Spatial Analysis: Where? Why?

1. Chapter 1: part 2 Spatial Analysis

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

8. Situation • Situation is the location of a place relative to other places • Important for two reasons: • Finding an unfamiliar place • Understanding its importance • 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.” • Reasons #2: • Many locations are important because they are accessible to other places. • Example: Singapore • 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.

9. Situation- Singapore

10. 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

11. 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

12. Distance • Central theme in geography • Once the 1st “law of geography” • 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 • Friction of distance • Reflection of the time and cost of overcoming distance • Time-Distance Decay • 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

13. 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

14. 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!!!!!!!

15. Mental Maps

16. 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)

17. Density and Concentration of Baseball Teams, 1952–2000 The changing distribution of North American baseball teams illustrates the differences between density and concentration.

18. World Population Density

19. US Population Density

20. Concentration of Christians in the world

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. Space-Time Compression 1492–1962 The times required to cross the Atlantic, or orbit the Earth, illustrate how transport improvements have shrunk the world.

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

30. 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

31. 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.

32. 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”

33. Regions • 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 • Regions are the equivalent of scientific classification for geographers • Regions are determined through the cultural landscape • Three types of regions: • Formal • Functional (nodal) • Perceptual

34. Formal Regions • 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 • Formal regions help explain broad global or national patterns such as variations in religions and levels of economic development.

35. 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

36. 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.

37. 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?

38. Vernacular Regions A number of factors are often used to define the South as a vernacular region, each of which identifies somewhat different boundaries.

39. Regionalization • 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 • Regionalism • Used to describe situations in which different religious or ethnic groups with distinctive identities co-exist 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

40. 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