Geography
Functional Regions
Functional regions are geographic areas defined by a specific function or activity that occurs within them. These regions are characterized by a central point or node from which the function radiates outwards, creating a network of interconnected activities. Examples include transportation hubs, economic trade areas, and communication networks.
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10 Key excerpts on "Functional Regions"
- Matt Duckham, Michael F. Goodchild, Michael Worboys, Matt Duckham, Michael F. Goodchild, Michael Worboys(Authors)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
Definitions of Functional Regions frequently offer nodal region as a synonym. The idea here is that interaction emanates from a node, a point-like feature from which movement comes. This is often true but not always. The region that receives sirocco winds in Mediterranean Europe is a functional region, but the winds emanate from a fairly large area in North Africa, not a point. The region of the U.S. that receives fruits and vegetables from California has a similarly non-punctate source. Hartshorne listed general region as his third type, which means something like a Table 1: Introductory geography textbooks examined for this essay Christopherson, R.W. (1997). Geosystems: An Introduction to Physical Geography. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 3rd edition. de Blij, H.J. and Muller, P.O. (1996). Physical Geography of the Global Environment. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2nd edition. Gabler, R.E., Sager, R.J., and Wise, D.L. (1993). Essentials of Physical Geography. Fort Worth: Saunders College Pub, 4th edition. Marsh, W.M. and Dozier, J. (1981). Landscape, an Introduction to Physical Geography. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Wallen, R.N. (1992). Introduction to Physical Geography. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers. Foundations of geographic information science 190 region that “stands out in one’s mind” or is “distinctive.” This type label has not found widespread usage in geography, probably because its definition as a separate type is not coherent. Instead, texts in human geography often refer to perceptual regions.
eBook - PDF- R. Knowles, J. Wareing(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Made Simple(Publisher)
Fig. 3.3. Formal regions of England and Wales (after J. F. Unstead). Fig. 3.4. Functional Regions of England (after D. Senior). 30 Economic and Social Geography Made Simple region (Fig. 3.4). In a country such as the UK, where over 80 per cent of the population live in towns, this makes obvious sense, but even in less urbanised parts of the world, the influence of the city is increasing rapidly. A city region is the area around a city which is both served by the city, which provides shops, employment, professional services, etc., and in turn serves the city, by provid-ing food, water supply, labour and so on. The region thus operates as an integrated functioning whole, but it is very complex, and this complexity raises problems of measuring the extent of the city region (Chapter Twenty). In the attempt to divide up the surface of the earth into significant units, the search is for regions which first have a central unity, be it formal or functional, given by the interaction of the spatial and ecological systems, and secondly are clearly different from the regions around them. However, attempts to divide space into such regions have not been entirely successful and the concept of the region must be seen as an ideal or model rather than an objective reality. Two major problems arise from the attempt to make the regional ideal concrete. The first concerns the definition of regional boundaries. Even when defining formal regions, the boundary problem arises because features such as rainfall or vegetation do not change abruptly as lines on a map but rather shade from one region to another. Problems even arise over fixed features in the landscape such as mountain ranges or rivers, because although these may be barriers to movement and can therefore be considered as effective boun-daries, it can be argued with equal conviction that they give unity rather than separation in many regions.
eBook - PDF- Antoni Kuklinski(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
But, as already stated, regional planning decisions of this kind are either elemen-tary or incomplete because spatial interdependence is lost sight of. The next step is to identify what can be called the functional spatial configurations wherein the interdependence between diverse formal areas or localities is ascertained for one or more selected phenomena of spatial flows. Such interdependences are usually so patterned as to form functionally organized units in the spatial configuration, with varying centripetal intensities of spatial flows in each such unit called Functional Regions. Major centres of different Functional Regions in the spatial configuration can again be linked axially (not centripetally) on the basis of macro-economic functional ties. When a nation forms the functional spatial configuration, the constituent Functional Regions are usually called macro-economic regions, each of which is characterized by a particular specialization of economic activities which, in turn, forms the basis for centripetal intensities of spatial flows within. When we talk of the structure and balance of regional economy, it ought to be at the level of macro-economic regions, since it would be often impractical to expect a balance in economic transactions for only a particular part of a functionally organized unit and also since the analysis for the economic structure would be complete when made over the total specialization base of a functional region. The usual inter-regional input-output ac-counting for the balance in regional transactions is normally done over a given set of administrative divisions of a country, and not usually over a predetermined set of Functional Regions. Even then such an accounting is helpful in narrowing down the problem of distribution of functional activities over areas for a particular growth path of a nation.
