An Axiomatic Approach to Geographical Space

Geographical space is a major concept in spatial analysis. Curiously enough, no attempt has so far been made to provide a general and rigorous presentation. In this paper, a formal definition of the basic geographical components is given. For that purpose, topology and measure theory are used. A general definition of geographical space is then proposed and some properties are examined. Finally, the relations between the proposed definition and the particular representations used in spatial analysis are discussed.     

Welfare Caseload Change: An Alternative Approach

In the last decade, caseloads in AFDC/TANF have shifted dramatically up, then down. Of existing studies based on time series or state panel data, some tend to underplay the role of welfare reform. All say little about what policies drove the decline or about the role of governmental quality. An approach using cross-sectional models explains interstate differences in caseload change rather than the national trend but allows more discussion about the role of policy and government. Results suggest that grant levels, work and child support requirements, and sanctions are important explainers of change, along with some demographic terms and unemployment. These policies in turn are tied to states' political opinion, political culture, and institutional capacity. Moralistic states seem the most capable of transforming welfare in the manner the public wants.     

Commuting Distances and Gender: A Spatial Urban Model

In any urban center the commuting distances are a function of the spatial structure of the center and of the characteristics of the commuters. In this paper theoretical relationships between commuting distances and distances of residences to city centers are derived for monocentric and polycentric cities. These relationships are then linked to the sociological determinants of commuting distances. An econometric model encompassing both spatial structure variables and social variables is constructed and estimated using data for sixteen urban centers. Gender differences are focused upon. The expansion method is used.     

Minimum-Cost Distances in Spatial Analysis

An axiomatic approach to distance is developed which focuses on those behavioral concepts of distance related to movement in space. In particular, spatial movement by behaving units is postulated to involve a choice from among some set of abstract trips in space, and implicitly, to involve the minimization of some relevant notion of trip costs. In this context, the relevant behavioral notion of distance in space is taken to be the minimum-cost distance generated by this choice process. These trip-cost concepts extend the classical notions of paths, path lengths, and shortest paths in metric spaces. Hence many of the analytical results of the paper involve extensions of classical shortest-path distance properties to minimum-cost distances. In addition to these extensions, a characterization theorem is given which specifies the possible functional relationships between trip costs and their associated path lengths. These relationships include most functional forms which are commonly employed in the literature.     

Language Diversity in West Africa: An Ecological Approach

Analysis of a linguistic atlas reveals an ecological gradient in the diversity of languages in West Africa. As one moves south from arid into lusher ecoclimatic zones, the average size of ethnolinguistic groups decreases. Various factors are considered which may have contributed to this distribution. I argue that the ethnolinguistic map is primarily a reflection of the systems of generalized exchange and mutual dependence into which people enter. It is hypothesized that such social networks function to reduce subsistence risk due to variations in the food supply. If this hypothesis is correct, the average size of ethnolinguistic groups should be inversely proportional to the degree of ecological variability they face. This prediction is tested and found to hold strongly for a large part of West Africa. There is also limited evidence of a correlation between linguistic diversity and topography. It is concluded that ecological risk has been a key historical force in West Africa and that the ethnolinguistic mosaic can be used as a valuable “fossil record” of people's adaptive social and economic strategies.     

An Approach to Urban Dynamics

Spatial cycles that are general to the urbanization process have been widely observed in the developed countries. These include (a) the decline of large agglomerations and the emergence of medium-sized municipalities, and (b) population decreases in the core and population increases in the suburban parts of the metropolitan area, followed later by contrasting increases in the core and decreases in the suburbs. In this paper, we formulate a mathematical model for such spatial cycles of the urbanization process as those mentioned above. Based on this model, we ascertain some general characteristics of these cycles of urban dynamics. From our findings, we can propose a long-term strategy for the urbanization process.     

