The Reverse Side of the Medal: About the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the Beautification of the N2 in Cape Town

This paper aims to show the reverse side of the (football) medal. The N2 gateway project in Cape Town is presented, by government and media, as a ‘flagship’ project of the new Breaking New Ground strategy, to fight the housing backlog of 400,000 houses in the city. But I want to argue that the fast-tracking of the project has to be understood as a beautification strategy to prepare the city for 2010. Massive slum eradication and the construction of ‘beautiful formal housing opportunities’ between the airport and the mother city are becoming a painful reminder of the forced removals under the apartheid regime.

Indicators of Small Town Tourism Development Potential: The Case of Fouriesburg, South Africa

As small towns experience economic and social restructuring, many are pursuing tourism opportunities as one component of a more diversified local economic strategy. This paper is interested in the small town of Fouriesburg in South Africa's Free State. While the town was once a thriving service center for a surrounding rural agricultural region, this traditional economy has faded. Given that the nearby town of Clarens has developed a substantial tourism economy, we pose the question of whether there already exist indicators that Fouriesburg may be poised for a similar change. These indicators include location within the urban field, timing within the tourist area life cycle model, differentials/opportunities in property values, and the role of real estate agents as “gatekeepers” in directing investments. The findings suggest that, while Fouriesburg has potential for developing a tourism-oriented economy, many of the important policy and planning supports needed to assist with diversification are not yet in place.

Urban Tourism in Bloemfontein: Current Dynamics,Immediate Challenges and Future Prospects

In South Africa, there is a paucity of research focused on urban tourism. The small body of research focused on South Africa’s urban places as tourist destinations is mainly concerned with urban tourism in the country’s metropolitan areas. Secondary cities, such as Bloemfontein, have received scant research attention. In the context of such research neglect, the paper focuses on the urban tourism system of Bloemfontein. Drawing on both survey material and secondary data sources, the investigation provides an outline of the Bloemfontein tourism economy. Particular attention is given to different tourism types and their spatial distribution. Thereafter, an overview of obstacles to various tourism development as experienced by product providers is given and potential support mechanisms detailed. Finally, a tourism development strategy is set out.

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Housing intermediary services in China: the rise and fall of ‘Fang Wu Yin Hang’

Housing reforms in China are often conceived to have engendered a gradual shift towards a market system. New institutions have been introduced to enable decentralized, monetarized and privatized allocation of housing units. This study explores the emergence, growth and downfall of an intermediary service (known as ‘fang wu yin hang’) created spontaneously by real estate agents to facilitate housing transactions in the Chinese cities. Although this new institution looked capable of strengthening the rationality, efficiency, transparency and impersonality of China’s housing market, it was abandoned soon after its inception. The failure of this transient service suggests the presence of some social institutions, which could have blocked China’s progress towards a full-fledged market system in the housing sector.

Consolidating Local Economic Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Since the release in 2006 of a national coordinated framework, a new policy maturity has emerged in South Africa around the planning of local economic development (LED). In this article, key issues are explored for the consolidation of LED as an important aspect of development planning in postapartheid South Africa. Five significant themes are identified as central to the consolidation of LED, namely, the linkages of LED within wider spatial planning frameworks, learning good practices for LED especially in terms of cluster development, data issues and the identification of competitive advantage, the appropriate role of LED in the context of ‘the urban future’, and capacity challenges facing LED.

Dilemmas of Representation in Post-apartheid Durban

This paper aims to provide a sketch of the ways in which ‘formal’ institutions of democratic representation worked in practice in Durban/eThekwini in the 2000-2004 period. In so doing, it assesses how the representation of eThekwini’s citizens functioned at both the ward and metropolitan levels. After outlining the formation of the new metropolitan political arena, we consider the relationships amongst political parties at Metro and Ward levels, and, in particular, explore some contextually specific forms of democratic practice which emerged through the interaction of proportional representation and ward representation over time. The election of councillors as such does not resolve a series of dilemmas concerning how to institutionalise democratic representation within a racially diverse, spatially divided, and rapidly changing metropolitan area. Electoral-representative aspects of a urban democratisation are not a straightforward ‘formal’ framework alongside which other processes of democratic discussion, mobilisation and contestation can be easily situated.

South Africa’s City Regions: A Call for Contemplation... and Action

The paper explores and explains the phenomena of city growth and city regions in the South African context. It reflects on the process of urbanisation and city region growth in South Africa in an attempt at contributing towards the development of a discourse and analysis that better appreciates city region areas as crucial components of the growth, development and well-being of the nation as a whole, including communities living in rural areas of the country. The paper also raises questions around the increasing challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality, as well as the growing ecological dilemmas that city regions in South Africa are faced by. The paper is based on a study and analysis of quantitative data on urban areas and more specifically ‘city regions’, aptly called the ‘National Spatial Trends Overview (2008)’, for the South African Cities Network, the national Department of Provincial and Local Government and The Presidency. The innovative spatial analysis and data platform used enabled the identification and comparative analyses of a wide range of settlements based on their functional urban areas. It is argued that regardless of where on the contentious scale city regions are viewed as positive or negative, they are important for the country as a whole. Taking cognisance of benefits as well as costs of city region areas, the paper concludes that an appreciation for city region planning dynamics will be crucial for the achievement of the South African Government’s national developmental goals and objectives.

