- A case study of the urban spatial needs of informal craft workers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.    369 kb by    McLachlan, Gavin | gavin.mclachlan@nmmu.ac.za    Short Outline In South Africa is an informal industry based on the working of wire into a range of objects. Craft hawkers are present in the cities with their space needs. The paper examines this as part of the emerging creative economy in developing countries. Abstract WIRE CRAFT AND URBAN SPACE: A CASE STUDY OF THE INFORMAL WIRE ART TRADE IN SOUTH AFRICA. GAVIN McLACHLAN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR NELSON MANDELA METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY The new creative and technical economy has come to characterise the world’s most successful cities. In the developed countries the nature of this partnership is becoming increasingly clear in terms of the environmental quality and constraints that characterise this. In developing countries, where many people are new urban immigrants and lack the skills or capital to access high technology, they have been forced to develop a huge informal economy in order to try to access urban resources. The many sectors of this informal economy have their own spatial requirements that need to be properly integrated into the fabric of the city. These include, for example, taxi ranks and hawkers markets. In South Africa there has been considerable growth in the hawking of African wood carvings, hand made jewelry, ethnic furniture and toys. A component of the trade in creative items is that there is a tradition in rural communities, in the Eastern Cape, of the making of wire toys for children that has grown into a small informal industry specializing in the making of wire art for sale. The objects produced include children’s toys, jewelry, household objects and ornaments. The creators and sellers of these objects have generated a small industry that is able to engage the global economy. They and their clients have certain spatial needs including the location of manufacturing and selling points as well as the character of this type of space. This paper will describe the nature and extent of the wire art industry in the Eastern Cape as an example of a creative economic activity in a developing context. In particular the spatial needs of the wire art industry will be identified and the integration of this into cities will be evaluated. Keywords informal trade, wire art, developing countries, urban space Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2005: Making Spaces for the Creative Economy   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper