No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The argument in this dissertation is that housing studies focus mainly on the politicaleconomy paradigms and ignore the role played by other social theories. On the one hand, conventional economic theory, mainly built on new-Liberal principles, suggests that privatisation is required to ensure that markets work better. In the housing field, privatisation is mainly seen as a way to ensure the initiation of a secondary housing market. On the other hand, Neo-Marxist views argue that privatisation leads to a range of negative impacts, such as eventual homelessness and the unaffordable nature of housing bonds. The main problem with these two political and economic viewpoints is that they are blind to other social theories and ignore, to a large degree, the historical context of housing, especially in South Africa. The debates in this study point out that the pathdependency theory (with historical methodology as a sub-approach) in housing policy discourses provides additional understanding of privatisation, especially in the South African context. In contradiction to general observation, housing processes in South Africa may be locked in their own trajectory, and they may not be similar to those in the parent colonial power such as Britain. This study identifies a policy and research gap in privatisation. It is the first attempt to assess the privatisation of housing in South Africa through empirical evidence since the introduction of the Discount Benefit Scheme two decades ago. The international literature shows that there has been an effort in both developed and developing countries to privatise rental housing stock. This move is related to the overwhelming pro-market policy developments after the Second World War. Neo-Liberal and Neo-Marxist thinkers put forward various opinions for and against the process. With South Africa having had strong economic and political ties with Britain during apartheid, the South African government also privatised the nearly 500 000 state-owned housing units. Researchers in South Africa also made postulations that were either Neo-Liberal or Neo-Marxist in assessing the future possible impact of housing privatisation, this despite the work of Turner and Tipple on the social context of housing. The dissertation tests the original argument of the political-economy continuum by interrogating the empirical evidence obtained from the suburb of Rocklands, Bloemfontein. In this environment, tenants improve the state-subsidised core houses through what Tipple terms âtransformationsâ, which are more a response to social needs than to economic imperatives. The empirical analysis looks at the outcomes of housing privatisation relating to the physical effects on housing after transformations, the processes involved in transformations that accentuate self-dependence and resourcefulness and the capacity of tenants to borrow from the market and trade their improved assets in the market. The main findings from the empirical evidence support a key theoretical assumption that housing debates should look beyond the binary political-economic debate. The findings in the study refute the political-economic assumptions forwarded in the Neo-Liberal and Neo-Marxist theories. However, the findings in the study support Tippleâs contentions on the critical role of the social and historical context of housing. To this effect, the main findings in the study are similar to Tippleâs contentions, namely that privatisation leads to transformations that combat housing stress, that transformations produce economic multipliers in the locality, that transformations occur outside the basis of secure tenure and that income is not the most important variable in housing extensions. The study goes further and suggests the historical context of housing, whereby privatisation is a way of ensuring a foothold in urban South Africa. Such a foothold in urban South Africa is important considering the historical exclusion of black people from urban South Africa. The social context of black housing in South Africa is characterised by a long quest for urban citizenship and housing rights. These characteristics give rise to a distinct housing environment not observable in the developed countries.

This thesis is the first study in South Africa to explore the concept of logistics cities in peripheral areas with in the context of local economic development. Although the term logistics city is used freely to denote cities in which logistics forms an important part of their economic base â as is the case in Dubai, Shangai and Zaragoza â the body of academic literature on the topic is extremely limited. The logistics city concept was formulated in Australia as an academic concept from approximately 2006 onwards. In South Africa, there is seemingly a tendency among decision makers to regard the mere existence of an airport, especially its potential transformation into an air-freight hub, as a possible local economic development initiative. The aim of this study was to evaluate Upington (as a peripheral area within the South African economy) and its ability to utilise the Upington International Airport as a local economic development initiative, specifically from the perspective of a logistics city. The study analysed the latest theoretical developments in location theory, specifically the new economic geography (NEG) and cluster theory as a basis of the logistics city. The NEG, which was developed in the 1990s in response to the changes brought about by globalisation and the strides made in technology, argues that â theoretically at least â peripheral regions could grow through the development of logistic clusters at the location of an airport. In addition, given the current capacity problems at OR Tambo International Airport, the NEG should pave the way for the development of a logistics facility at the UIA, the more so from the perspective of the logistics city concept. The study confirmed that, in spite of the theoretical opportunities presented by the NEG, the logistics city concept and the incorporation of an air-freight hub in provincial policy and strategy documents, air-freight hub development is still fundamentally dependent on market conditions and that the existence of well-developed airport infrastructure alone is not sufficient reason for transforming a regional airport in a peripheral area into a logistics facility. The study further showed that despite the increasing range of local economic development (LED) research in South Africa, academic literature focusing on the relationship between air-freight transport, logistics and LED is virtually non-existent. Moreover, the study showed that LED efforts are seriously hampered by a number of issues, such as the lack of assimilation of the logistics and air-freight industries into local economic development policy and plans, a lack of capacity at the institutional level, the lack of integrated planning between the spheres of government, the LED stakeholders, parastatals, agencies and the private sector and also the lack of clear policies on the developmental role of regional airports in South Africa. The dominance of ACSA, and the companyâs own lack of a strategic focus on regional airports, has also been shown to be problematic. The study further demonstrated efficient logistics to be an important determinant of a countryâs competitiveness and that South Africa may lose competiveness because both of high logistics costs and low logistics performance levels. The study also showed that there is generally a lack of accurate information and data on logistics and air freight in South Africa, particularly at the regional and the local level, which makes effective and integrated planning even more difficult.