is exactly what SAPS published for that station.
Caveats
Each suburb profile displays a caveat explaining that crime figures represent the entire policing area, not the specific suburb. For suburbs served by multiple stations, only the primary station's figures are shown with a note about partial coverage.
Census Data
Census 2022
Source: Statistics South Africa Census 2022 (10% sample, weighted population estimates)
Coverage: 438 of 744 suburbs (58.9%)
Method: Subplace names matched to CoCT Official Planning Suburb names via comprehensive alias mapping. Unmatched subplaces aggregated to parent main place suburbs where the main place name maps to a suburb.
Projection: 2025 estimates use 2.242% CAGR derived from Census 2011 (3.74M) and Census 2022 (4.77M) metro totals. Growth is applied uniformly — actual suburb growth rates vary significantly.
Limitation: ~306 suburbs (mostly estates, extensions, and business parks) do not map to any Census subplace or main place. These suburbs show no census data.
Suburbs without census data display an explanatory note rather than placeholder values. Census data availability does not affect other data layers (crime statistics, schools, transport, etc.) which use independent spatial matching.
Census 2011
Source: Statistics South Africa, subplace-level data
Coverage: 4 of 744 suburbs (selected profiles with detailed analysis)
The 2011 Census includes socioeconomic indicators (income, employment status, dwelling type) not available from 2022. This data is now 15 years old and is displayed with a date disclaimer. It should be interpreted as historical context rather than current conditions.
Schools
Source: Department of Basic Education School Masterlist via DataFirst (CC-BY licence)
Coverage: 326 of 744 suburbs (43.8%)
Schools are matched to suburbs using point-in-polygon spatial joins against official suburb boundaries.
Fields displayed: school name, phase (primary/secondary/combined), sector (public/independent), and quintile (1-5 for public schools).
What Are Quintiles?
South African public schools are classified into quintiles (1-5) based on the poverty level of the surrounding community. This is a poverty classification, not a school quality rating. Quintile 1-3 schools are no-fee schools. Independent schools do not have quintile ratings.
Healthcare Facilities
Source: Western Cape Government health facility data
Coverage: 128 of 744 suburbs have nearby facilities listed (17.2%)
Facility types: public clinics, public hospitals, private hospitals. Facilities are matched to suburbs using point-in-polygon spatial joins.
Many suburbs show no facilities because the nearest clinic or hospital is located in an adjacent suburb. This does not mean healthcare is inaccessible—only that no facility falls within the suburb's administrative boundary.
Parks & Green Space
Source: City of Cape Town Open Data Portal
Coverage: 567 of 744 suburbs (76.2%)
Park polygon centroids are matched to suburb boundaries. Fields include park count, play equipment count, and total area in hectares.
Fire Station Proximity
Source: City of Cape Town Open Data Portal
Coverage: 740 of 744 suburbs (99.5%)
Each suburb is assigned its nearest fire station by straight-line distance from the suburb's geographic centroid. Fields displayed: station name, station class, distance in kilometres, and whether the station is located within the suburb.
Minibus Taxi Routes
Source: City of Cape Town Open Data Portal (1,466 route geometries)
Coverage: 145 of 744 suburbs (19.5%)
Routes are matched to suburbs by text-matching origin and destination names against suburb names. Fields displayed: route count, connected suburbs.
Limitation: Text matching has inherent limitations—some route endpoints reference landmarks or transport hubs rather than suburb names, resulting in missed connections.
Household Survey 2024
Source: Community survey data with weighted aggregation
Coverage: 119 of 744 suburbs (16.0%)
Fields include service delivery satisfaction, food security, safety perception, and infrastructure access. Survey responses are aggregated using household weights to produce suburb-level estimates.
Coverage is partial—only suburbs that map to survey sampling areas are included.
Transport
Source: City of Cape Town
Coverage: 744 of 744 suburbs (100%)
Boolean indicators for transport modes: MyCiTi bus, Metrorail, Golden Arrow bus, and minibus taxi presence.
Load Shedding
Source: City of Cape Town / Eskom
Coverage: 744 of 744 suburbs (100%)
Each suburb is assigned to a load shedding block (1-16), which determines outage schedules across all load shedding stages.
Dam Levels
Source: City of Cape Town / Department of Water and Sanitation
Coverage: 744 of 744 suburbs (100%)
Dam levels are a city-wide metric representing total water storage for the metropolitan area. All suburbs display the same figure.
Air Quality (In Development)
Status: Currently in development
Air quality monitoring is planned for a future release. We are working on integrating live data from the South African Air Quality Information System (SAAQIS) monitoring network. This feature will provide real-time AQI readings from the nearest monitoring stations to each suburb.
Urban Support Focus Areas
Source: City of Cape Town Open Data Portal
Coverage: 81 of 744 suburbs (10.9%)
A binary flag indicating suburbs with more than 10% geographic overlap with City of Cape Town designated Urban Support Focus Areas—zones prioritised for infrastructure and services investment.
Libraries
Source: City of Cape Town Open Data Portal
Coverage: 94 of 744 suburbs (12.6%)
Library locations are matched to suburbs using point-in-polygon spatial joins.
Data Freshness
Data is not updated in real time. Each section on suburb profiles displays its source period. When newer data becomes available from source agencies, the site is updated manually.
Typical update frequencies:
- Crime statistics: Quarterly (per SAPS publication schedule)
- Census data: Per census release (approximately every 5-10 years)
- Schools: Annually (DBE masterlist)
- Dam levels: Weekly
- Other layers: As source agencies publish updates
Limitations
All data processing involves interpretation. Key limitations to be aware of:
- Crime statistics are station-level totals, not suburb-specific figures
- Census 2011 data (including income) is 15 years old
- Census 2022 excludes income data entirely
- Healthcare field exists on all suburbs but many have no facilities within their boundaries
- Taxi route matching uses text-based name matching which misses some connections
- Census 2022 population data covers approximately 59% of suburbs (438/744), capturing ~96% of the metro population. The remaining suburbs are mostly small estates, extensions, and business parks that do not exist as Census subplaces.
For official statistics, consult the source documents directly. Links to sources are provided on each suburb profile.
Data Sources & Attribution
For full licensing terms and attribution requirements for each data source, see our Data Sources page.
AI-Assisted Development
This site was built using AI development tools (Claude, GitHub Copilot) with governance constraints applied throughout the development process. Methodology decisions—including approaches that were deliberately rejected—were made with ethical data presentation as a priority. See the About page for more detail.