Center for Spatial Studies

The analysis of space and place has become an increasingly important component of social science research in the past two decades (Goodchild et al. 2000). This is mainly due to recent advances in spatial technologies (especially GIS), the availability of a massive amount of geocoded data, and the recognition that space can be a powerful integrating framework for social science disciplines. In light of the growing significance of space, location, and place in social science research, and based upon the vision that a spatial approach provides a compelling integrating framework for the social sciences, the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS) was established to develop unrestricted access to tools and perspectives that will advance the spatial analytic capabilities of researchers throughout the social sciences. 1 CSISS is funded by the National Science Foundation (USA) under its program of support for infrastructure in the social and behavioral sciences. It focuses on spatial analysis as an integrating force for the social sciences and seeks to achieve its goals through six interrelated programs: learning resources, workshops, best-practice publications, place-based search methodologies, software tools development, and a virtual community (e.g. Goodchild and Janelle 2003). These programs are informed by recent advances in spatial information science, and are designed to provide infrastructure to facilitate the national dissemination of spatial perspectives across the social science disciplines. The contributors of this special issue of the Journal of Geographical Systems were the instructors of the CSISS workshop on Accessibility in Space and Time: A GIS Approach, held at the Ohio State University in July 2002. As part of the CSISS program, the workshop is based upon the premise that concepts and methods for analyzing accessibility are essential for understanding many significant social, economic, and political issues (e.g., access to jobs, healthcare, transportation, and other public facilities for different

Travel-time connectivity is a key factor in defining a process of the spatial reorganization of man's: functional establishments. A case study relating highway development with the growth in wholesale activity for selected cities in the upper midwest of the United States indicates that, aside from being a good surrogate of transport efficiency, travel-time connectivity is also a good measure of the relative advantage of a given place in attracting to itself the centralization and specialization of human activity. functional framework which includes a A measure of the friction of distance, such as time or cost of travel, seems essential in a study of central place development. Furthermore, as Blaut noted, structure (the areal arrangement of earth-space phenomena) and process (the rearrangement of these phenomena over time) are one and the same thing-that is: ''. .. structures of the real world are simply slow processes of long dur a t i~n. "~ Inherent in Blaut's view is the implicit existence of a temporal pattern in each and every spatial pattern3 Thus, these two factors, the friction of distance (measured in travel-time) and historical development,

were substantial; they prepared the call for participation, screened alternative sites for the conference and applications from prospective participants, reviewed options for the meeting agenda, chaired the principal paper and breakout sessions during the meeting, prepared the reports that appear in this document, and assessed seed-grant proposals that will help guide future accessibility research. Special recognition is given to Helen Couclelis, who inspired the proposal for a Varenius initiative on accessibility in the information age.

The 1980s have witnessed a reflective mood among geographers in many lands. Little wonder indeed that during this decade which celebrates the centennials of foundation for numerous associations, societies, and university departments of geography, one's thoughts turn toward the record, the dream and reality, ethos and structures of the discipline,and some speculate cautiously about i t s future. The Goodchild and Janelle article invites such critical selfexamination, and directs attention toward issues of specialization versus integration in the thought and practice of American geography. Analysis of AAG membership affiliations to a range of special interest categories, they hope, could offer "an empirically-based discussion of the current structure of specialization in the discipline" (Goodchild and Janelle 1988, 3).

The integration of geographically referenced information into the conceptual frameworks and applied uses of the social sciences and humanities has been an ongoing process over the past few centuries. It has gained momentum in recent decades with advances in technologies for computation and visualization and with the arrival of new data sources. This article begins with an overview of this transition, and argues that the spatial integration of information resources and the cross-disciplinary sharing of analysis and representation methodologies are important forces for the integration of scientific and artistic expression, and that they draw on core concepts in spatial (and spatio-temporal) thinking. We do not suggest that this is akin to prior concepts of unified knowledge systems, but we do maintain that the boundaries to knowledge transfer are disintegrating and that our abilities in problem solving for purposes of artistic expression and scientific development are enhanced through spatial perspectives. Moreover, approaches to education at all levels must recognize the need to impart proficiency in the critical and efficient application of these fundamental spatial concepts, if students and researchers are to make use of expanding access to a broadening range of spatialized information and data processing technologies.

Geographic tools for the analysis of spatially referenced information now serve the research needs for a broad range of academic disciplines and public purposes. Nonetheless, the diffusion of spatial technologies into the curricula of most disciplines remains limited. This article reviews initiatives of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS) to address this problem through a programme of national dissemination in the United States. The experiences of its Spatial Perspectives on Analysis for Curriculum Enhancement (SPACE) programme are probed for guidelines on structuring workshops to serve undergraduate instructors in their efforts to advance spatial thinking in the social sciences.

Information/communication technologies definitely hold potential to make more efficient use of existing and new transport facilities, but serious questions arise concerning their likely impact on environmentally sustainable futures. Validity of the substitution hypothesis, that transportation will give way to communication, is increasingly in doubt. Information about information and communication technologies The European Union recently issued a call for tenders for a regional telecommunications atlas to describe the state of infrastructure and service provision on a regional level. A similar effort is needed in North America to more clearly identify the relationship of such technologies to transportation and to monitor the space-time diffusion of their accessibility. Spatial structures and telecommunicationtransportation futures

This paper concentrates on the dualistic role of transportation as a pro-active agent of globalization and as a beneficiary of its development. Surprisingly, transportation is possibly the least researched element in the complex of factors that foster a changing world economy. The goal is to suggest areas that require an informed social science perspective based on research that will enhance theoretical understandings and policy formulations. Beginning with a focus on changes in the nature of demand for transportation and its supply, the discussion considers issues relating to regional inequalities in accessibility, standardization for multimodal transport, and governance of global transportation. The vulnerability of transport-dependent globalization, and the role of transportation in the dematerialization of society for sustainable development are also areas suggested for extended research.

