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The search for empirical regularities in spatial distributions as a basis for generalizations about spatial structures. The approach was pioneered by a physicist, John Q. Stewart, and developed with William Warntz, who was employed on the American Geographical Society\'s Macrogeography Project (see Warntz, 1984; Johnston, 1997).
Stewart and Warntz\'s agenda was similar to that associated with the application of general systems theory to geography; they sought scale-free generalizations. Their most lasting contribution to spatial analysis was the concept of population potential, cartographic surfaces which generalize point (and point-in-area) distributions, which underpinned later developments in classification and regionalization using geographical information systems. (Cf. centrography.)Â (RJJ)
References and Suggested Reading Johnston, R.J. 1997: Geography and geographers: Anglo-American human geography since 1945, 5th edn. London: Arnold. Warntz, W. 1965: Macrogeography and income fronts. Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute. Warntz, W. 1984: Trajectories and coordinates: geography as spatial science. In M. Billinge et al., eds, Recollections of a revolution. London: Macmillan. |
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