The geography of informal arts and crafts traders in South Africa’s four main city centres

Abstract

The choice of location of street traders and the products they sell reflect specific geographies of flows of people. In this study the focus is on the spatial relationships between arts and crafts trading and the tourist market. This article presents the outcomes of research into the characteristics and geographies of informal trade in arts and crafts in South Africa’s four main metropolitan city centres. The results show that informal selling of arts and crafts is a relatively small component of street trading in all four centres. Intra-city variations are reported and the geographical patterns of arts and crafts traders in the four centres analysed with GIS software. The purpose of this analysis is to identify concentrations of traders specialising in arts and crafts within the general distributions of informal traders in the four cities.