In a similar vein, I often wonder what is exactly an agglomeration in
material and scalar terms. When I look at maps of agglomerations in
southern California (say the furniture industry) on a four page foldout
map, the agglomeration looks like lots of little dissassociated dots,
sometimes clustered into anemic patches.
But when the data is compressed to fit on one map on 8.5 by 11 (or even
A4) paper, things look much more snug and agglomerative. And this is
even when distances are say 70 or 80 miles from the two furthest
points. Are those two locations still part of the same agglomerative
field?
When I look at the German book publishing industry housed in much
more compact cities I realize that what counts as an agglomeration in the
literature on North American agglomerations does not really work in the
German context. Maybe its all the suburbs and pavement between the two
points in the Southern California case, whereas in the german case there
is lots of green forest between Frankfurt and Mainz. Hmm.
So I guess most of these notions: agglomerations, hills, valleys, near
and far are fairly fuzzy and dynamic concepts.
Jeff Boggs
Doctoral Candidate
UCLA Department of Geography
Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Hillary Shaw wrote:
> Try this on your friends. Ask them how high does an elevated area of ground
> have to be above its surroundings to be a mountain. Probably a bit more than 10
> metres, but not as high as 5,000 meters. So what about 150 metres, 300
> meters, 600 metres? Is it a cultural thing (maybe the Dutch regard as mountains what
> a Nepalese barely sees as hills) - I remember some years ago some Dutch
> coming from Harwich to London on the train to London, late afternoon, in order to
> get a night train up to Scotland. They were quite impressed by the hills of
> eastern Essex - love to have seen their faces on waking up in the Grampians. In
> Denmark they have, as the highest point, the Skov Hoj, or sky mountain, all of
> 170 metres above sea level.
> Or what about slope? Is a three hundred metre high eminence with a 30 degree
> slope more of a mountain than a thousand metre eminence with 5 degree sides?
> The same logic applies to deserts, or seas, for instance. How big does a
> desert, or a sea, have to be to count as such. 1 square kilometer of sand? Twenty?
> Five hundred?
> Most people wouldn't count a 2 square kilometre area of sand a desert, if
> surrounded by more fertile areas, but many would if it was surrounded by sea - a
> desert island? Why does what surrounds a desert alter our perception of how
> big it has to be? What of a 2 sq kilometre desert island with a 20 hectare town
> on it?
> I havent seen much on the geog literature about this, but a straw poll of
> friends suggests we use such terms in everyday speech without really thinking
> what we mean by such. Especially if we're going to be using precise tools like
> GIS mapping, maybe we should have some idea of what therse things actually are.
> Or is geography forever condenmed to be an imprecise science?
> Hillary Shaw, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT
> [log in to unmask]
>
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