Chapter 3 vocab

activity space

The area within which people move freely on their typical rounds of regular activity (not unusual exceptions)

asylum seeker

A person who seeks political refuge (asylum) in a country other than their own due to fear of harassments, imprisonment or even death caused by the government.

attitude

Belief and feeling about places, people, or events.

awareness space

Locations or places about which an individual has knowledge even without visiting all of them; includes activity space and additional areas newly encountered or about which one acquires information.

barrier

A geographic feature that impedes spatial interaction, either by blocking it totally, slowing it down, or redirecting it. Barriers may be physical, socio-cultural, or psychological.

behavior

Coordinated and goal-directed action by people or institutions.

behavioral approach

A way of doing human geography that focuses on disaggregate (individual) level of analysis, appreciating the role of cognition and emotions in determining human actions.

(Christaller’s) Central Place Theory

A deductive theory formulated by Walter Christaller (1893-1969)to explain the size and distribution of settlements through reference to competitive supply of goods and services to dispersed rural populations.

chain migration

The process by which migration movements from a common home area to a specific destinations are sustained by links of friendship or kinship between first movers and later followers.

channelized migration

The tendency for migration to flow between areas that are socially and economically allied by past migration patterns, by economic and trade connections, or by some other affinity.

cognition

Knowledge and beliefs about something, and the thinking and memory processes that create and modify them; it varies somewhat across individual people and cultural groups: perception is something used broadly as a synonym for cognition.

complementarity

The actual or potential relationship of two places or regions that each produce different goods or services for which the other as an effective demand, resulting in an exchange between the locales.

counter (return) migration

The return of migrants to the regions from which they earlier emigrated.

critical distance

The distance beyond which cost, effort, and/or means play a determining role in the willingness of people to travel.

dispersion

  In spatial distributions, a statement of the amount of spread of a phenomenon over an area or around a central location. Dispersion in this sense represents a continuum from clustered, concentrated, or agglomerated (at one end) to dispersed or scattered (at the other).

distance decay

The declining intensity of any spatial interaction with increasing distance from
its point of origin.

First Law of Geography

( syn: distance decay) “Everything is related to everything else, but near
things are more related than distant things”; attributed to the American geographer Waldo Tobler
(1930–).

forced migration

When people are compelled by someone or some event to relocate their
residence.

friction of distance

A measure of the retarding or restricting effect of distance on spatial interaction. Generally, the greater the distance, the greater the “friction” and the less the interaction, or the greater the cost of achieving the interaction.

gravity model

A mathematical prediction of the interaction between two places as a function of
their size (or other measure of attractiveness to interaction) and some measure of the distanceseparating them.

guest worker

A migrant permitted to work in a country other than their homeland due to a
temporary labor shortage. The best-known example of the use of guest workers is West Germany inviting people from Turkey in the aftermath of World War II.

internally displaced person

An IDP is a person who has had to leave their home community due to the danger caused by environmental catastrophe, civil unrest, or war, but has not sought refuge in another country.

intervening opportunity

The concept that closer opportunities will materially reduce the attractiveness of interaction with more distant—even slightly better—alternatives; a closer alternative source of supply between a demand point and the original source of supply.

law of retail gravitation

Any gravity model of shopping behavior, such as Reilly’s Breaking-Point Law or the potential model when applied to multiple stores or shopping centers.

link

A transportation or communication connection or route within a network

migration

The permanent (or relatively permanent) relocation of an individual or group to a new place of residence.

migration field

The area from which a given city or region draws the majority of its in-migrants

mobility

General term for all types of human movement through space and time, including
temporary travel and migration

movement bias

Any aggregate control on or regularity of movement of people, commodities, or
communication. Included are distance bias, direction bias, and network bias.

natural hazard

A process or event in the natural environment that has consequences harmful to
humans.

network

The areal pattern of sets of places ( nodes ) and the routes ( links ) connecting them, along which movement or communication can take place.

network bias

The view that the pattern of links in a network will affect the likelihood of flows
between specific nodes

node

An origin, destination, or intersection place in a communication or transportation
network

partial displacement migration

Migrations wherein migrants move to a new residence nearby, with a new activity spaces that overlap some with their former home ranges.

