Academic literature on the topic 'Theses, OSU – Geography'

ABSTRACT Off-site construction (OSC) involves the fabrication and assembly of building components in a purpose-built factory which are then transported to the job site for final installation. OSC has proven to be a greener construction approach, spurring research towards benchmarking the sustainable attributes of the technique. However, a quantitative statistical analysis of studies on OSC sustainability and a framework of the knowledge domain are not well-established. Drawing on 642 bibliographic records from Scopus, this paper conducted a bibliometric and visualized analysis of research on the sustainability of OSC from 1971 to 2019. The findings show that research publications on OSC sustainability only witnessed steady growth since 2000. A geospatial analysis revealed that at least 32% of countries are involved in the OSC sustainability research, of which the United States, China, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada make the greatest contributions. The hot topics in the contemporary OSC sustainability research were identified as embodied carbon, embodied energy, construction waste, post-occupancy evaluation, resources conservation, and recycling, and cost savings. The paper identified areas that require further research. Thus, the paper offers an all-embracing understanding of the core research themes, trends, and patterns on OSC sustainability to stakeholders.

Climate change induced sea-level rise (SLR) is on its increase globally. Regionally the lowlands of China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and islands of the Malaysian, Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos are among the world’s most threatened regions. Sea-level rise has major impacts on the ecosystems and society. It threatens coastal populations, economic activities, and fragile ecosystems as mangroves, coastal salt-marches and wetlands. This paper provides a summary of the current state of knowledge of sea level-rise and its effects on both human and natural ecosystems. The focus is on coastal urban areas and low lying deltas in South-East Asia and Vietnam, as one of the most threatened areas in the world. About 3 mm per year reflects the growing consensus on the average SLR worldwide. The trend speeds up during recent decades. The figures are subject to local, temporal and methodological variation. In Vietnam the average values of 3.3 mm per year during the 1993-2014 period are above the worldwide average. Although a basic conceptual understanding exists that the increasing global frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones is related with the increasing temperature and SLR, this relationship is insufficiently understood. Moreover the precise, complex environmental, economic, social, and health impacts are currently unclear. SLR, storms and changing precipitation patterns increase flood risks, in particular in urban areas. Part of the current scientific debate is on how urban agglomeration can be made more resilient to flood risks. Where originally mainly technical interventions dominated this discussion, it becomes increasingly clear that proactive special planning, flood defense, flood risk mitigation, flood preparation, and flood recovery are important, but costly instruments. Next to the main focus on SLR and its effects on resilience, the paper reviews main SLR associated impacts: Floods and inundation, salinization, shoreline change, and effects on mangroves and wetlands. The hazards of SLR related floods increase fastest in urban areas. This is related with both the increasing surface major cities are expected to occupy during the decades to come and the increasing coastal population. In particular Asia and its megacities in the southern part of the continent are increasingly at risk. The discussion points to complexity, inter-disciplinarity, and the related uncertainty, as core characteristics. An integrated combination of mitigation, adaptation and resilience measures is currently considered as the most indicated way to resist SLR today and in the near future.References Aerts J.C.J.H., Hassan A., Savenije H.H.G., Khan M.F., 2000. Using GIS tools and rapid assessment techniques for determining salt intrusion: Stream a river basin management instrument. 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This study explores private and public campground markets in Oregon. A profile of private and public campgrounds, their prices, location, and amenities, served as the supply side statistics while responses from the 1997 Campground Questionnaire provided data for demand of Oregon campgrounds. The questionnaire inquired about respondents' last camping trip in Oregon, where they camped, how much they paid, the facilities available, the activities in which they participated, socioeconomic attributes, and included a dichotomous choice contingent valuation (CV) question. These data were used to statistically analyze differences in the supply and demand for the private and public campground sectors. First, the inventory was examined using OLS to estimate the effects of campground amenities and location on user fees charged at different campsite types at private, federal, and state campgrounds. Second, I used the survey data (i.e., respondent profiles and campground attributes) to estimate substitution probabilities among campsite type and campground ownership using a nonlinear multinomial logit model. Questionnaire information was also utilized to test for market segmentation and identify the user groups' characteristics. Finally, I utilized responses to the CV question to determine the amount of consumer surplus for Oregon state parks. The significant inventory results were as follows. The model predicted that tent sites at state campgrounds are more expensive, on average than tent sites at private campgrounds. National Forest campgrounds located in eastern Oregon, on average, are less expensive than those at private and state campgrounds. The survey statistical results predicted that users of tent sites appear to be the least price sensitive, for both private and public markets. Recreational vehicle owners are more price sensitive than tent owners in both the private and public markets. Furthermore, those campers that choose a full hookup site are the most likely to use the OPRD reservation system. The contingent valuation data revealed, through linear regression, that campers would be willing to pay $44.71 more than they currently pay for a camping trip if the payment were used to improve and maintain state parks. This research is intended to contribute statistical reference for user fees and general market information to the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department.
Graduation date: 1999