中国人的生活世界:民俗学的路径

中国的人文与社会科学应该把中国人的生活世界作为认识的对象与关怀的目标,民俗学能够在其中发挥关键的引领作用。与发挥这种作用相匹配,民俗学应该定位为研究普通人的日常生活的文化传承的社会科学。按照这一发展路径,民俗学将成为现代国家建设中的基础性学科和支柱性学科。     

Shortest Distances in a Modified Transportation Network

Taking as the starting point an undirected source network and a set of possible new links that can be used to extend the source network, a method is proposed to determine, by simple inspection of a matrix tableau, all shortest distances in any extended network, without using a shortest path algorithm. In consequence, this method may be a useful tool for analyzing and judging network extensions. In particular, computation time can be saved in many complex network optimization methods that use shortest path algorithms. The computer experiments show that the method is feasible even when an extended network may differ from the source network by several dozens of branches.     

An Immanentist Approach to the Urban

Abstract: This paper is a critical engagement with immanentist approaches to cities. Geographers approaching the urban through an immanentist lens—primarily inspired by Gilles Deleuze's work—have called into question transcendent determination, namely the determination of material reality by an external and ontologically distinct substance. This has been an implicit assumption in approaches that reduce contemporary urban developments to “effects of globalization” or “impacts of neoliberalism”. I identify two major shortcomings within the recent immanentist critique: first, their rejection of the notion of a structure in toto, and second, their noticeable silence on Louis Althusser despite his unique contribution to the question of complex causality and his shared trajectories with and influence on Deleuze. By using illustrations from the ongoing urban renewal program in Istanbul, I speculate on the ways in which an Althusserian notion of “immanent structure” could contribute to a better understanding of cities as multiplicities.     

Views into the Fragments: An Approach from a Microhistorical Perspective

The approach I call the “singularization of history,” which I have been developing in recent years within the methodological structure of microhistory, is the main subject of this article. It has the precise aim of defining the ways in which scholars can use sources to enter into the past in as detailed and varied a way as possible without becoming trapped within the received channels of the grand narratives. I will make an attempt to demonstrate what the Icelandic School of Microhistory (ISM) is all about and its connection to the scribal culture in the country, as well as the importance of ego-documents for microhistorical analysis. The central element in the analysis of this paper will be the sources themselves—their creation, their context within the events they describe, the opportunities they present for analysis, and in what kind of academic context they have become a subject for enquiry.     

A Cost-Benefit Location-Allocation Model for Public Facilities: An Econometric Approach

This research develops and operationalizes a facility location-allocation model based on cost-benefit principles derived from welfare economics. Despite the theoretical advantages of cost-benefit location-allocation models, the difficulties associated with estimating household preferences for public facilities have heretofore prevented their application. This research demonstrates that the hedonic-pricing methodology can be effectively used to estimate preferences for public facilities. Specifically, household preferences for Baltimore public middle schools were estimated from the spatial variation in housing prices using the random bidding model. To provide an example of the methodology, the cost-benefit location-allocation objective function was maximized to simultaneously determine the optimal number, quality, and locations of Baltimore middle schools. The cost-benefit approach to facility location constitutes a major improvement over existing methods because it directly incorporates user preferences into the objective function and because the number and quality of facilities can be determined endogenously rather than being specified as a constraint a priori.     

Neighborhoods and Fertility in Accra, Ghana: An AMOEBA-based Approach

Fertility levels remain high in most of sub-Saharan Africa, despite recent declines, and even in a large capital city such as Accra, Ghana, women are having children at a pace that is well above replacement level and this will contribute to significant levels of future population growth in the city. Our purpose in this paper is to evaluate the way in which neighborhood context may shape reproductive behavior in Accra. In the process, we introduce several important innovations to the understanding of intra-urban fertility levels in a sub-Saharan African city: (1) despite the near explosion of work on neighborhoods as a spatial unit of analysis, very little of this research has been conducted outside of the richer countries; (2) we characterize neighborhoods on the basis of local knowledge of what we call "vernacular neighborhoods"; (3) we then define what we call "organic neighborhoods" using a new clustering tool-the AMOEBA algorithm-to create these neighborhoods; and then (4) we evaluate and explain which of the neighborhood concepts has the largest measurable contextual effect on an individual woman's reproductive behavior. Multi-level regression analysis suggests that vernacular neighborhoods are more influential on a woman's decision to delay marriage, whereas the organic neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status better capture the factors that shape fertility decisions after marriage.