A national overview of spatial trends and settlement characteristics

This National Spatial Trends Overview forms a key baseline input to the national urban development framework and was to build onto work already done within the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP), as well as take into account recent publication of trend data and enhanced capabilities to conduct more nuanced spatial analysis. In conducting the analysis it became evident that the character and role of not only cities and city-regions are changing, but also that of the range of other settlements in the country. The brief overview of spatial trends and settlement dynamics contained in this paper has been drawn from a more regional focussed analysis of selected demographic, economic, built environment and natural resource spatial and trends data as set out in the accompanying analysis undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team with support and inputs from a large number of collaborators. The analysis drew from and contributed to a foundation laid by policy, spatial analysis and technology developments since 2003 and a large number of data sources.