The archaeological resources contained in Corvallis Riverfront Commemorative Park (RCP) have a great potential to add to the historical record of the warehouse district of the original town of Marysville (Corvallis). The City of Corvallis' proposed Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) project and proposed changes to Riverfront Commemorative Park threaten to destroy archaeological resources within the research area. The purpose of this research was to assess the archaeological potential of the research area between VanBuren and Jefferson Avenues along the Willamette River. The assessment was based on an archaeological survey and historical documents. Historical records and maps were used to create a chronology of the developments which occurred within the research area. By knowing who occupied the riverfront and when, archaeologists can design a plan for the excavation of these resources. The archaeological survey was conducted to locate remains that may be related to structures that once occupied the riverfront. Maps of the City's proposed construction were used to determine the potential resources that will be impacted. The historical record indicated that there is a great potential for the research area to yield archaeological remains which can add to our knowledge about the formation of Marysville (Corvallis). These archaeological remains if properly excavated could be used for public interpretation and as a common theme within Riverfront Commemorative Park. An assessment of construction project maps for the CSO project and proposed changes to Riverfront Commemorative Park indicate that a majority of the archaeological resources contained within the research area will be destroyed. Based on these assessments it is recommended that the City of Corvallis conduct subsurface archaeological testing to recover as much information related to the settlement of the research area as possible.
Graduation date: 1998

The Quartz Mountain Obsidian Quarry is located in the Southeast corner of the Bend Fort Rock Ranger District in central Oregon, approximately forty-five miles southeast of Bend, Oregon. The research of the Quartz Mountain Obsidian Quarry began with a literature search of other quarry sites in the area and the use of aerial photos to determine the survey area. After the survey area was established a ground survey was conducted. Following the survey several key areas were chosen for surface collections that could answer key questions: What types of core reductions were being used on Quartz Mountain?; and What types of materials were being utilized? (red/black obsidian found in rhyolite veins, red/black obsidian found in fist sized and larger nodule form, or large block black obsidian). In order to answer these questions three collection units were established. The lithic material from the units was collected and analyzed and the information placed into a database, which was then grouped for statistical analysis, and generated into charts and tables. The resulting data was then compared to the information found from an extensive literature search to see how the material that I collected compared to those found at other quarry sites. From this information I was able to determine that two different core reduction methods were being used on Quartz Mountain: blade core and bifacial core. Along with the different core reduction methods a mobility strategy also came into play. In this thesis I will use the data gathered to determine the different core reduction methods and the mobility strategies that are associated with them.
Graduation date: 1998

The dominant view amongst contemporary analytic metaphysicians working on notions of metaphysical dependence and the overarching structure of reality is one according to which that reality is hierarchically structured (the hierarchy thesis), well-founded (the fundamentality thesis), populated by merely contingent fundamentalia (the contingency thesis), and consistent (the consistency thesis). The introduction to this volume addresses the reasons commonly offered in defence of these theses and evaluates their merits. If it is correct that these are the core commitments of the metaphysical foundationalist, then it is proposed that the view is not nearly on such firm footing as one might suppose. The chapter also argues that the alternatives to this view—metaphysical infinitism and metaphysical coherentism—ought to be taken more seriously.

Focusing on the theme of the mutually constitutive relations between geographic space and the economic order, Allen J. Scott discusses the problems of the location of economic activities, learning and innovation in industrial systems, and economic development. These problems are dealt with in both theoretical and empirical terms.

