Spatial Patterns

Spatial Patterns

            The distribution of economic activies across the earth’s surface or within a region may be viewed as forming a pattern. Such a pattern may be explicitly recognized when the category of economic activity in question is represented on a map. For example, figure 1.6 depicts, by a series of nodes, or points, the distribution of grain elevators in an area of the Canadian Great Plains. Such a map describes a  point pattern.It answers the basic question where with considerable cartographic precision and provides a starting point for spatial analysis. Geographers today are fond of conceptualizing a great many phenomena as if they only at a singl point even thought they, of course, occupy some space in reality. A house may be mapped as a point, as may be a factory, a shopping center, and even a city. A point pattern implies that relative location is to be emphazide in the description  and analysis and that the actual area  the phenomenon occupies is not significant at that level of spatial analysis.

            Other categories of geographic patterns be noted. Another glance at figure 1.6 reeveals liniear patterns representing railroads used to transport the grain. These linear patterns in location and layout . Any type of movement or connection between places may be viewed as part of a linear pattern whehter or not  there exists an observable physical facility connecting the places. For in stance, the frequency of telephone calls warehouse of large corporation may be mapped to form a linear flow pattern.

            Combining the linear and nodal concepts, one may defin a nodal region, useful in many kinds of geographic analysis . A nodal region consists of an area in which the focus  of activity (the orientation of the linear pattern ) is on a single node. A major city will “organize” the activities of the surrounding area, for example.To delimit the extent of a tensity of focus or the magnitude of movement drops below a defined threshold. Thus, each grain elevator forms the focus of a small but separate nodal region, from which it obtains a greater share of grain than does any other elevator.

            Another commonly encounted type of spatial pattern is depicted on the choropleth map. On such as states or counties, are recorded as having a single value, indicated by a single color or shading. A land use map of a city may be shown by a choroplate pattern. At another scale of analysis, the United States and Canada might be devided into agricultural regions on the basis of dominant kinds of agriculture resent what geographers have called uniform regions, where the element defining the region (such as dairy farming, cash grain farmingor goat herding) is more or less evenly spread within the region, but weakly represented outside the region.

            A fourth, and final, general category of spatial patterns is the surface, which may be illustrated cartographically in a variety of ways. As the name implies, a geographic surface, also known as a statistical surface, shows a continuous distribution of some feature over an area. The most intuitive example is the landform surface, in which elevations above sea level are shown to form a pattern of hills and valleys. Perhaps the most common method of surface mapping is by use of isolines, as in figure 1.7a. These are lines connecting points of equal magnitude. Many kinds of phenomena for which data exist only at points may be generalized into a continuous surface, as for a median income surface of a region. In such a case, lines are drawn to connect all places with aspecified median income to give the overall pattern of regional income variation. Computer programs are available to draw three dimensional representations of geographical surfaces, as in figure 1.7b. in which the peaks show location with high median income and the valleys the poor places.

            Spatial patterns often combine to form hierarchies, interlocking sequences of patterns ranging from small to large scale. Such spatial hierarchies reflect the extent and dimensions of an economic system, where a system consist of set of elements with  functional relationships and with interdependencies among the element defining the system. A system is then, defined by a disciplinary perspective, and geographic system are seen from the perspective of the location of the system element. Take the example of a commercial agricultural system, looking first at the smallest component in the hierarchy. At this level we may note the role of the role of the farmstead as an organizational node around which the farm operates-a small scale nodal region. This nodal region in fact consist of fields in which different crops are grown, the fields constituting an elemental type of uniform region. In this area will be numerous farms acting as nodal regions, thus defining overall a uniform region. Scattered over the uniform agricultural region will be a series of small agricultural region will be a seies of small agricultural and marketing centers acting  as collectors of farm products and as distributors of goods and services required by the rural population. These centers, of course, function as nodal regions. As a group, however, these centers may be said to form a uniform region of marketing centers. This example could be extended further up the economic system, to the level of metropolitan areas. The main points are clear, however. We have described in terms of spatial patterns a functionally related group of economic elements constituting a hierarchial pattern of alternately uniform and nodal dimensions. Beyond description and mapping, of what further interest are these patterns?

SPATIAL PROCESS

            To answer this question, we turn to spatial process implies something happening over time. A spatial process, then, involves change within some or all of the element of a system. Since we are dealing with spatial economic system, spatial processes are mappable as they may occur at different places. The term pattern has been used to describe an activity distribution frozen at a point in time, and to that extent a some what artificial situation is reflected. The concept of spatial process is used to “explain” spatial patterns, as it refers to a casual chain of events that produces change over time. A pattern existing at one moment of time is the result of the operation of process that have had differential spatial impacts. Geographers are concerned with the interplay between pattern and process, and these two concepts are evenues geogrphers use to analyze spatial economic systems. In the simplest sense, the pattern answers the question where; process, the why.

            Since spatial economic pattern are a result of human decisions, many approaches to the analysis of economic systems  now involve studying behavior as a spatial process. Economic patterns change because of human descision, which may be based on different economic goals, different perceptions of economic alternatives, different preference and cultural systems, and different methods of solving problems or making choices. Locational decisions may be based on varios levels of information. Locational decision made within the constraints of a particular strategy will affect the pattern of locations in some given way whereas another decisions maker, following a different drummer, may generate quite constrasting locational changes. For example, an entrepreneur who believes his or her customers are unanimously price-conscious may locate near a supplier to reduce cost, which can be passed on to the customers through lower prices that undercut his or her competition, he or she may be indifferent to the location of the customers. A second entrepreneurs will create constrasting spatil patterns on the economic landscape.

            Different processes operate on the economic landscape at different times. The obseryed cross-sectional pattern is a composite of influences, some continuing to operate and others having ceased far in the past. Economic geographers must view the spatial economic system as it exists at the present, as a kind of artifact, created largely in the past and only slowly responding to more current influences. The present spatial pattern at any particular place for any specific economic activity, through feedback mechanism, helps shape the next stage of the processes unfolding. The task of explanation is to unravel the varied spatial processes as they acted in the past and continue to act in the present.

            In addition to human behavior as adirect spatial process, technological change brings about conditions broadening or reducing the range of human choice. And technology, as we will explain more fully in chapter 3, has had a snowballing effect over time, increasing geometrically. To illustrate how  a given spatial pattern may be the result of many past and present spatial processes, consider the distribution of manufacturing in metropolitan areas today. On the one hand, the distribution of manufacturing shows clusterimg near the center of the urban area ; on the other, much of it is spread widely throughout the surbubs. Two different kinds of spatial processes have been responsible for the depelovment of this pattern. One, occurring principally in the past, was a centralizing influence,  having to do with accessibility at a given level of transportation technology ( the railroad, river, and canals). The other process, of considerable current impact, is a decentralizing factor, related in part to the motor truck as a transport agent. This example is of two constrasting processes affecting metropolitan manufacturing lovation, and the explication of the pattern is fairly straightforward. In most other cases, the geographer faces a much more complex challenge.

            The principle of locational inertia must also be considered in spatial studies of economic system. Economic location inertia is a time lag effect that activities experience in the adjustment to new locational influences. The inner city manufacturing plant might be one such example. Here is a plant that located in the past because of one set of locational factors. Other factors now operating would suggest the plant should select a different kind of location. However, because of capital sunk into building and equipment, it is no simple matter to move, since the building and equipment, it is no simple matter to move, since the building, perhaps old and needing repair, has limited economic value except to the firm occupying it.