eBook - PDFThe World Today
Concepts and Regions in Geography
- Jan Nijman, Peter O. Muller, Harm J. de Blij(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
This dominant uniformity makes it one of Russia’s natural and cultural regions, extending from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. When regions display a measurable and often visible internal homogeneity, they are called formal regions 9 . But not all formal regions are visi- bly uniform. For instance, a region may be delimited by the area in which, say, 90 percent or more of the people speak a particular language. This cannot be seen in the landscape, but the region is a reality, and we can use that criterion to draw its boundaries accurately. It, too, is a formal region. • Regions as Systems Other regions are marked not by their inter- nal sameness but by their functional integration—that is, by the way they work. These regions are defined as spatial systems 10 and are formed by the areal extent of the activities that define them. Take the case of a large city with its surrounding zone of suburbs, urban-fringe countryside, satellite towns, and farms. The city supplies goods and services to this encircling zone, and it buys farm products and other commodities from it. The city is the heart, the core of this region, and we call the surrounding zone of interaction the city’s hinterland 11 . But the city’s influ- ence wanes along the outer periphery of that hinterland, and there lies the boundary of the functional region of which the city is the focus. A functional region 12 , therefore, is usually forged by a structured, urban-centered system of interaction. It has a core and a periphery. Interconnections Even if we can easily demarcate a particular region and even if its boundaries are sharp, that does not mean it is isolated from other parts of the realm or even the world. All human-geographic the physical setting 11 regions are more or less interconnected, being linked to other regions. As we shall see, globalization is forging ongoing integra- tion and connections among regions around the world.
eBook - PDFDecentralisation and Regional Economic Performance
Empirical Studies for European Regions
- (Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cuvillier Verlag(Publisher)
The main driving force behind this interest emanates from contributions of endogenous growth theory and new economic geography. These emphasize the role of interactions between economic agents, which do not stop at borders of regions within the same country, nor across countries. Thus, interactions and externalities across regions are drivers of spatial dependence and should be included in an analysis of regional growth performance. Against the backdrop of the above discussion concerning administrative versus Functional Regions, in this analysis Functional Regions are defined as rather closed sub-economies. Depending on the delineation of Functional Regions, they encompass one or more administratively defined areas, which in decentralized states might have the power to levy taxes 77 See e.g. Barro (1991); Glaeser et al. (2004); Eicher and García-Peñalosa (2006); Acemoglu et al. (2005, 2012) for analysing national and cross-sectional growth pattern, while e.g. Crescenzi and Rodriguez-Pose (2011); Crescenzi and Percoco (2013) summarize the impact of institutions on innovation and growth on the regional scale. 78 Recent contribution include (without being exhaustive): for OECD/EU countries: Feld and Dede (2005); Thornton (2007); Baskaran and Feld (2009); Rodriguez-Pose and Ezcurra (2011); Buser (2011); Bodman (2011); for the UK: Pike et al. (2012); and for Spain: Gil-Serrate et al. (2011). Dieses Werk ist copyrightgeschützt und darf in keiner Form vervielfältigt werden noch an Dritte weitergegeben werden. Es g ilt nur für den persönlichen Gebrauch. 96 Fragmentation and economic performan and/or provide local outputs to the residents and firms in that jurisdiction. It may now be assumed that the development of Functional Regions might be different depending on the structure of local government within Functional Regions.
eBook - ePub- Cynthia Metcalf, Rhonda Atkinson(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Research & Education Association(Publisher)
They are often defined by governmental or administrative boundaries (i.e., United States, Jacksonville, Brazil). However, formal regions can show other characteristics. For example, a climate region is a formal region because it links places that share a climate. The places on a map that shows where a specific language is spoken make up a formal region because they share the feature of a common language. • Functional Regions (sometimes referred to as nodal regions) are linked together by some function’s influence on them. However, if the function ceases to exist, the region no longer exists. Functional Regions are created through the movement of some phenomenon, like a disease; or a perceived interaction among places, like pizza delivery routes. For example, a functional region might appear on a map of Delta Airlines’ flights from Atlanta, Georgia. A mapmaker would plot all the places to which Delta travels from its hub in Atlanta, the node. Then the mapmaker would draw a boundary enclosing all of those places into one functional region. The area affected by the spread of a flu epidemic is another example of a functional region. Functional Regions are defined by the places affected by the movement of some phenomenon from its source, or from the node of other places. • Vernacular regions are those loosely defined by people’s perception (e.g., the South, the Middle East). The boundaries of a perceptual region are determined by people’s beliefs, not a scientifically measurable process. For example, the space in which the “cool kids” sit at lunch would be a perceptual region because its boundaries are totally determined by the region maker’s perception of who is cool and who is not—something that could be debated by any other person in the room. Another example of a perceptual region is the American South
eBook - PDFNon-Western Theories of International Relations
Conceptualizing World Regional Studies
- Alexei D. Voskressenski(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Thus, at the state level, a primary actor in world politics, the fundamental notions are space and territory. At the international region level, the fundamentals are region, space and place. The “place” concept implies a specific combina- tion of geographic parameters. It possesses unique physical-geographic, social and cultural traits. If to define a specific locality via the “place” term, the “region” can be determined as a geographic complex, consist- ing of numerous places, the parameters and attributes of which constitute this specific geographic complex and set it apart from any other place or geographic complex. The definition of the region concept as a territory via the “place” concept is crucial to unraveling the methodological elabo- ration logic of World Regional Studies as an academic discipline, which scrutinizes simultaneously the world political features of regions such as international-political regions and cross-border regions (regions beyond state boundaries) and their local characteristics—regions inside states and constituent parts of intrastate regions (districts). (For an exploration of any kind of space of temporal borders see, for example, Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, Chap. 5). Many scholarly disciplines deal with the spatial-geographic aspects of various types of human activity: economic, political, business, cultural, religious and others. For instance, Human Geography considers the spa- tial arrangement of human activity and human relations with the envi- ronment to be political geography. It examines the political features of human activity within geographic space (Knox and Martson 2013).