Focusing on early modern plays that stage encounters between peoples of different cultures, this book asks how a sense of geographical location was created in early modern theatres that featured minimal scenery. While previous studies have stressed these plays’ connections to a historical Mediterranean in which England was increasingly involved, this book demonstrates how their dramatic geography was shaped through a literary and theatrical heritage. Reading canonical plays including The Merchant of Venice, The Jew of Malta, and The Tempest alongside lesser-known dramas such as Soliman and Perseda, Guy of Warwick, and The Travels of the Three English Brothers, Dramatic Geography illustrates, first, how early modern dramatists staging foreign worlds drew upon a romance tradition dating back to the medieval period, and second, how they responded to one another’s plays to create an ‘intertheatrical geography’. These strategies, the book argues, shape the plays’ wider meanings in important ways, and could only have operated within the theatrical environment peculiar to early modern London: one in which playwrights worked in close proximity, in one instance perhaps even living together while composing Mediterranean dramas, and one where they could expect audiences to respond to subtle generic and intertextual negotiations. In reassessing this group of plays, the book brings into conversation scholarship on theatre history, cultural encounter, and literary geography; it also contributes to current debates in early modern studies regarding the nature of dramatic authorship, the relationship between genre and history, and the continuities that run between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This book, based on a philosopher’s experiences as dean over almost two decades, argues it is appropriate for the sciences and humanities to have different aims and for the values informing their inquiries also to be different. It maintains there are four core differences: (1) it is proper for the sciences but not the humanities to seek insights not limited to particular locations, times, or things; (2) the sciences but not the humanities value findings as independent as possible of the perspectives of the inquirers; (3) the sciences should be wholly descriptive while the humanities can also be concerned with prescriptive claims, which give expression to values; and (4) the sciences are organized to increase collective knowledge, whereas in the humanities individual insight is highly valued independently of its ability to generate consensus. Associated with these differences are secondary distinctions: different attitudes about an endpoint of inquiry; different notions of intellectual progress; different roles for expertise; different assumptions about simplicity and complexity; and different approaches to issues associated with consciousness. Taken together these distinctions constitute an intellectual geography of the humanities and sciences: a mapping of key features of their epistemology. In addition, the book discusses the role of universities in an era attached to sound bites and immediately useful results, and the importance of there being a healthy culture of research for both the sciences and humanities, one that treasures long-term intellectual achievements and whose presiding value is that with respect to many issues it ought not to be easy to have opinions.

This chapter offers a new reading of Catullus’ Lesbia by examining the poet’s spatial poetics. These poetics play a crucial role in shaping the worlds created in the poems. Catullus’ collection features three distinct poetics of place: topical, neoteric, and abstracted, clustered in specific groups of poems: the polymetrics, the carmina maiora, and the elegiac epigrams, respectively. As Lesbia is the only character (apart from the ‘Catullus’ persona) who appears in each group, she presents the ideal subject for examining how Catullus’ distinct poetics of place shape characterization in different genres of poetry. Furthermore, as a woman whose gender is frequently thematized, Lesbia presents a fulcrum for investigating how gendered ideologies of certain spaces might have shaped Catullus’ spatial poetics. This chapter offers close readings of three ‘Lesbia’ poems: 37, 68b, and 70, to highlight the importance of place and space to Lesbia’s role in each poem.

This chapter sets an analysis of the economy of interplaces in the context of broader debates and developments in human geography scholarship of the past four decades or so. In particular, it argues that the study of interplaces and their economies suggests the value of recovering older relational human geographical approaches with their twin emphasis on place and space. It also argues that there is an enduring need in economic geography to generate a limited but adequate variety of geographical concepts with which to analyse contemporary phenomena. Recent tendencies for the place/space debate to collapse into oppositions between scale or networks have been unhelpful. The author’s preference is for a limited set of concepts—some of which themselves lie somewhere between scalar or territorial metaphors on the one hand and network or topological metaphors on the other.

