South Africa, 1870‐1970: A View of The Spatial System

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Abstract
Analysis of population potential over time aids understanding of the evolution of the South African space economy as an interacting system. The maps display two of the three interrelated components in the spatial organization of an economy recognized by Berry, viz., a national pattern of heartland and hinterland, and gradients of urban influence on surrounding dependent regions. Core areas from an early stage have exerted an increasing domination over national spatial arrangements in South Africa, the parameters of which show little evidence of fundamental change. Advanced stages show the vertical strengthening and diffusion outwards of ever-increasing levels of population potential from the core areas to their immediate contiguous peripheries and the patterns may be related to Friedmann’s stages in the growth of national space economies. Owing to the co-existence of exchange and traditional economies and constraints upon social and economic participation of the non-White population, mainly Africans, in national development, the patterns of population potential are representative of both a modern urbanization surface (dominated by Whites), on the one hand, and of a modernizing surface (dominated by non-Whites), on the other.