Jon-Carlo Steele Pennett Due: 17th April 2012

Settlement Geography

A settlement is a grouping of people; activities; building structures and communication networks that function together on a daily basis as a single integrated system. This essay will look at how three settlements, Cape Town; Grabouw and Stanford compare with each other.

Cape Town; Grabouw and Stanford are located within the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Cape Town is a very built up area and is a major Metropolitan. Cape Town is also a break of bulk settlement and can be seen as a specialized city that is multi-functional because it serves many functions. Grabouw and Stanford are not as built up as Cape Town. They have fewer high order good and services. This places them both lower on the hierarchy of urban settlements. They can be seen as minor country towns that supply goods and services to the surrounding rural population, so they are also seen as central places.

Due to Cape Town being so well built up compared to Grabouw and Stanford, It has a lot more land-use-zones that can be clearly identified. Cape Town has a large CBD with many tall, high rise buildings; situated on a grid iron street pattern; accessible but contains a lot of traffic during peak hour. Cape Towns upper residential zone has large 2-3 story houses that are situated on a planned irregular street pattern that is fairly close to the CBD, such as Higgovale. Cape town’s transition zone is situated around the oldest parts of the city, like Bo-Kaap and Buitengracht Street because of the old style small housing.

Cape Town also has a light industry situated fairly close to the CBD at Paarden Island. Printing, plumbing and textile industry takes place there. Cape Town also has a decentralized commerce regional Centre, in the form of Century City, Which is situated along the N1, which contains a big space and has large parking areas. Cape Town’s heavy industry is in the form of a refinery that is located away from the CBD and city.

The lower income residential area has a fairly high density of people. The houses are close together; has a high amount of people occupying and are situated on a planned irregular street pattern aswell as the fact that they are situated near transport routes. Cape Town also has an informal settlement zone at Langa and Crossroads. These areas have a high density of people; poverty and lack of infrastructure, but upgrading is taking place. The urban rural fringe is located on the outskirts of Cape Town and acts as a transition zone between the urban area of Cape Town and the rural areas. It is far from the CBD and there are some recreational facilities.

Grabouw, because it is much smaller than Cape Town, it has much smaller land use zones. The buildings in the town are not as tall as those in Cape Town. One can see land use zones, but not as distinctively as in Cape Town. There are residential areas and a CBD with retail outlets that include a shopping Centre in Grabouw. There are however outlying business districts but there is some form of an urban rural fringe with light industry at the periphery.

Stanford on the other hand is smaller than both Cape Town and Grabouw. It is the least busy out of all three settlements and one feels a greater sense of calmness there. There are residential areas with little distinctive differentiation between high and low income housing areas. There is not distinctive CBD, but a market is present, antique shops and a chain store with an ATM. There are no industrial zones but farming does take place in this area.

The threshold population is the maximum number of people required to support a business. Cape Town as we have established is a major metropolitan and is much bigger than both Grabouw and Stanford. With this there comes a larger population in Cape Town than in Grabouw or Stanford. There are more people in the city and this results in Cape Town having a greater threshold population, because of its vast amounts of people and high order goods and services.

Grabouw has a lot less high order goods and services compared to Cape Town. It also has a lower population compared to Cape Town, so businesses are accustomed to having fewer customers than those in Cape Town, thus they require a lower threshold population. There are more low order goods compared to high order goods in Grabouw and a lot less high order goods and services compared to Cape Town. That results in the threshold population being smaller than Grabouw than that of business in Cape Town.

Stanford has the least amount of high order goods and service. It is also the smallest town. Business there has the smallest threshold population and depends, mainly on tourism. The arts and crafts stores plus antique shops do not depend on high amounts of customers due to the high prices of the goods, so a high threshold population is not required in Stanford.

The range is the maximum distance a consumer is willing to travel to purchase goods and services. Cape Town has mainly high order goods and services. It has a large range, as many people are willing to travel great distances for the high order goods and services Cape Town offers.

Grabouw has a range that is much lower than that of Cape Town. This is due to the town having fewer high order goods and services compared to Cape Town to initiate people to travel a large distance to come to the town.

Stanford has the least amount of high order goods and services, so one would expect it of having the lowest range. This is partially true but the antique stores and arts and craft stores attract not only the people from surrounding areas but local and international tourists as well. Stanford and Grabouw could have larger ranges if they were not shadowed by Cape Town.

Cape Town is larger than both Grabouw and Stanford. It has a larger population, large range, and sphere of influence and as a result, it is able to support more high order goods and services than either Grabouw or Stanford. Lower order goods and services are available in greater quantities compared to high order good in all three areas, as they are needed on a daily basis. Cape Town has the most low order goods and Stanford the least due to the size of the town and the population it’s supporting.

The rate of urbanization describes the pace at which urbanization is taking place. Cape Town has the greatest rate of urbanization compared to those of Grabouw and Stanford. This can be seen because of the infrastructure and housing upgrades in the city. If the rate of urbanization were not that high, less upgrading and renovating would be taking place. The different urban settlement rates of urbanization are determined by the amount of high order goods and services it has. With Grabouw and Stanford not having as many high order goods and services as Cape Town, it struggles to bring people into their towns to increase the rate of urbanization.

Due to the past global rescission (last year) we can still see evidence in each settlement of economic downturn. One can see in the towns of Grabouw and Stanford that tourism is on the decline (but slowly increasing as the results of the 2010/2011 rescission are fading), as people do not have sufficient funds to travel and go on holiday. This is seen by the antique store and arts and craft stores being filled with stock on display and in storerooms this shows us that not enough is being sold. This is more visible in Stanford.

Stanford is also fairly quiet as benches are not occupied with tourist and the town appears empty. This is also due to the economic downturn as tourists are not able to travel and go on holiday (although tourism is on the increase once again).

The economic downturn is also evident in the real estate sector, but this is more apparent is Cape Town. High-income residential area houses have ‘for sale signs’ or have been sold. This is due to people not being able to afford the installments or maintenance of those properties anymore and therefore leads to downscaling to cheaper property.

In Cape Town office blocks also have more ‘to let’ signs as business have moved out of building to pay cheaper rental fees outside of the CBD (as I have mentioned we are not feeling the effects of the recession as suavely now and this we can see by people letting out expensive work spaces and funding new buildings).

In the past year there has also been an increase in Auctioneers within Cape Town due to banks auctioning off vehicles and goods that people have purchased on credit, that can no longer afford to pay for due to the 2010/2011 recession (Economic downturn).

Other evidence of the economic downturn is the loitering and begging on the streets. This was more evident in Grabouw, as people were sitting on street corners with nothing to do, as they were mostly unemployed, as companies cannot afford to have excess staff although in reasant months the amount of loiterers has decreased as I often go through Grabouw on a monthly basis.

I thus conclude that evaluating and comparing the data, you can see the transition from urban Cape Town to rural Grabouw and Stanford. From this comparison we are able to see the vast differences between these areas and how they differ in terms of the nature and functions.