This volume explores the climates, landscapes, ecosystems and hazards that comprise the Mediterranean world. It traces the development of the Mediterranean landscape over very long timescales and examines modern processes and key environmental issues in a wide range of settings. The Mediterranean is the only region on Earth where three continents meet and this interaction has produced a very distinctive Physical Geography. This book examines the landscapes and processes at the margins of these continents and the distinctive marine environment between them. Catastrophic earthquakes, explosive volcanic eruptions and devastating storms and floods are intimately bound up within the history and mythology of the Mediterranean world. This is a key region for the study of natural hazards because it offers unrivalled access to long records of hazard occurrence and impact through documentary, archaeological and geological archives. The Mediterranean is also a biodiversity hotspot; it has been a meeting place for plants, animals and humans from three continents throughout much of its history. The Quaternary records of these interactions are more varied and better preserved than in any other part of the world. These records have provided important new insights into the tempo of climate, landscape and ecosystem change in the Mediterranean region and beyond. The region is unique because of the very early and widespread impact of humans in landscape and ecosystem change - and the richness of the archaeological and geological archives that chronicle this impact. This book examines this history and these interactions and places current environmental issues in long term context.

Where in our conceptual geography is “meaningful” best located and what conceptual work should it do? Agent-independent and agent-independent-plus conceptions of meaningfulness locate “meaningful” within the conceptual geography of agent-independent evaluative standards and assign “meaningful” to the work of commending lives. The chapter argues that the not wholly welcome implications of these more dominant approaches to meaningfulness make it plausible to locate “meaningful” on an alternative conceptual geography—that of agents as end-setters and of agent-dependent value assessments—and to assign it to the task of picking out lives whose time expenditures are valuable to the agent. The chapter develops a normative outlook conception of meaningful living and responds to the challenge confronting any subjectivist conception of meaningfulness that it is overly permissive.

Major advances in the use of geographic information systems have been made in both anthropology and archaeology. Yet there are few published discussions of these new applications and their use in solving complex problems. This book explores these techniques, showing how they have been successfully deployed to pursue research previously considered too difficult--or impossible--to undertake. Among the projects described here are studies of land degradation in the Peruvian Amazon, settlement patterns in the Pacific northwest, ethnic distribution within the Los Angeles garment industry, and prehistoric sociopolitical development among the Anasazi. Following an introduction that discusses the theory of geographic information systems in relation to anthropological inquiry, the book is divided into sections demonstrating actual applications in cultural anthropology, archaeology, paleoanthropology, and physical anthropology. The work will be of much interest within all these communities.

This book has argued the value of refocusing economic geography towards the economy apparent in between cities and nations. It has also suggested a limited arsenal of concepts that might be deployed when analysing the economy of interplaces. Nevertheless, this chapter concludes the book by noting some of the themes and issues omitted in its preceding discussions. It goes on to offer a critical discussion of the normative agendas associated with intermediaries, agglomerations, enclaves, networks, and arenas. It briefly notes some departure points for future economic geography research raised as a result of this consideration of the economy of interplaces.

Geographic issues loom large as the American population begins the new millennium. Regional fertility differentials are growing, social networks focus new immigrants on a small number of port-of-entry metropolitan areas and states, highly channelized migration streams redistribute population in response to economic and social restructuring, and a highly variegated landscape of aging has emerged. Perhaps at no other time in its history has the field of population geography been confronted with a more intellectually important and socially relevant research agenda. Building upon its strong tradition in spatial demography and incorporating an increasingly diverse set of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, population geography today seeks a more complete understanding of human movement, regional demographic variability, and the social context within which these population processes occur. In addition, population geographers increasingly tackle issues of policy significance. After a brief review of the history of population geography and an empirical analysis of its presence in geography’s major journals, we summarize six lines of contemporary research including studies of: (1) internal migration and residential mobility; (2) international migration, transnationalism, and the nexus of internal and international migration systems; (3) immigrant assimilation, acculturation, and the emergence of ethnic enclaves; (4) regional demographic variability; (5) the social context for population processes; and (6) public policy research. We conclude by identifying major challenges facing the field today and fruitful new directions for research including the need for greater emphasis on environmental issues, integration with geography’s new technologies, and more social relevance. Although geographers long had integrated population characteristics into their broader regional studies, population geography emerged as a distinct field of study only in the early 1950s. It, like urban geography, surfaced from a discipline that was strongly rooted in the study of rural cultural landscapes and regional inventories. Its birth was marked by the 1953 AAG presidential address of Glenn Trewartha, a noted climatologist and population geographer. Trewartha lamented the neglect of population in the discipline of geography, which was at that time organized into the subdivisions of physical and cultural geography. He argued for a new threefold structure organized around population, the physical earth, and the cultural landscape.

