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Since 2000, South Africa has redefined the metropolitan areas of its cities. This represents an innovative experiment in creating city administrations which are required to facilitate better urban integration and encourage greater redistribution of economic resources. The policy certainly meets a number of local and global objectives. This article seeks to analyse the causes and the consequences, in the context of social identity, of this policy in the East Rand, a complex urban region to the east of Johannesburg. It argues that the establishment of a metropolitan authority in the East Rand is the result of both the failure of municipal integration policies, due to obstruction at the neighbourhoods scale, and the convergence of local and national political and economic interests.