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spatial economy — English
To make a living, or to enlarge their existing material wealth, people engage in gainful activities, but these activities take place over space. The people themselves might not necessarily travel long distances to do business, but business transactions (economic activities) usually contain a spatial – or distance – component and communication networks are intricately involved in these economic activities. Since economic activities take place over space, they describe spatial patterns (see “spatial distribution”, “spatial interaction” and “spacio-temporal [or space-in-time] perspective”) and these are studied by economic geographers. Economic activities in one specific area are, however, part of an economic network that might involve a myriad of places on Earth. Especially in the current time, when economic activities have become completely globalised and multi-national corporations (MNCs) dominate all economic activity on Earth, spatiality is one of the most important aspects of all economic activities. A simple example could perhaps explain it better than a page of text. A farmer who plants cabbage in rural Limpopo Province, needs a few plastic pipes to irrigate his cabbage plants. He uses his cell-phone (designed in the USA, but made in Korea) and makes a call (via a cell-phone service provider based in Johannesburg) to a local store in the nearest town and orders the pipes he needs. The store owner uses his landline telephone and contacts the international production company’s call centre and speaks to someone in Australia to obtain information about the availability and delivery of the pipes, although the pipes are actually manufactured in Benoni, South Africa. Alternatively, the store owner might use e-mail to obtain the information. The farmer uses his vehicle (made in Japan, but assembled in a plant in the Eastern Cape) to drive to town to collect his pipes. When the cabbages need to be harvested, Zimbabweans from a nearby refugee settlement walk to his land to cut the cabbages. A contractor (using a large lorry made in India) transports the cabbages to the market in Pretoria where retailers (see “retail facilities”) buy it and sell it to consumers in numerous shops all over Pretoria. Can you imagine how intricate the map of the spatial distribution and interaction of this relatively simple economic activity is? Although the regional economy of Limpopo Province is an agricultural one, it is connected to an increasingly complex network that spans the whole world.
