1. Chapter 1: part 2
Spatial Analysis

2. Where? Why? The two main questions in geography: Spatial Analysis
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 Toponyms (place names) 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)
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 Situation
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: Site factors include things like:
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 Relative 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 Connectivity
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 Expansion 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
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

34. 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

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 Regionalism Sectionalism Irredentism
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
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

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