Download Chapter 1: part 2

CHAPTER 1: PART 2
SPATIAL ANALYSIS
WHERE? WHY?
• The two main questions in
geography:
• To answer where?
• maps
• To answer why?
• Processes of spatial
interaction and diffusion
• Spatial Analysis
• Study of many geographic
phenomena can be
approached in terms of their
arrangement as points, lines,
areas, or surfaces
• Keys to spatial analysis:
•
•
•
•
•
Location
Distance
Space
Accessibility
Spatial interaction
LOCATION
• Humans possess a strong
sense of place
• Feeling for features that
contribute to the
distinctiveness of a
particular spot on Earth
• Hometown
• Vacation destination
• Describing the features of
a place or region is an
essential building block
for geographers
• Geographer’s describe a
feature’s place on Earth
by identifying its location
• The position that something
occupies on Earth
• Four ways to identify
location:
•
•
•
•
Place name
Site
Situation
Mathematical location
PLACE
• Place
• Definition:
• A specific point on Earth
distinguished by a particular
characteristic
• Every place occupies a unique
location, or position, on Earth’s
surface
• Geographers describe a
feature’s place on Earth by
identifying its location
• Toponyms (place names)
• Definition:
• Name given to a place on Earth
• Most straightforward way to
describe a location
• Might be named for a person,
tied to religion, physical features,
etc.
• Ashburn’s explanation
RELATIVE LOCATION
• Site
• Refers to physical
attributes of a location
• Terrain, soil, vegetation,
water sources
• Situation
• Refers to the location
of a place relative to
other places and
human activities
• Accessibility to routeways
• Nearness to population
centers
SITE
Definition:
Physical character of a place
Site factors include things
like:
Landforms, climate,
vegetation types, availability
of water, soil quality, minerals,
and even wildlife.
Site factors are essential in
selecting locations for
settlements historically
Humans can modify site
Example:
 Manhattan is twice as large as
it was when bought in 1626.
 How? Portions of the East River
and Hudson river filled with
sunken ships and refuse
 Recently: Battery Park City,
142- acre site
SITUATION
Situation is the location of a
place relative to other
places
 Important for two reasons:
 Finding an unfamiliar place
 Understanding its importance
• Reasons #2:
• Many locations are important
because they are accessible to other
places.
• Example: Singapore
•
•
• Reason #1:
• Can compare an unfamiliar
location with a familiar one.
• Example:
• Directions: “It’s down off Ryan
Road, take a left at Loudoun
County Parkway and a left at
the 1st light.”
Has become center of trading and
distribution of goods for much of
Southeast Asia
Located near the straight of
Malacca, a major passageway
between the China Sea and Indian
Ocean.
SITUATION- SINGAPORE
MATHEMATICAL - ABSOLUTE LOCATION
• Latitude
• Refers to the angular distance of
a point on Earth’s surface
measured in degrees, minutes,
and seconds north or south of
the Equator
• Lines of latitude that run parallel to
the equator are called parallels
• The equator has a value of 0
degrees
• Longitude
• Refers to the angular distance
of a point on Earth’s surface,
measured in degrees, minutes,
and seconds east or west from
the prime meridian
• The prime meridian is the line
that passes through both poles
and through Greenwich,
England
• Prime meridian has a value of 0
degrees
• Lines of longitude, called
meridians, run from the north
pole to the south pole
• Practice quiz
DISTANCE
• Absolute physical
measure
• Kilometers
• Miles
• Relative measure
• Expressed in terms of
time, effort, or cost
• Distance can be in eye
of the beholder
• Cognitive distance
• Distance that people
perceive as existing in a
given situation
• Based on personal
judgments about the
degree of spatial
separation between points
DISTANCE
• Central theme in
geography
• Friction of distance
• Once the 1st “law of
geography”
• Time-Distance Decay
• Tobler’s law
• everything is related to
everything else, but nearer things
are more related than distant
things (i.e. distance itself hinders
interaction).
