Aspects of Spatial Thinking – Synonym List
Different people/disciplines sometimes use different terms for the same basic concept.
Location – where is it?
(That’s the entrance ticket to a geographical investigation.
It is what makes a study geographical as opposed to historical, scientific, etc.)
The concept of location has two components:
Conditions – what is at a place site ecological perspective
Connections – how a place is linked with others situation
spatial perspective
Aspects of spatial thinking:
Comparison
similarity
Influence
aura
Region
group
Hierarchy
magnitude
inequality
rank
ratio
localization quotient
halo corona neighborhood effect surroundings buffer distance decay
category
position
classification formal region
enclosure
order
subdivision
nodal region
subregion
extension
point-in-polygon
Transition
sequence slope gradient rate of change gradual/steep abrupt/diffuse border
Analogy
equivalence
Pattern
random
Association
structural similarity
even
clustered
correlation
bias
covariation
parallel
balance
co-location
shape
pattern similarity
“sister city”
alignment
symmetry
overlay/and
Aspects of spatio-temporal thinking:
Change
then and now
Movement
Diffusion
flow
spread
trend
trade
growth
migration
expansion
legacies of past use
push-pull
contagion
chokepoint
relocation
sequent occupance
breakpoint
4th dimension
Strategies for combining various modes of spatial/temporal thinking:
Spatial Model
Exception
thinking about how something that happens in one place
can affect other places, perhaps quite far away
residual
deviation
outlier
overlay/or
hypothesis generator
©2006, New York Center for Geographic Learning contact [email protected]