OST scholars in geography and related social sciences have recognized that the locational structure of man's economic, political and cultural activities is not in a static state. Yet very little attempt has been made to conceptualize the manner by which the spatial arrangement of man's establishments change over time. This study seeks to provide at least a partial solution for meeting this need. (1) AN EVOLVING SETTLEMENT STRUCTURE. The geometric patterns of human settlement are linked by a framework of transport lines which, through time, have varied greatly in their capacities for volume and speed of traffic. If the speed of man's transport carriers were uniform throughout the world, if he could travel in any direction and over any type of terrain at a given speedneither faster nor slower-then it is possible that settlement patterns would exhibit some of the geometric regularity of the Christaller-Losch models. (2) In reality, however, the adoptions of transport innovations which alter the time and cost distances separating man's functional establishments have occurred neither simultaneously nor uniformly in all directions from all points on the earth. While such considerations shed doubt upon suggestions for static and formal patterns of spatial organization, it is not the intent of this effort to discredit the central place networks of Christaller and Losch; rather, the descriptive model proposed in this study seeks to characterize the dynamics of the settlementtransport complex. Thus spatial patterns will be viewed as phenomena evolving in a realm of time-space.

Ontario LOCATIONAL CONFLICT is a frequent by-product of efforts to change the physical structure of man-made environments. Within the geography discipline, theoretical and empirical interests in the conflict basis of public and private decisions on the use of land were stimulated in the early 1970s by the work of Julian Wolpert and his associates.' The resolution of conflicts over the locations of specific activities is seen as an important means of allocating benefits among locations2 and has led to considerable variations in the distribution of necessary services and amenities among residents of the Indeed, irrespective of overt evidences of conflict occurrence, David Harvey has characterized the land-use pattern itself as an important indicator of the socio-political rules which direct urban de~eloprnent.~ Although the conceptualization of locational-conflict research has drawn broadly from economics and other social sciences, the empirical work in this area has been more narrowly conceived, focusing on individual conflict issues and emphasizing their unique sets of participants, arguments, and environmental circumstances. Michael Dear has called attention to the difficulties imposed by this case-by-case approach on efforts to account for the system-wide impacts of specific land-use decisions.5 But, in addition, this approach has not permitted a rigorous characterization of the geographic pattern of conflicts within urban regions. For this purpose, there is need for a consistent set of data to identify the full range of conflicts associated with a city's development over given time periods. Ideally, such a data base should be readily available for cities of different sizes and cultural settings so that general conceptualizations of conflict patterns can be hypothesized and tested. Evidence on land-use changes might provide the basis for such analysis. But, land-use changes per se need not necessarily lead to locational conflicts. Nonetheless, areas having high levels of land-use transition may be expected to generate more overt public debates over land-use issues than areas of comparative stability. Although no specific identity of locational conflicts was attempted, Bourne's" analysis of the aggregate of changes for 27 land-use activities within metropolitan Toronto offers an important contextual framework for understanding an urban area's conflict pattern. Using a principal components procedure, he defined a typology of the most significant components of change from 1963 to 1971. This consisted of (1) suburbanization, (2) the renewal of the urban core and fringe, (3 1 public park expansion and the growth of service networks (utilities and roads), and (4) the growth and decline of nucleated specialized activities (e.g., the removal of industrial uses from the inner-city and the spread of institutional, recreational, and high-rise residential uses to the suburbs). The research described in this paper results in conclusions which parallel those of Bourne; however, it differs with respect to specific objectives, the sources of data, and the procedures of analysis.

Background The National Science Foundation funded CSISS (1999-2005) to enhance national research infrastructure for the social and behavioral sciences. CSISS provided opportunities to engage social and behavioral scientists in the explicit recognition of spatial perspectives and use of spatial analytic tools. This book was devised as a conduit for the main CSISS ideals into academia. The concept for the book was developed in summer 2000 and was released to the public by Oxford University Press in 2004. The notion of "spatial social science" is in its formative stages. It is drawing momentum from rapidly expanding applications of new geographic information technologies, improved software, and newly available geographically referenced data of relevance to social science issues. We anticipate that spatial thinking and analysis will expand greatly over the next few years and we hope that this book will assist this important transition. In identifying contributors, we looked for authors of articles with relevant content who were widely cited, supported from major peer-reviewed funding programs, and noted for use of spatial approaches within their sciplines. Though the authors represent several disciplines, they have one major attribute in common-the application of spatial thinking in their research designs and execution. Objective This book illustrates how the spatial perspective adds value and insight to social science research, beyond what traditional non-spatial approaches might reveal and makes available outstanding examples on the uses of spatial thinking. 21 chapters illustrate how spatial analysis fosters theoretical understanding and empirical testing. Each chapter exemplifies the founding principle for the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS)-that the analysis of social phenomena in space and time enhances our understanding of social processes. The chapters offer substantive empirical content for illustrating the interpretation of specific spatial analytic approaches suited to advanced research in the social sciences. It is our hope that the book will help cultivate an integrated approach to social science research that recognizes the importance of location, space, spatiality, and place. Aside from demonstrating applications of spatial analysis in research, it is anticipated that this book will also be suited as an advanced-level text for a trans-disciplinary audience.