• Leads to distance decay:
contact between two places
decreases as distance increases
• Reflection of the time and cost
of overcoming distance
• Distance decay describes the
rate at which a particular
activity or phenomena
diminishes with increasing
distance
• The farther people have to travel
the less likely they are to do so
• i.e. contact diminishes with
increasing distance and
eventually disappears
SPACE
• Most fundamental skill that
geographers possess to
understand the arrangement of
objects across surfaces of the
earth
• Geographers think about the
arrangement of people and
activities found in space and try
to understand why those
people and activities are
distributed across space as they
are
SPACE
• Space can be measured in
absolute, relative, and
cognitive terms
• Absolute space
• Mathematical space described
through points, lines, areas,
planes, and configurations
whose relationships can be fixed
through mathematical
reasoning
• Topological space
• Defined by the connections
between, or connectivity of,
particular points in space
• Measured in nature and
degree of connectivity
between locations
• Relative space
• Can take the form of
socioeconomic space or of
experiential or cultural space
• Can be described in terms of site
and situations, routes, regions, and
distribution patterns
• Spatial relationships are fixed
measures of time, cost, profit,
production, and physical distance
• Cognitive space
• Defined and measured in terms of
people’s values, feelings, beliefs,
and perceptions about locations,
districts, and regions
• Can be described, therefore, in
terms of behavioral space• Landmarks, paths, environments,
and spatial layouts
• Mental maps!!!!!!!
MENTAL MAPS
DISTRIBUTION AND SPATIAL
INTERACTION
• Everything occupies a
unique space on earth
• Distribution:
• arrangement of a feature in
space
• Three main properties of
distribution:
• Density
• Concentration
• pattern
• Density: frequency something
occurs
• Arithmetic Density: total # of objects in
an area (i.e. pop density – 340/sq km)
• Physiological Density: # of persons per
unit of area suitable agriculture (i.e.
can country feed itself?)
• Concentration: extent of a
feature’s spread over space
• Clustered: Objects close together
• Dispersed: objects relatively far
apart
• NOT THE SAME AS DENSITY
• Pattern: geometric
arrangement of objects in
space
•
Land Ordinance of 1785 (grid)
DENSITY AND CONCENTRATION
OF BASEBALL TEAMS, 1952–2000
The changing distribution of North American baseball teams
illustrates the differences between density and concentration.
WORLD POPULATION DENSITY
US POPULATION DENSITY
CONCENTRATION OF CHRISTIANS IN
THE WORLD
ACCESSIBILITY
• Generally defined in
relative location
• The opportunity for contact
or interaction from a given
point or location in relation to
other locations
• Implies proximity, or nearness,
to something
• Connectivity
• Important aspect of
accessibility
• Contact and interaction are
dependent on channels of
communication and
transportation
• Example: commercial airlines
• Cities that operate as hubs
are most accessible
• Accessibility often a function
of economic, cultural, and
social factors
SPATIAL INTERACTION
• Used by geographers
as shorthand for all
kinds of movement
and flows involving
human activity
• Four basic concepts:
• Complementarity
• Transferability
• Intervening
opportunities
• Diffusion
COMPLEMENTARITY
• AKA we need each other
• For spatial interaction to
occur between two
places there must be
demand in one place
and a supply that
matches, or compliments
it, in the other
• Complementarity can be
the result of several
factors
• Variation in physical
environments and resource
endowments from place to
place
• Internal division of labor that
derives from the evolution of
the world’s economic
systems
• Specialization and
economies of scale
TRANSFERABILITY
• AKA: cost involved in moving
goods from one place to
another
• Function of two things:
• Costs of moving a particular item,
measured in real money and/or
time
• the ability of the item to bear
these costs.
• High transferability rate
•
Computer microchips
• Easy to handle
• Transport costs are minimal in
proportion to their value
• Low transferability rate
•
Computer monitors
• Fragile
• Lower value by weight and volume
• Transferability varies over time
• Successive innovations in
transportation and
communications
• Waves of infrastructure
development
• Time-space convergence
• The rate at which places move closer
together in travel or communication
costs
• Results from a decrease in the friction
of distance as space-adjusting
technologies have brought places
closer together over time
•
•
Global and local
Shrinking of space has important implications
SPACE-TIME COMPRESSION
1492–1962
The times required to cross the Atlantic, or orbit the Earth,
illustrate how transport improvements have shrunk the
world.
