Place

Articles

• Spatial mobility
  21 June 2012, by N. C.

  Spatial mobility is an essential component of the way societies organise space. It has been defined in various ways, in reference to different registers of observation and conceptualisation. In its most frequent acceptation, mobility is movement or travel from one «place» to another. This movement can concern people, but also material and immaterial goods, and information. The unit of measurement naturally depends on what is travelling, and can for instance be in terms of numbers of (...)

• Centre/Periphery
  13 October 2004, by C.G.

  The geometrical metaphor of centre and periphery is often used to describe opposition between the two basic types of places in a spatial system : the one which is commanding and benefitting it, the centre, and those which are subjected to it, in a peripheral position. This conceptual pair goes back at least to the time of Werner Sombart (Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1902), if not of Marx (city/countryside relations), and was used by the imperialism theoreticians (Rosa Luxemburg, Boukharine) (...)

• Territory
  24 November 2013, by B. E.

  A territory is a portion of terrestrial space envisaged in its relationships with the human groups that occupy it and manage it for the purpose of meeting their needs. This notion is, in geography, neither a synonym nor a substitute for the word space. While there is of course a notion of space in territory, it is not viewed as a neutral and isotropic backdrop. Numerous components (which can be environmental, social economic actors, institutional, etc.) impart specificity and identity to (...)

• Territory2
  30 November 2013, by Guy Di Méo

  Here we propose a provisional definition of territory. It integrates what we have learnt from our first observations on the nature of geographical space, considered in its different aspects, from spaces that are produced to spaces that are experienced and lived in. It set out a few more general hypotheses, which we will subsequently endeavour to verify.
  Concerning what can be drawn, two main components of the concept of territory will be retained, the "social space" component and the (...)