Geography in America has become more robust, more recognized, more marketable, more unified, and more diversified since the first publication of Geography in America (Gaile and Willmott 1989a). American geographers have built on geography’s traditional strengths, while simultaneously embracing valuable new ideas and evaluating important new perspectives that have challenged the established theory and knowledge base of the discipline (National Research Council 1997). The robustness of American geography is well illustrated within the chapters in this book. Across the discipline from Geographic Information Science to the regional geography of Africa, American geographers have been able to respond constructively to new challenges and criticism, including the clear need to understand and evaluate the causes and effects of the events of September 11, 2001. American geography at the dawn of the twenty-first century can be characterized by its unity amidst diversity. While our traditional focus on place—and on spatial relationships within and among places—continues to provide unity, a growing variety of research problems, methods, subfields, and epistemologies is increasing our diversity. While we well recognize the difficulty in defining “geography” satisfactorily (Gaile and Willmott 1989b), we also are persuaded that an understanding of our shared perspectives, principles, and goals holds the greatest promise for effectively integrating diversity into our discipline. For this reason, we offer a synopsis of the nature and practice of geography, which draws from earlier work and especially from the above-mentioned National Research Council (NRC) report. Several years ago, Gilbert White asked us personally to define “geography,” and we give a slightly revised version of that definition and characterization here. We continue to believe that geography “is not bounded,” but now feel that a meaningful definition and characterization of the nature and practice of geography is both possible and useful. Geography is the study and science of environmental and societal dynamics and society–environment interactions as they occur in and are conditioned by the real world. Geographic investigations into these are influenced by the character of specific places, as well as by spatial relationships among places and processes at work over a hierarchy of geographic scales.

Although the use of mathematical models and quantitative methods in geography accelerated in earnest with the development of quantitative geography and regional science in the late 1950s, such techniques had already made their way into the mainstream of physical geography much earlier. Today, mathematical models and quantitative methods are used in a number of subfields in geography with their proliferation being aided, in part, by the widespread use of remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and computer-based technology. As a consequence, geography as a whole has witnessed a new growth in the development of models and quantitative methods over the last decade, and it is this growth that we seek to elucidate here. Highlighting the advances in the use of models and methods in geography is a difficult undertaking. Such techniques are so widely used in GIS and remote sensing that many developments in these areas also could be considered in this chapter. Moreover, modeling and quantitative techniques are so strongly integrated within some geographic subfields (e.g. climatology and geomorphology, economic and urban geography, regional science) that it is often difficult to separate technique development from application. This is illustrated by the fact that many members of the Association of American Geographers who frequently use and develop quantitative techniques and models are not active participants in the Mathematical Models and Quantitative Methods Specialty Group, choosing instead to favor specialty groups with a more topical, rather than methodological, focus. In a very real sense, the quantitative revolution has been completed in many subfields of geography, with the goals and aims of the revolutionaries having long since passed into the mainstream. Furthermore, geographers who are involved with quantitative methods and mathematical models are extremely diverse in their interests and applications— they contribute to an extremely wide variety of disciplines. While they excel at spreading the geographic word to other disciplines, summarizing their multifarious contributions is nearly impossible. The rather trite statement, “Geography is what geographers do,” seems to apply strongly here. Geographers are largely a collection of individuals who, although united by their interest in spatial models and methods, are unique in the ways that they make contributions to various fields.