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Deadlocks and breakthroughs in urban renewal: a network analysis in Amsterdam

Urban renewal in the Netherlands has become a matter of ‘networking’. Housing associations, Dutch social landlords, became financially independent in the 1990s and have a responsibility in urban renewal. It is a joint responsibility in which local authority, social landlord and tenants are dependent on each other. This situation is rather new and needs some getting used to, as the two case studies show. The paper concludes that taking account of the complexity of networks could improve the chances of gaining support for problem definitions and solutions. This would result in agreement about goals and win–win package deals for actors, and ultimately in ‘more’ progress in urban renewal.

Resident Involvement and Participation in Urban Tourism Development: A Comparative Study in Maun and Gaborone,Botswana

This paper reports a comparative study of urban tourism development in two areas, Maun and Gaborone, located in northern and southeastern Botswana. More specifically, the study evaluated residents’ tourism awareness and its importance in their lives; assessed economic benefits and employment derived from tourism; and examined impacts of tourism and development issues as perceived by the residents. Data were collected via household surveys and key informant interviews between June 2003 and April 2004. Findings indicate that both study sites bear some similarities in terms of infrastructural development and rapid population growth. The study also found that only a small proportion of the local population is employed within the tourism sector and that the vast majority of tourism-related enterprises are foreign-owned. Various recommendations are outlined to increase citizen participation in urban tourism development, most notably in cultural heritage tourism.

Innovation and regional absorptive capacity: the labour market dimension

In 2003, Eurostat published an ‘experimental’ dataset on regional innovation levels derived from the Second Community Innovation Survey. This dataset, part of the European Innovation Scoreboard, also contains a range of regional labour market indicators. In this paper, we report an exploratory analysis of this data, focussing on how the labour market characteristics of regions shape regions’ absorptive capacity (RACAP) and their ability to assimilate knowledge from public and externally conducted R&D. In particular, we aim to establish whether labour market aspects of RACAP are more important for innovation in prosperous or lagging regions of the European Union (EU).

Quasi-marketising access to social housing in Britain: assessing the distributional impacts

Since 2000 growing numbers of British social landlords have emulated their Dutch counterparts by introducing a ‘quasi-market’ approach to letting vacant properties. Known in Britain as choice-based lettings (CBL), the new approach aspires to treat people seeking social housing as consumers and to encourage consumerist behaviour. This is consistent with a wider drive for UK welfare state reforms emphasizing ‘customer choice’. As in other policy areas (e.g., education and health) the widening of service-user choice in this area has given rise to concerns that a more market-like system could be to the detriment of already disadvantaged groups. In the CBL case, particular concerns have been expressed about the possible consequences for formerly homeless households. It has also been suggested that, in shifting responsibility for decisions on matching properties and people from landlords to house-seekers themselves, CBL might exacerbate ethnic segregation. Drawing on a government-commissioned study focusing on early CBL schemes in England and Scotland, this paper examines these hypotheses in the light of empirical evidence. The analysis finds no indication that formerly homeless households tend to be disadvantaged under CBL in terms of area popularity or property quality. And, in general, the system appears to produce a more spatially dispersed—rather than a more concentrated—pattern of lettings to ethnic minority households.

Examining the location factors of R&D labor in the regions of Greece

In this paper two models are developed in an attempt to elucidate the factors that influence the regional distribution of R&D labor across the regions of Greece. The first one is based on an adaptation of the [Guerrero and Seró (1997) Regional Studies 31:381–390] model to the Greek context treating the regional distribution of R&D labor as a function of the extent of agglomeration and the prevailing economic conditions. The second model extends the first one by taking into account two additional factors, viz. the production structure and infrastructure. The econometric results indicate the superior performance of the extended model in the context of Greece as well as attribute the location of R&D labor mainly on the diversification of industrial activity and the number of establishments in innovation-intensive sectors. It is therefore suggested that the stimulation of the regional production structure and infrastructure is essential for ‘knowledge-lagging’ regions.

Inter-generational Occupational Mobility Amongst Blacks in the Mitchell’s Plain Magisterial District, Cape Town: Evidence from the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey

This study examines inter-generational occupational class mobility amongst blacks (Africans and coloureds) in the Mitchell’s Plain Magisterial District in Cape Town, South Africa. The results of the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey conducted in 2000 serve as the main source of data. We show that middle-class occupational origins do not necessarily guarantee the transmission of advantage from one generation to the next. The findings revealed that there is a churning effect at work with respondents experiencing upward occupational class mobility due to the changing occupational structure, which at the same time is counteracted by considerable downward occupational class mobility. This result is partly due to (1) the particular class structure of the Mitchell’s Plain Magisterial District, which excludes many middle-class black areas and therefore has a more working-class character and (2) the precarious character of the black middle class, which is concentrated in low-paid nursing and teaching occupations.

