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the investigation considers issues around the training of the local community towards
potential economic ventures and businesses.
2.3 THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF ECONOMY
The term spatial structure is used in empirical studies in the field of economic geography to
refer to an economic landscape (Smith, 1977), but more generally it is a theoretical concept
whose precise definition depends on the problematic issues in question. Early usages
represented the space economy as the object oflocation theory: they were couched within the
framework of neo-elassical economics and hence adopted an empiricist view of the space
economy as 'the spatial pattern of economic activities' which somehow corresponds to a
particular configuration ofresources and population and to particular production and transfer
technologies (Isard, 1956). This research embraces the neo-elassical thought of space
economy and land use, as giving more cognisance and development of local resources, the
welfare oftbe local population, as well as the tapped and untapped economic potentials ofthe
Ulundi Local Municipality [www.faculty.washington.edu, (2008)].
Because of its connections with General Equilibrium Theory, the original concept was a
functionalist one which could be treated in systems terms: 'not only are the mutual relations
and interdependence of all economic elements, both in the aggregate and atomistically, of
fundamental importance: but the spatial as well as the temporal (dynamic) character of the
interrelated processes must enter the picture' (Isard, 1956). Hence for Isard, a theory of the
space economy had to address the total spatial array of economic activities, with attention
paid to the geographic distribution of inputs and outputs and the geographic variations in
prices and costs. Promoting local tourism and agriculture through the spatially distributed
landscapes and cultural attributes in Ulundi would be significant in this research.
The concept was reformulated with the emergence of a critique drav.n from Marxian
Economics: the autonomy of location theory was challenged and its interest in spatial
organization integrated into a wider political economy which owed much to a nascent
structuralism. Two main definitions were offered. One. drawn explicitly from Althusserian
reading of Marx, identified different 'space-times' with the different economic, political and