Transportation geography is the study of the spatial aspects of transportation. It includes the location, structure, environment, and development of networks as well as the analysis and explanation of the interaction or movement of goods and people (Black 1989). In addition it encompasses the role and impacts—both spatial and aspatial—of transport in a broad sense including facilities, institutions, policies and operations in domestic and international contexts. It also provides an explicitly spatial perspective, or point of view, within the interdisciplinary study of transportation. There has been substantial progress in the development of the transportation geography subfield over the last ten years. In 1993, the Journal of Transport Geography was started in the UK, providing the subfield with its own eponymous journal. Several second editions of key textbooks were published, including The Geography of Transportation (Taaffe et al. 1996), The Geography of Urban Transportation (Hanson 1995), and Modern Transport Geography (Hoyle and Knowles 1998). The Transportation Geography Specialty Group (TGSG) instituted the Edward L. Ullman Award for scholarly contributions to the subfield; recipients have included Edward Taaffe, Harold Mayer, Howard Gauthier, William Garrison, William Black, James Vance, Susan Hanson, Morton O’Kelly, Bruce Ralston, Donald Janelle, Thomas Leinbach, Brian Slack, and Kingsley Haynes. The specialty group also began honoring students who have written the best doctoral dissertations and masters theses each year, and a TGSG web page was created. The University of Washington Department of Geography instituted the Douglas K. Fleming lecture series in transportation geography at AAG annual meetings. Finally, transport geographers have played prominent roles in a Geography and Regional Science Program organized joint National Science Foundation/European Science Foundation initiative on Social Change and Sustainable Transport (SCAST) (Leinbach and Smith 1997; Button and Nijkamp 1997). This initiative led to the development of the North American-based Sustainable Transportation Analysis and Research (STAR) network led by geographer William Black as a counterpart to the European-based Sustainable Transport in Europe and Links and Liaisons with America (STELLA) network. Together, these initiatives and research networks offer significant opportunities for geographers to contribute to a growing body of literature on the environmental, economic, and equity implications of transportation systems.

. . . We have not really prescribed limitations of inquiry, method, or thought upon our associates. From time to time there are attempts to the contrary, but we shake them off after a while and go about doing what we most want to do. . . . We thrive on cross-fertilization and diversity. Sauer (1956) You can’t go wrong when you call something cultural, for it is the one term that, without necessarily specifying anything, carries the full weight of all possible forms of specificity. Gallagher (1995: 307) . . . Both these quotations, one recent and one nearly a half-century old, point to the monumental task before us in attempting to report on the progress of cultural geography over the past dozen years. Many things get called cultural geography, for many different reasons, with varying purposes in mind. Different people who consider themselves cultural geographers often have wildly different ideas of what this label means, as well as radically different approaches to what they do. We cannot pretend to encompass the whole of this body of work, and we must admit as much at the outset. Instead, let us begin with the specialty group itself, since it provides some focus and continuity for taking stock of the subfield. The Cultural Geography Specialty Group’s membership has increased slowly but steadily since the group’s inception in the late 1980s. With 465 members, the CGSG was, as of 2000, the Association of American Geographers’ fourth-largest specialty group out of fifty-seven, behind the GIS, Urban Geography, and Remote Sensing groups. In terms of topical proficiency among AAG members, cultural geography looms even larger. Cultural geography is the third most frequently claimed area of proficiency, behind only GIS and Urban Geography, with 848 practicing professionals, or 13 per cent of the AAG membership. And, given Gallagher’s and Sauer’s points, the number of people who might be claimed by someone as cultural geographers would be much larger than this. Reflecting on these numbers, it appears that, far from being a moribund subfield dying out in the face of a technological revolution in the discipline, cultural geography, however it may be defined, is actually flourishing on the eve of a new millennium.

Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution and they continue to dominate our lives as we enter the twenty-first century. Yet there are clear signs that the grip they have on every sector of society must soon relax in favor of other energy sources. Such a transition will not come because we are running out of fossil fuels, but rather because the environmental and social costs of their rapid use threaten our very existence on the planet. This is an expected development. From the time when fossil fuels first enabled and magnified humans’ dominion over the earth, the costs they brought—as any good economist would argue—have been inseparable from their benefits. Although the benefits were explicit and the local costs were experienced by many, it was not until skilled writers such as Zola, Orwell, Llewellyn, and Dickens vividly portrayed them that their widespread and pernicious nature was broadcast to those outside their immediate reach. Nowadays the problems we are grappling with have spread to the global scale, including atmospheric warming, thinning ozone, and rising exposure to above-background radioactivity. Understanding earth–energy associations is a task well matched to the varied skills of geographers. The worth of such study is increasingly apparent as the world’s human population continues to rise, as fossil fuels become more difficult to wrest from the earth, and as we continue to realize that there will be no risk-free, cost-free, or impact-free rabbits coming out of the alternative energy hat. In this chapter, we review developments in energy geography in the US and Canada as posted to the literature since the first edition of Geography in America, including a sprinkling from overseas to provide context. Owing to the fundamental nature of energy, we have accordingly cast a wide net in our background research, albeit with some boundaries. For example, while we discuss several important contributions to energy research by physical and environmental geographers, we excluded consideration of such themes as energy budgets, most climate change research, and mine-land reclamation and radioactive waste transport studies by hydrologists and geomorphologists.

The business geographer performing market analysis for real estate should become skilled in the advances of geographic technology, as well as geographic and real estate analysis and procedures. And the client should become skilled in judging the analyst's work. In this context, the eighteenth-century poetic essay by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is appropriate (see box 10.1). The left column is particularly relevant to the analyst practitioner, while the right column is particularly relevant to the client who is making his or her judgmental decision. The client, whether an investor, financier, or developer, should know enough about business geography and real estate market analysis to correctly understand the evaluation and report, know which questions to ask of the analyst, and know how to translate the report into correct judgment. The client making the judgmental decision should not have his or her vision clouded by details of the choice made for which data source to use for population projections, nor should the judgmental decision be steered off course by the choice between which desktop GIS software to use. Instead, the client has other considerations, such as How do I select and work with a business geographer performing market analysis for real estate projects? and When and how should a business geographer consultant be used? This chapter gets the reader started in these tasks. Financiers, investors, developers hire business geographers to provide a variety of services, including choosing the appropriate data, software, and methods to use, and rely on their professional skills of execution and ability to complete and present the report in a manner that will improve their judgment. The business geographer brings objectivity, professionalism, and both broad and specialized experience with similar projects. How should a business geographer be chosen? First, the prospective client should decide what project(s) the analyst is to evaluate. The type of projects a business geographer might be engaged to work on include; . . . Determining the highest and best-use for a given site Selecting the location and evaluating the viability at that location for a specific type of development Constructing an expansion strategy and location strategy for individual outlets of a new or existing chain of retail stores. . . . The client should decide whether outside expertise should be sought or whether the real estate market analyst functions should instead be performed in house.

The study of urbanization processes and urban spaces is contentious and problematic. Different disciplines focus on different processes and ways of knowing, and urban life—its contexts and problems—is tugged and twisted in so many directions that it is difficult to know the appropriate questions to ask, let alone to articulate future research directions. Mayors and other city leaders are concerned about civic boosterism and the quality of life in their cities, planners try to manage competing claims on space and movement, and environmentalists grapple with degradation and equity, while economists conjure up more appropriate models of development and growth. The urban arena is a context for competing intellectual claims and traditions that at times converge on consensus but more often than not garner dissent. We forefront our appraisal of the subfield with a contention that guides most of what is to follow. The contention is important because it necessarily limits the kinds of research we talk about. We argue that with the emergence of a more sophisticated articulation of spatial theory in the last decade, geographers are now well positioned to say something important about the urban issues that are shaping the new millennium. This sea change occurred in the 1990s and now places many aspects of geographic research at the forefront of urban analysis. The articulation of spatial theory comes in large part from two sources: first, critical geography with its focus on the spatial construction of social life and, second, from emerging ideas about technology and space. It is not our intention to dismiss the importance of empirical and interpretative studies, which are discussed tangentially in relation to the central theoretical themes of the chapter. In this review, however, we emphasize the articulation of spatial theory as a significant development in urban geography as we enter the twenty-first century. We begin in the first main section by picking up where “The Urban Problematic” left off in Geography in America (1989). We describe the ways in which American geography is rising to the challenge of understanding the tremendous changes that are underway in cities and argue that the work of urban geographers focusing on the roles of space and scale is critical to understanding these changes.