eBook - PDFThe World Today
Its People and Places
- Linda Connor, William Norton, Michele Visser-Wikkerink(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Portage & Main Press(Publisher)
region An area on the surface of the earth distinguished from other areas by some physical and/or human characteristic(s). Regions are parts of the surface of the earth defined by one or more unifying characteristics. Just as oranges are packaged with oranges or apples with apples, like locations are “packaged” together by geographers. This is known as regionalizing. For example, we might identify or package regions according to average winter temperatures, amount of rainfall, what kinds of plants are grown there, what language is spoken by the people living there, or what religion is practised. The Six Regions of Canada FIGURE 0.15. This map shows one generally accepted regionalization of Canada. Remember that identifying regions is just a tool to help us do geography and not an end in itself. There is no one correct set of regions, and the boundaries and characteristics of a region that a geographer identifies may change from time to time. Figure 0.15 uses provincial and territorial boundaries to divide Canada into regions. Does the division of the six regions make sense to you? Suggest some other ways of regionalizing Canada (e.g., French/ English, urban/rural). “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” (Confucius, 551–479 BCE, Chinese philosopher). 16 Introduction Identify the photo in figure 0.16 that shows the physical or human geography found in each of the six regions of Canada. a. b. c. d. e. f. FIGURE 0.16. Images of the six geographic regions of Canada. ANSWERS a) Atlantic Canada b) Quebec c) Ontario d) Western Canada e) Territorial North f) British Columbia Thinking Geographically 17 The Tools of the Geographer Tools for Collecting, Organizing, and Displaying Geographers must be able to collect, organize, and display facts in order to answer the question Where? Travel and fieldwork are often basic to a geographer’s work.
eBook - PDF- OECD(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- OECD(Publisher)
Improved planning will make these urban areas more competitive to support job creation, and more attractive for their residents. The methodology identifies urban areas as functional economic units, characterised by densely inhabited “urban cores” and “hinterlands” whose labour market is highly integrated with the “cores”. This methodology is a clear example of how geographic/morphologic information from geographic sources and census data can be used together to get a better understanding of how urbanisation develops. Information on the distribution of the population at a fine level of spatial disaggregation – 1 km² – are used to identify more precisely the centres or “cores” of the urban space, defined as contiguous aggregations (“urban clusters”) of highly densely inhabited areas (grid cells). The hinterlands of these internationally comparable urban cores are defined using information on commuting flows from the surrounding regions. Such a definition is applied to 30 OECD countries and identifies 1 179 FUAs with at least 50 000 inhabitants. Functional urban areas have been identified beyond their administrative boundaries in 30 OECD countries. They are characterised by densely populated urban cores and hinterlands with high levels of commuting towards the urban cores. The share of national population in FUAs ranges from 87% in Korea to less than 40% in Slovenia and the Slovak Republic. Figure 1.25. Percent of national population living in functional urban areas, 2012 Source: OECD (2013a), OECD Regions at a Glance 2013 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/reg_glance-2013-en .
eBook - PDFRegional Policy
A European Approach
- Norbert Vanhove(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Some are homogeneous with respect to such physical characteristics as geography and natural resource endowment, while others are defined as similar in their economic and social characteristics, e.g.:• • production structure; • consumption pattern; • occupational distribution of the labour force; • ubiquity of a dominant natural resource; • topography; • climate; 133 Regional Policy: A European Approach Chapter 3 • social attitude; • per capita income level;5 • business-cycle concept. A major problem in attempting to delimit homogeneous regions is that regions tend to be similar to another region in some respects but in other respects show a closer link with a third region. Moreover, most regions will contain both rural and urban areas. 2. Nodal or polarised regions (region polarisee). 'A polarised space is a set of units or economic poles maintaining more trade or connections with a pole of the next superior order than with any other pole of the same order'.6 According to this definition, Mulhouse belongs to the region of Basel if it has more trade relations with Basel than with the region of Strasbourg. A nodal region has two characteristics, viz. intraregional functional interconnections and a hierarchical structure. (a) Functional interconnections (notion de connectivite) A nodal region is composed of heterogeneous units, but these are closely interrelated with each other functionally. The functional interconnections are most clearly visible as flow phenomena. The flow can be represented as (a) a regional account system, (b) an input-output system, or (c) a graph. The matrix and graph presentations are given below. Matrix A B C A *ab *ac B *ba = *bc C lca *bc -Graph The t-flows above could, of course, refer to different flow phenomena. One thinks o f: 134
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