Shale Gas Development in the Central Karoo – Impacts on Social Fabric 

The term “social fabric” embraces numerous complex and interrelated phenomena, including demographic and economic factors, behavioural issues (e.g. investment choices, political dynamics), social institutions (e.g. families), social organisations (e.g. municipalities and churches), and social networks, or relationships amongst people. The social fabric is underpinned by people’s beliefs and sentiments, including a sense of belonging and…

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Shale Gas Development in the Central Karoo – Impacts on the Economy

Shale gas development (SGD) has the potential to yield highly significant economic opportunities, but also bears risks engendered by the extractive nature of SGD. In both respects it parallels other divisions of the mining sector. Previous South African research into the macro-economic opportunities associated with SGD reveals little agreement on likely benefits, their extent, or…

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A multi-dimensional analysis of local economic development in Graaff-Reinet

Doreen Atkinson and Mark Ingle  “A multi-dimensional analysis of local economic development in Graaff-Reinet, Eastern Cape”, Journal for New Generation Sciences, vol. 8 no. 1, 11-28.   Abstract This article presents the results of a business survey conducted in the Great Karoo town of Graaff-Reinet. The survey solicited the views of business owners on a range of…

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Changes in small towns in South Africa’s Karoo

Etienne Nel, B Taylor, T Hill, D Atkinson “Changes in small towns in South Africa’s Karoo: Looking from the inside out”. Urban Forum, published online, 17 August 2011.   Abstract This article seeks to situate the experience of demographic and economic change in South African small towns within a broader context. Drawing on international literature detailing…

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Proportionality in enterprise development of South Afrian towns

Toerien DF and Seaman MT  Proportionality in enterprise development of South Afrian towns. SA Journal of Science 108: 1-10.(2012)   Abstract Two concepts, (1) companies are ‘living’ entities and (2) ‘company ecology’, stimulated our hypothesis that towns are ‘enterprise ecosystems’. This hypothesis cannot be tested directly. However, if it is correct, application of clustering and…

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Enterprise richness as an important characteristic of SA towns

Toerien, DF (2014), Enterprise richness as an important characteristic of South African towns, South African Journal of Science, November/December.   Abstract Towards the end of the 20th century there were almost 500 small towns of fewer than 50 000 persons in South Africa, accommodating about one tenth of the country’s population. Little was known or…

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Regional order in the enterprise structures of selected Eastern Cape Karoo towns

Toerien, DF and MT Seaman, MT (2012), Regional order in the enterprise structures of selected Eastern Cape Karoo towns, South African Geographical Journal, vol. 94, no. 2. (2012)   Abstract Proportionality phenomena have earlier been observed in the enterprise structures of South African towns. A question remained whether small towns also exhibit such hidden order.…

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Proportionality in enterprise development of SA Towns

Toerien, DF and Seaman, MT (2012), Proportionality in enterprise development of South African towns, South African Journal of Science, May/June.   Abstract We investigated proportionalities in the enterprise structures of 125 South African towns through examining four hypotheses, (1) the magnitude of enterprise development in a town is a function of the population size of…

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