Spatial mismatch in Cape Town : business location and the impacts on workers

The south east and cape flats regions of Cape Town is home to abundant supplies of cheap and available unskilled labour. With the awareness that Cape Town may be slowly following the developmental path of Johannesburg and many other cities of the world, as decentralization, suburbanization, and the overall processes of economic 'tertiarisation' and urban transformation encompass the entire structure and culture of the city, we wonder about how the cities unskilled workforces are faring. Development has focused on the north of the city while the south east has been bypassed, causing residents to have to travel far out to find jobs and work. There is a clear spatial mismatch between places of work and places of residence for the workers of the South east, and overcoming this disconnection is challenged further by an inefficient and expensive public transport service, upon which they are fully dependent. By way of the interviews with businesses from various industrial areas in Cape Town, this thesis shows that many owners and management do not place much importance on where their workers, in particular unskilled and semi-skilled manual workers live and how they travel. It seems that when choosing a location for their businesses, size, price, and availability may limit owners' options of location choice and interviews reveal that owners may be responding to rather than driving development. Findings reveal that unskilled manual workers typically reside in the south east, while business owners, management and other white collar workers typically live in the northern and southern suburbs, as well as other central areas. Furthermore, transport patterns were evaluated and it is clear that the unskilled workers rely heavily on public transport while higher skilled occupational groups either have their own car, or are part of lift-clubs. The problem of a spatial mismatch is clearly skewed towards workers of the south east who rely on public transport, by intensifying the burdens of commuting times and costs. A further finding is that many businesses resort to highly informal methods of recruitment, such as word-of-mouth and internal referral techniques, revealing the significance of social networks in gaining access to job opportunities. This is especially important for workers trying to find employment in areas outside of the traditional economic nodes as it is expensive to commute to those areas regularly in search of employment. Having access to those businesses through employed family members, neighbours and relatives, is therefore critical.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Sociology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Naidu, Claudia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Crankshaw, Owen

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8955

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/8955