This chapter reviews the state of North American geographical research on Africa in the 1990s. During the 1980s research on Africa dwelt on the many crises, some real and some imagined, usually sensationalized by the media, such as the collapse of the state in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, and Rwanda and the economic shocks of structural adjustment programs. The 1990s witnessed momentous positive changes. For example, apartheid ended in South Africa and emerging democratic systems replaced dictatorial regimes in Malawi and Zambia. Persuaded that Africa had made progress on many fronts largely due to self-generated advances, some scholars began to highlight the positive new developments (Gaile and Ferguson 1996). Due to space limitations, selecting works to include in this review has been difficult. In many instances we stayed within five cited works (first authorship) for anyone scholar to ensure focus on the most important works and to achieve a sense of balance in the works cited. Thus, research reviewed in this chapter should be treated as a sample of the variety and quality of North American geographical work on Africa. One major challenge was where to draw the boundary between “geography,” “not quite geography,” and “by North American authors” versus others. In these days of globalized research paradigms, geography has benefited tremendously from interchanging ideas with other social and natural science disciplines. Thus, separating North American geographic research in the 1990s from other groundbreaking works that profoundly influence the discipline of geography is difficult. For example, while the empirical subject matter included agriculture, health, gender, and development issues, the related theoretical paradigm often included representation, discourse, resistance, and indigenous development within broader frameworks influenced by the ideas of social science scholars such as Foucault (1970, 1977, 1980), Said (1978), Sen (1981, 1990), and Scott (1977, 1987). This chapter engages these debates. Building upon T. J. Bassett’s (1989) review of research in the 1980s, the chapter develops a typology for the growing research on African issues and related theoretical orientations (Table 36.1). The reviewed works fall into the three main subdisciplines of geography—human geography (by far the most dominant), physical geography now commonly referred to as earth systems science or global change studies, and geographic information systems (GIS).

The pioneering work of North American geographers in the 1970s and early 1980s has laid a sound foundation for research and fieldwork opportunities in China (Karan et al. 1989), a nation largely closed to academics and others until the late 1970s. Building on this foundation, research on China geography since the last decade or so has witnessed phenomenal achievements in mass, diversity, and intellectual depth. Geographers have for a long time been captivated by China’s sheer size. But their recent scholarship must also be understood against the backdrop of that nation’s groundbreaking reforms and transformations since the late 1970s. China’s decisive integration into the world economy, in conjunction with its sweeping processes of socialist transition, has fascinated geographers all over the world. As this review will show, these changes have indeed defined the priorities and research agendas of many North American geographers. Their research has been significantly facilitated and stimulated by extensive and increasing contacts with scholars in China, through long-standing collaborations, fieldwork, and international conferences especially since 1979 when exchange of ideas and visits among North American and Chinese geographers have flourished. China’s opening its doors has also motivated a large number of excellent Chinese students to pursue advanced training in North American institutions, who have added considerably to the human resources of China geography there. The research output of North American China geographers is outstanding, which parallels the growth of China geography in general (Selya 1992b). The scope of their attention, however, is also uneven. In this review, we attempt to highlight achievements and dominant themes of inquiry since the late 1980s, as well as areas for future improvement. Recent research on China’s economic geography has concentrated on two substantive foci: regional development and foreign investment-induced growth. Both are rooted in China’s economic transformations and have far-reaching spatial implications.

Accurate understanding and forecasting of traffic conditions is a key contemporary problem for local policymakers. Road networks are increasingly congested, yet data on usage patterns is often scarce or expensive to obtain, meaning that informed policy decision-making is difficult. This paper explores the extent to which traffic disruption can be estimated from static features of the volunteer geographic information site OpenStreetMap [OSM]. Kernel Density Estimates of OSM features are used as predictors for a linear regression of counts of traffic incidents at 6,500 separate points within the Oxfordshire road traffic network. For highly granular points of just 10m2, it is shown that more than half of variation in traffic outcomes can be explained with these static features alone. Furthermore, use of OSM’s granular point of interest data improves considerably on more aggregate categories which are typically used in studies of transportation and land use. Although the estimations are by no means perfect, they offer a good baseline model considering the data is free to obtain and easy to process.