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Pages 55-76

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From page 55...
... However, it is difficult to measure what matters about places because their nature depends on both physical and social characteristics. They not only have a location, territorial domain, and natural environment, but also are social constructs, shaped by human behavior and interactions.
From page 56...
... 56 COMMUNITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE and for the kind of data needed for place-based decision making. We may observe in data or analysis a fixed territory over time, but we are seldom observing a fixed collection of people.
From page 57...
... A node is a spatial and temporal cluster of interactions and common experiences, and it occurs wherever people meet together to work, buy and sell, study, talk, receive health care, cheer for a champion that represents them, or enjoy or fear the natural environment, for example. Then a person's place his or her "here" or a community that he or she "belongs to" is a group of nodes in which a person frequently spends time that are near each other spatially.
From page 58...
... The connections mean that decisions in a single place at one momentabout lifestyles, economic competitiveness, transportation choices for both people and goods, and environmental amenities affect the livability of multiple other places at different scales and over the course of the future. Our concern with nodes is consistent with the concern about time geography (discussed in Chapter 3~.
From page 59...
... A couple living in an apartment house in Milwaukee regards their neighborhood their city block and a few adjoining blocks as their place, because the nodes of home, common space of the apartment house, and stretches of sidewalk are important in their lives. However, they also regard the school district as their place, because another important node in their social network is the high school that their children attend.
From page 60...
... The following description of the concept of time geography illustrates the constraints and the importance of both space and time in conditioning human movement within and between places. Time Geography and Movement in Time and Space Torsten Hagerstrand and other geographers at Lund University in Sweden developed the concept of time geography in the 1960s (Hagerstrand, 1970~.
From page 61...
... A job may require presence at a work site for a fixed number of hours per week. However, stores, medical facilities, and government offices are at limited numbers of locations in space and are open at limited hours.
From page 62...
... Political Places Every brief definition has its problems, and an especially important complication for a definition of place based on nodes is created by political boundaries. In practice, including transportation planning, political jurisdictions are meaningful places for all residents, even if the residents do not frequently interact.
From page 63...
... They also impose inertia on social change and contribute to path dependence by virtue of containing some relatively long-lived features that human activity can change, but usually only gradually. Natural environments of places evolve over time because of ecosystem dynamics, extreme geophysical events (such as earthquakes)
From page 64...
... Thus, we have again a mutual feedback process in connection with the natural and the built environments. Traditions, conventions, and norms also affect places, as emphasized in the recent literature on "social capital" (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1993, 2000; Becker, 1996~.
From page 65...
... This social capital may have the same durability and slow-changing nature as the natural and built environments, but it is likely to have more in common with the built environment than the natural environment in this respect. Rural Places Rural places are especially difficult to define without using the flexible criteria of near and frequently in identifying the nodes that collectively make up a person's place.
From page 66...
... A strong sense of community, often considered an essential part of a sense of place, is a form of social capital and sometimes an important
From page 67...
... 194~. Here again is an example in which the spatial dependence between places of similar scale is a major determinant of the character of place at a higher scale.
From page 68...
... Some common statistical indicators actually count the relevant population in a way not yet mentioned. Consider numbers such as total income, per capita income, poverty rate, illness due to poor environmental quality, and quality of public services per capita.
From page 69...
... Many things affect choice, including the expected efficacy of voice if the person stays. If policy makers wish to retain populations, they have to design political processes that facilitate participation in the decision process.
From page 70...
... 2~. Travel between the territories may be by foot, bicycle, private car, or public transportation, but regardless of travel mode, the spaces between the lived-in territories are important features that help define the entire assemblage.
From page 71...
... Kinds of Linkages Between Places Linkages related to transportation include personal travel, complementary and competitive connections in economic trade, movement of capital, and common experiences in political places. One common thread is the importance of air transportation, which looms larger in importance than in the previous discussion.
From page 72...
... Economic Trade and Competitive Connections Most firms must compete for customers, and the quality of transportation affects competitiveness. This group of linkages is not sharply distinguishable from the previous ones, since producers of raw materials and intermediate goods must compete for customers, as do producers of final products.
From page 73...
... Residents of Northam and Southam have limited control over transportation decisions made in their state capital, but the residents of the two towns are inextricably linked together by the decisions made in Capital City. Travel within and between towns, travel in and out of the state, economic trade, and competition all of these are affected by political jurisdictions.
From page 74...
... 1992. Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion.
From page 75...
... people prosperity: Welfare considerations in the geographic redistribution of economic activity.
From page 76...
... :~ Expressways and Byways, 1971, by Edward Koren. Courtesy of New Yorker magazine.


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