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This research uses the concept of ‘urban scenes’ to explore and characterise the economy of the city of Makhanda (Grahamstown). It is argued that this framework can create a thorough situational analysis on which to plan for locally-appropriate Local Economic Development (LED). It does this through characterising a local economic context that situates economic activity within a framework that acknowledges the role and interactions of consumers, culture, clustered amenities and economic activities, and urban place. It thus adds to traditional situational analyses by focusing on the urbanisms, activities, and character of the city—making these factors indivisible from the local economy. The framework reveals that two prominent scenes exist within Makhanda: the Education and Tourism Scenes. Education institutions like top public and private schools and Rhodes University are located within the city, and a tourism product exists in the form of creativity and the arts, festivals, edutourism, heritage, and wildlife safaris and hunting. These scenes bring significant money into the local economy through tourism and temporary education-led migration. They are both, however, under significant threat from a dysfunctional local municipality that has consistently failed in its mandate to support the local economy, engage with local stakeholders, and create an enabling environment for business. Intermittent and unreliable water supply, sewerage spills, and the deterioration of existing infrastructure are just some of the issues faced within the city. Any successful LED programme needs to tackle this issue and others to succeed. In addition to creating an enabling economic environment, cooperation within and between stakeholders in the identified scenes needs fostering. The local municipality also needs to create employment and a more inclusive economy to tackle issues of high unemployment and inequality.

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This study seeks to understand land use decision-making dynamics on large residential plots in Fingo Village, Makhanda (Grahamstown). Fingo Village was selected as a study area because it is one of the poorest urban settings in South Africa where urban poverty is observed alongside access to land. A dominant economic perspective not only suggests that land use decisions are motivated by economic motives, but also implies that access to land would enable people to generate income from its use to improve their livelihoods. This study argues against an uncritical embrace of this assumption. Lefebvre’s production of space thesis provides a holistic understanding of the factors involved in the making of land use decisions. The focus of this study is on the dialectic process in the spatial triad– spatial practice, representational space and representations of space. This involved the reading of government policies and legislation together with local lived experiences to gain an understanding of the particular spatial practices seen in Fingo Village. Snowball and convenience sampling were used to select 36 household plots in Fingo Village. Primary data was gathered by means of semi-structured interviews and participatory mapping while additional information was sourced from secondary sources and desktop analysis. The findings of the study show that there is no uniform pattern of land use and success. Different land use activities found on the selected residential plots, including the main house, backyard flat or flats, spaza shops, a funeral parlour, livestock keeping, cultural use (a kraal for ancestral worship) and food gardening. These activities are motivated by residents’ perceptions and attitudes towards their spaces, as well as the value and meaning they attach to the land which is not limited to economic factors, but is also influenced by socio-cultural, political and biophysical considerations. Although some spatial practices are prohibited by the government, they are important to the residents. Other participants fail to use the land as would be expected by a conventional economic perspective, due to spatial conflict relating to different interests as a result of collective land ownership and the failure of municipalities to enforce policies and regulations. The fact that numerous factors influence households’ land use decisions means that access to land does not always directly translate into economic benefits. It is all about what people think or do about their land, as well as what the state lays out in terms of policy and legislation, that will influence whether those people with large plots of land will ‘prosper’ or not.