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intervening opportunity — English
The existence of a place, entity or a condition which influences the spatial interaction between two places that are situated some distance apart. Interaction is always influenced by the distance between two places and the rule of thumb is that interaction is inversely proportional to the distance between them. The longer the distance between two places, the higher is the distance decay which limits interaction between them, and consequently the less interaction will occur. However, distance decay between two places might be greatly influenced or overcome by the occurrence of a desirable place or entity between the two places. Such a place is called an intervening opportunity and it might be anything from a mine, town, game reserve, cultural or religious site, place of exceptional natural beauty or any other place that people would want to visit or do business in. It is an extremely important principle in the geography of economics and the geography of tourism, because a tourist site located somewhere near or between two or more important cities would definitely be visited by more people than one which far away from the main transport networks. In essence an intervening site is just another site for doing business in the near vicinity of existing main business sites or tourist destinations. However, entrepreneurs who wish to establish tourist destinations would be well advised to seek out localities that would benefit from the vicinity of other major attractions. The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site is fortunate in that it is located in Gauteng near both Pretoria and Johannesburg, while tourist destinations such as Dullstroom, Sabie and Graskop could all be seen as intervening opportunities between Johannesburg (and Pretoria) and the Kruger National Park.