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Public Policy and Small Towns in Arid South Africa: The Case of Philippolis

Internationally and in South Africa, small towns have been subjected to several external factors leading to their decline, with decentralisation processes placing increased pressure on them to develop locally based responses to these external realities. However, very little academic research has been conducted on the impact of national and sub-national public policies on small towns. Instead, the emphasis has tended to fall on policy frameworks and formulas which can be applied in blanket fashion across different settlement types. South African developmental policies have made no provision for coherent socio-economic developmental support strategies aimed at the more than 500 small towns and the numerous struggling local governance structures, which are virtually all fighting for long-term sustainability. This research is based on a review focusing on selected social, economic and governance policies. The aim is to investigate both the influence of some of these policies and the impact of their implementation in the context of the small town of Philippolis. It will be argued that these policies have not benefited Philippolis and/or that they have been applied inappropriately within this small town. Finally, a number of general recommendations will be made, along with certain policy-related considerations.

Beyond the Metropolis: Small Town Case Studies of Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture in South Africa

It is widely accepted that urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is an important livelihood or coping strategy amongst the poorest urban households for food security and income generation in developing countries. In South Africa, UPA has been promoted in the post-apartheid era as a strategy for poverty alleviation in several key policy documents. However, despite high unemployment, some academics have raised the issue that UPA might be less robust amongst South Africa’s urban poor households, when compared to other developing countries. This paper presents results from case studies exploring the nature and geographical extent of UPA in one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, the Eastern Cape. Key results include that the social welfare scheme has, effectively, emerged as the primary contributor to household income and food security. Consequently, UPA does not play a major role in food security for most UPA households. This paper will discuss these results and reflect on the bearing of UPA as a tool for poverty alleviation in South Africa.

Testing the credit view with pooled data: dynamic links among state bank health, investment-oriented bank loans, and economic performance

This paper focuses on the “credit view” theory at the state level, which suggests that state-level banking sector health influences state-level real economic performance. Specifically, we extend typical analysis of the credit view theory, applying relevant state-level economic variables to consider whether the health of a state’s banking system affects capital investment loans and, in turn, whether growth of these loans affects a state’s economic performance. We develop a two-equation state-level model, use more refined measures of capital investment loans, and apply advanced dynamic pooled estimators to our panel of state data for the 1984–1993 period. Regression results support dynamic links among state bank health, state investment-oriented bank loans, and state economic performance, thus supporting existence of a state-level credit channel effect.

Creating an African Riviera: Revisiting the Impact of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront Development in Cape Town

The use of leisure and tourism to re-image and redevelop cities has been interpreted as a mechanism for attracting capital and people. In a period of intense inter-place competition and urban entrepreneurialism, whole built environments become centerpieces of urban spectacle and display. Waterfront developments have become emblematic in this regard. Over the past two decades the redevelopment of the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (V&AW) in Cape Town has been transformed from ‘port’ to ‘playground’ and is internationally acknowledged as one of the most successful of these developments. This redevelopment has, as has been the case with numerous other waterfront developments, not been uncontroversial. New tensions and conflicts have arisen over the use, meaning, and ownership of this space. The acquisition of the waterfront by a consortium of London- and Dubai-based property developers in 2006 has renewed concerns about the ‘plasticization’ of the waterfront and signals the symbolic start of a new phase in this waterfront’s development trajectory. The paper tracks the development of the V&AW since its inception in the late 1980s and argues that general critiques of waterfront developments sit uneasily in the Cape Town context. It is also suggested that these developments can fulfil a very significant and positive role for developing world cities.     

Spatially varying development mechanisms in the Greater Beijing Area: a geographically weighted regression investigation

This study aims to extend the understanding of regional development mechanisms in China. This study investigates spatial non-stationarity in China’s regional development mechanisms by applying geographically weighted techniques on spatial datasets in the Greater Beijing Area, China. The analyses reveal two results: first, regional development mechanisms in the Greater Beijing Area show significant spatial non-stationarity; and second, development mechanisms have strong local characteristics; this study hence complements the current literature in China’s regional development studies. The study demonstrates the importance of local spatial modeling techniques in regional development research.

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Environment,Sustainable Resource Use and the Cape Town Functional Region – An Overview

Like similar urbanised regions in the world, key ecological thresholds in the greater Cape Town area are being breached by the prevailing approach to growth and development, resulting in dysfunctional costs for the local economy. This condition of rising costs caused by a new set of material, ecologically driven variables creates the context for rethinking what growth and development means. This paper provides a synthesis of critical ecological flows and resources in the Cape Town region, drawing on the most current available data on energy, water, waste, transport, land, biodiversity and climate change. Rooted in emerging disciplines of ecological economics and the new institutional economics, it argues that investments in growth and poverty eradication will be undermined unless we recognise environmental resources and ecosystem services as binding constraints and move rapidly towards a sustainable resource use economy. The paper suggests some bold system changes and initiatives to position the Cape Town region as a global leader in the new sustainability revolution.