INTERVENING OPPORTUNITY
• More important in
determining volume
and pattern of
movements and flows
• Size and relative
importance are
important aspects
• PRINCIPLE OF
INTERVENING
OPPORTUNITY:
• Spatial interaction between
an origin and a destination
will be proportional to the
number of opportunities at
that destination an inversely
proportional to the number of
opportunities at alternative
destinations
DIFFUSION
• Process in which phenomenon (disease, trends,
technology, etc.) spread from one place to
another over time
• Hearth: place of origination
• Diffusion happens quickly today w/ modern technology,
communication, transportation
SPATIAL DIFFUSION
• The way things spread through
space and over time
• One of the most important
aspects of spatial interaction
• Crucial to understanding
geographic change
• Diffusion occurs as a function
of geographic statistical
probability
TYPES OF DIFFUSION
• Relocation Diffusion
• The spread of an idea through
physical movement of people
from one place to another
• Languages
• Money systems
• Aids
• Expansion diffusion
• “snowballing process”
• develops in hearth- remains
strong and spreads
• Example: an agricultural
innovation among members of
local farming community
• Example: Islam
• Three types of Expansion
diffusion
• Hierarchical
• Contagious
• Stimulus
TYPES OF EXPANSION DIFFUSION
• Hierarchical: idea spread from
persons or nodes of authority
or power
• Also called cascade diffusion
• A phenomenon can be
diffused from one location to
another without necessarily
spreading to people or places
in between.
• Example: a fashion trend from large
metro area to smaller cities, towns,
and rural settlements
• Example: Rap music – came from
West Africa, adopted on East Coast,
morphed in Philly into Hip-Hop,
spread into urban areas and then
dispersed.
• Contagious: rapid,
widespread diffusion
throughout population
• Like a disease- Cholera
• Example: hula-hoop, spread
quickly in 1950’s, literally
contagious (hearth: Cali)
• Stimulus: spread of
underlying principle, even
though characteristic itself
failed to diffuse
• Indirectly promote changes,
ideas, innovation
•
•
Example: Europeans grew wheat, went
to America, no wheat but corn, started
growing corn like wheat.
the adoption leads to something new.
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE AND
ECONOMY
• In global culture and
economy, transportation
and communications
systems rapidly diffuse raw
materials, goods, services,
and capital from nodes of
origin to other regions.
• Three core hearth regions:
• North America
• New York
• Western Europe
• London
• Japan
• Tokyo
• Africa, Asia, Latin America
• 3/4ths world population, almost
all population growth
• On “periphery”
• Gap in regions called “uneven
development”
REGIONS
• Regions are the
equivalent of scientific
classification for
geographers
• Regions are determined
through the cultural
landscape
• Three types of regions:
• Formal
• Functional (nodal)
• Perceptual
• Regional studies:
• each region has its own
distinctive landscape that
results from a unique
combination of social
relationships and physical
processes.
• important to the principle:
people are the most
important agents of change
of Earth’s surface
FORMAL REGIONS
• Formal regions help explain
broad global or national
patterns such as variations
in religions and levels of
economic development.
Also a uniform or homogenous
region.
Shares one or more distinctive
characteristics
 Could be cultural,
economic, environmental
Example: Montana
Has recognized
boundaries and
shares a common
set of laws
FUNCTIONAL REGIONS
• Nodal region, it is
organized around a
node or focal point.
• Used to display
information about
economic areas
• Example: circulation of
a newspaper
FORMAL AND FUNCTIONAL REGIONS
The state of Iowa is an example of a formal region; the areas of influence of
various television stations are examples of functional regions.
PERCEPTUAL REGION
• vernacular region, is
a place that people
believe exists as part
of their cultural
identity.
• Example: the “south”
• How do you know you are
in the south?
• waffle house?
• grits?
• sweet tea?
VERNACULAR REGIONS
A number of factors are often used to define the South as a vernacular region,
each of which identifies somewhat different boundaries.
REGIONALIZATION
• Regionalism
• Used to describe
situations in which
different religious or
ethnic groups with
distinctive identities coexist within the same
state boundaries, often
concentrated within a
particular region and
sharing strong feelings of
collective identity.
• Often ethnic groups who
aims for autonomy from a
national state
• Ex. Serbs in Croatia
• Sectionalism
• Feelings that develop into
an extreme devotion to
regional interests and
customs
• Irredentism
• Assertion by the
government of a country
that a minority living
outside its formal border
belongs to it historically
and culturally.
• Often leads to war
• Ex. Serbs in Croatia
FUTURE GEOGRAPHIES
• Places and regions
are in constant
state of change
• Today, because of a
globalized economy
and globalized
telecommunications
and transportation
networks, places
have become more
interdependent