IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/deveza/v26y2009i2p271-288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic decline and gentrification in a small town: the business sector in Aberdeen, Eastern Cape

Author

Listed:
  • Doreen Atkinson

Abstract

Small towns are a neglected topic of study but they are gaining importance in South Africa because of rapid urbanisation. This paper discusses a case study of business development and gentrification in Aberdeen, a small town in the Eastern Cape's Karoo. Although there has been a long-term decline in Aberdeen's economy, major changes are now taking place that call for more focused development policies. The findings of a 2006 business survey in Aberdeen are presented here and integrated with findings from the international literature on small town development. The paper shows that endogenous development of a small town's economy by its business sector can lead to some local economic growth; however, it needs to be assisted by judicious government investment. Aberdeen's economy will need a stronger level of municipal guidance to exploit its strengths and overcome its limitations.

Suggested Citation

  • Doreen Atkinson, 2009. "Economic decline and gentrification in a small town: the business sector in Aberdeen, Eastern Cape," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 271-288.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:26:y:2009:i:2:p:271-288
    DOI: 10.1080/03768350902899595
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768350902899595
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03768350902899595?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gijsbert Hoogendoorn & Gustav Visser, 2016. "South Africa’s small towns: A review on recent research," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 31(1-2), pages 95-108, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:26:y:2009:i:2:p:271-288. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CDSA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.