pattern

The design or spatial arrangement of phenomena on the Earth surface.

personal communication field

An area defined by the distribution of an individual’s short-range informal communications. The size and shape of the field are defined by work, recreation,
school, and other regular contacts and are affected by age, sex, employment, and other personal characteristics.

personal space

An invisible, usually irregular area around a person into which he or she does
not willingly admit others. The sense (and extent) of personal space is a situational and cultural variable.

place perception

Beliefs and attitudes people have about particular places, regions, or landscapes.

place utility

1: In human movement and migration studies, a measure of an individual’s
perceived satisfaction or approval of a place in its social, economic, or environmental attributes. 2: In economic geography, the value imparted to goods or services by tertiary activities that provide things needed in specific markets.

potential model

A measurement of the total interaction opportunities available under gravity model assumptions to a enter in a multicenter system.

pull factor

Characteristic of a locale that acts as an attractive force, drawing migrants from
other regions.

push factor

Unfavorable characteristic of a locale that contributes to the dissatisfaction of its
residents and impel their emigration.

Ravenstein’s laws of migration

E.G. Ravenstein, a British demographer, studied internal migration in England in the nineteenth century. Based on his data, he proposed several laws of migration. Many of these laws are still relevant today. These laws are: Most migrants only travel a short distance.; Migrants who travel longer distances usually move to big cities.; Most migration proceeds step by step.; Most migration is rural to urban movement.; Every migration fl ow results in a return migration, or counter-fl ow.; Most migrants are adults, and families are less likely to migrate internationally.; Most international migrants are adult males.

refugee

 Forced or reluctant migrant, usually at the international scale, feeing difcult or
dangerous environmental, military, economic, or political conditions.

Reilly’s Breaking-Point Law

A law of retail gravitation proposed by William J. Reilly that finds the breaking point or boundary line of the market area functional regions around two cities’ trade areas. It predicts that consumers will make shopping trips to the city within the market area in which they live.

reluctant relocation

When people relocate their residence (migrate) somewhat involuntarily.

remittance

Money sent by international migrants back to family members in their home
country.

rural-to-urban migration

A very common type of migration, particularly in economically developing countries, whereby people leave the countryside for a major city’s greater opportunities in employment, education, health care, etc.

space

As used by geographers, it does not refer to outer space but to areal extent on the
Earth’s surface, in and around which all humans exist and their activity occurs.

space-time compression

Expressions of the extent to which improvements in transportation and communication have reduced the friction of distance and permitted, for example, the very rapid diffusion of ideas across space. Globalization depends in part on spacetime compression.

space-time path

A diagram of the line through space and time which describes where we are at
any given time, how long we spend there, and how fast we move between locations; they are usually described at the scale of single days but may be monthly, yearly, or lifetime paths. Space-time paths must ft within space-time prisms.

space-time prism

A diagram of the volume of space and the length of time within which our activities are confined by constraints of our bodily needs (eating, resting), our daily responsibilities, and the means of mobility at our command.

spatial interaction

The movement (e.g., of people, goods, information) between different places; an indication of contact and interdependence between different geographic locations or areas.

spatial search

The process by which individuals evaluate the alternative locations to which they
might move.

step migration

A migration in which an eventual long-distance relocation is undertaken in
stages as, for example, from farm to village to small town to city. See also hierarchical migration.

temporary travel

Short-term mobility, such as journeys to stores, workplaces, school, entertainment locales, or vacation destinations, in which people intend to return home at the end
of the day or soon thereafter.

territoriality

An individual or group attempt to identify and establish control over a defined territory considered partially or wholly an exclusive domain; the behavior associated with the defense of the home territory.

time geography

The study of temporal and spatial properties of human activity, particularly temporary travel.

total displacement migration

Migrations wherein migrants move far enough so their new activity spaces do not overlap at all with their former home ranges.

transferability

Acceptable costs of a spatial exchange; the cost of moving a commodity relative
to the ability of the commodity to bear that cost.

transhumance

A type of nomadic migration in which herders move their flock between grazing areas according to the season.

voluntary migration

When people relocate their residence by free choice, without being forced
or compelled.