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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Metropolitan dominance, export promotion and the future role of the coastal metropolitan areas
Authors:Van der Berg, S.ISNI
Lötter, J.C.ISNI
Year:1990
Periodical:South African Journal of Economics
Volume:58
Issue:2
Pages:187-199
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subject:industrial location
External link:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1813-6982.1990.tb00931.x
Abstract:South Africa's industrial policy has long been characterized by import substitution behind tariff barriers, and it's regional economic policy by industrial decentralization to homeland and border areas. Explicit regional policy largely centres around the position of the homelands in relation to the metropolitan regions, particularly the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal Triangle (PWV) region. The view put forward in this paper is that export-led rather than import-substituting industrial development would favour industrial decentralization, not to the homelands, but to the stagnating coastal metropoles, which are small in terms of population, economic activity and manufacturing activity. The relative stagnation of the coastal regions, here taken to be the Cape Peninsula, Port Elizabeth/Uitenhage, East London/Border region and Durban/Pinetown, can be explained by advancing either a structural hypothesis, which supposes that slow growth is the result of the unfavourable economic structure of a region, particularly dependence on industries declining in national importance, or a locational hypothesis, which supposes that stagnating industrial regions suffer from endemic disadvantages such as distance from markets. To overcome structural and locational deficiencies in coastal metropoles, an outward-looking industrial policy, based on export-led economic growth, has to be adopted. Bibliogr., note, ref.
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