The term neighbourhood is used for everything that is close, nearby, contiguous. Distance as measure of separation, of interval between two places may not be dissociated from the definition of a neighbourhood. The neighbourhood reaches its limit point (immediate neighbourhood) when the spatial units are contiguous, adjoining. A neighbourhood is always expressed into a metric […]
In geography, the notion of process integrates the idea of movement (from Latin pro-cedere: to go forward), of chain of actions or facts. Just as the idea of “dynamics”, with which it is sometimes confused, a process makes part of a temporal approach of diachronic type. But in a process, the chain of facts is […]
In statistics, a distribution is random or stochastic or realised by chance, when its composing elements may occur at any moment in time or may appear in any location with some probability. A random distribution may however follow a characteristic process that gives it a particular form (e.g. Poisson distribution, normal distribution, law of Galton-Gibrat). […]
In the strong sense, segregation is a policy for setting aside or relegating a population forming a religious or racial sub-group by legally confining them to one or several quarters of a city (spatial segregation); these populations also undergo political, economic or legal disciminations (social segregation). Among the older segregation models we can cite the […]
Spatiality combines all conditions and practices of individual and social life that are linked to relative position of individuals and groups with regard to one another. One fundamental postulate of geography is that those relative positions (or geographical situations) determine, probably or partly, form and intensity of social interactions. These in turn build back, while […]
A system is an autonomous entity with regard to its environment, organised in a stable structure (identifiable in the course of time), constituted by interdependent elements, whose interactions contribute in maintaining the system structure and making it evolve. The main epistemological contributions to the notion of system are : a circular conception of causality (retro-action […]
The general theoretical position of spatial analysis consists in proposing a partial explanation as well as prediction possibilities about the state and probable evolution of geographical objects / entities, on basis of knowledge of their situation with respect to other geographical objects. There exists not yet any general theory of geographical space that could be […]
The general theoretical position of spatial analysis consists in proposing a partial explanation as well as prediction possibilities about the state and probable evolution of geographical objects / entities, on basis of knowledge of their situation with respect to other geographical objects. There exists not yet any general theory of geographical space that could be […]
Area in which customers of a shop, of a commercial centre or of retail and services of a city are recruited.