Chapter 3 Spatial Interaction and Spatial Behavior

• A fundamental question to ask is “what considerations influence how individual human beings use space and act within it?”
  • Ex. The gold rush brought thousands of people to new regions in search of riches.
• Spatial interaction is the contact between humans and places.
  • This is an important matter as it demonstrates how humans live with other humans and how they make use of the resources and space around them.

3.1 Bases for Interaction

• For two places to interact one must have what the other one wants.
• Complementarity; there needs to be a direct supply and demand for the goods.
  • Ex. The Amazon and Greenland are not likely to be close traders but America and Canada are.
• Transferability: there needs to be an acceptable means of cost to trade, this includes the logistics of moving goods.
  • Essentially, how mobile the goods are to move to another region.
• Intervening opportunities reduce the supply/demand interactions between distant complementary areas.
  • Ex. Manhattan would not trade with the Sahara for sand if it’s available in the greater New York region,
• The three conditions mentioned above are the controlling factors on how goods move around the globe.
• Distance Decay
  • When an activity declines due to the distance of said activity increases.
  • All humans are influenced by the friction of distance, they will generally choose the closest and nearest location for their needs.
  • The decay is not linear and needs to account for many other factors such as cost.
• The gravity concept
  • Humans go to larger areas to seek fortune, not smaller towns in the countryside.
  • Newton’s law of universal gravity in simpler terms states that larger things have bigger forces of attraction than smaller ones.
  • Ex. Malls with more stores, Cities with more opportunities.
  • Direction bias is used to show that flows are not random and there are reasons why people use certain routes to get to certain places.

3.2 Human Spatial Behavior

• Geographers study behavior to improve models of spatial interaction to comprehend economic rationality and social gravity.
  • They do so by learning about the psychology of how people interact with the environment.
• They account for how every human is different regardless of age, sex or culture.
• Mobility is used to describe the movement of humans through space and time
  • Ex. Going to work and school or the grocery store.
• Migration is used to describe the relocation of humans and where they settle
  • Ex. Going to college, refugees coming to a new country, seasonal workers.

3.3 Individual Activity Space

• Territoriality is the emotional attachment to and the defence of home ground
  • Ex. Gangs defending their “turf, people protecting their houses.
• All humans claim a personal space as a zone of privacy and separation that their culture and circumstances permit.
• Humans also have an activity space where they move freely about their daily affairs
  • A suburban family may have a larger space due to their cars and jobs being further away.
  • People living in smaller slums have a much smaller space compared to others.
  • Many factors play into how one interacts with their space.

3.4 The Tyranny of Time

• The study of the temporal characteristics of activities in conjunction with their spatial characteristics is known as time geography.
• Every human has their space-time path which includes their daily activities.
  • Everyone has a certain amount of time in their day where they must conduct their responsibilities for work, parenting, eating etc.
• Geographers apply the study of space-time budgets for problems like traffic control, mass transit and highway design.

3.5 Distance and Human Interaction

• The majority of our trips are less than 20 minutes from home and humans are less likely to travel further to see friends and complete errands.
• Spatial Interaction and the Accumulation of Information
  • Information travels through many different mediums; people, media, telephones.
  • The internet has made worldwide communications almost instant and transferability of information is no longer an issue.
• Information Flows
  • Two types of flows
  • Individual (person to person)
  • Mass communication (source to area)
  • Each person also has their communication field
  • This field includes all the social contact it has during work or recreational activities.
• Information and Cognition
  • All the decisions humans make are based on their cognition, geographers refer to this as place perception.
  • The most efficient transfer of information comes from word-of-mouth reports. Whether that be family, friends or reporters.
  • There are plenty of barriers to long-distance information such as money, mountains, oceans, different religions, language and political systems.
• Cognition of Environment
  • The more familiar a person is with an area the more factual they will sound talking about it, while others have opinions that are not derived from true information.
• Natural Hazards
  • Although the term includes natural, the amount of damage done to a certain area is determined by the amount of human settlement in the area.
  • Even after major disasters, most people begin to rebuild immediately after the disaster settles.
  • People aren’t the most aware of regions that are prone to such natural disasters.
  • Ex. People in California are concerned about tornados when thinking of moving to Kansas but are unconcerned about the earthquakes on the west coast.
  • Geographers have been studying why people continue to live in such dangerous regions even though it may not be worth the risk
  • Only 1% of all residential moves are due to natural disaster worries
  • Geographers believe that this is because people just don’t think it's likely to hit their specific house.
  • If people have not been previously affected by a disaster they believe that it’s not likely to occur. Essentially they believe that their reasonings outweigh the chance of it happening to them.
• Migration
  • Migration is the permanent or planned long-term relocation of a residential place.
  • Migration affects national economic structures, determines population density and alters traditions and language.
  • Migration can be a college student changing dorms in his first year to the Europeans in the 19th century coming to America for riches and better opportunities.
  • Total displacement migration: Moving far from home, a place that has no activity spaces that overlap with their previous homes.
  • Partial displacement migrations: Where a local moves to a place nearby their previous house and has overlapping activity spaces.
  • In the 19th and 20th centuries, there was an influx of immigration to first-world countries due to the industrial revolution and the wars.
  • Many countries faced socio-economic issues with their resources being exerted.
  • In more recent times urban growth in these first-world countries has slowed down and the developing countries are urbanizing quicker than ever.
• Motivations to Migrate
  • Migration can be forced or voluntary
  • Between the 16th and 19th centuries, 10 to 12 million Africans were forcefully migrated to the Western Hemisphere.
  • Soviets were relocated in the early 20th century from the countryside into cities.
  • Many countries with a high refugee population are among the poorest.
  • Poverty is the largest motivator of migration
  • Droughts, floods, wars and, terrorism are also deciding factors
  • Essentially Migrants move because they believe that their life circumstances will be better at their destination.
• Controls on Migration
  • Push factor
  • The loss of jobs, overcrowding, poverty, war and famine are factors that lead people to migrate.
  • Pull factor
  • Safety, food, better climate, opportunity and better education are all reasons that attract people who wish to migrate.
  • Migrants generally get familiar with a couple of things before they move
  • They understand its utility (pull factors).
  • They get familiar with the region and try to understand what it’s like.
  • They try to reduce uncertainty about their new destination.
  • Chain migration is when the mover joins an established migrant flow of people from a common origin where they all migrate to a prepared destination.
  • Ex. All newspaper vendors in New Delhi come from the south of India.
  • Ex. All construction workers in New Delhi come from the east of India.
  • Most migrants move up the hierarchy of communities
  • Ex. From towns to cities or from a developing country to an established one.
  • Many rules of migration from the 1880s apply today as well.
  • Most migrants go a short distance and if longer it is to a larger city.
  • Generally from rural to urban.
  • Generally, young males migrate and families are not likely to.
  • Also are between the ages of 15 and 39.
  • Female migrants are motivated by economic pushes and pull
  • The majority of young and single women migrate to urban areas.

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