IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/tvecsg/v112y2021i4p351-369.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Communities, Complexity, and the ‘Conchoration’: Network Analysis and the Ontology of Geographic Units

Author

Listed:
  • Garrett Dash Nelson

Abstract

Whether to treat regions as distinct, bordered entities or meshes of borderless flows has long been a debate for geographers. This paper uses the methodological and conceptual insights of network analysis to argue for an approach to regionalisation that treats them neither as perfectly enclosed nor perfectly borderless. By comparing the many contested readings of ‘community’ in geography and the social sciences to the operational definition of a ‘community’ in graph theory, I extend historic questions about the spatial definition of human communities and describe how network analysis can offer insight about the texture of human geography. A case study, using network data about commuting in the New England region of the US, shows how these algorithmically‐detected regions are both stable and fluid at once. The paper proposes the term ‘conchoration’ to describe the ontology of emergent, functionally whole regions which are nevertheless perforated and interdependent.

Suggested Citation

  • Garrett Dash Nelson, 2021. "Communities, Complexity, and the ‘Conchoration’: Network Analysis and the Ontology of Geographic Units," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 112(4), pages 351-369, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:tvecsg:v:112:y:2021:i:4:p:351-369
    DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12400
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12400
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/tesg.12400?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlo Ratti & Stanislav Sobolevsky & Francesco Calabrese & Clio Andris & Jonathan Reades & Mauro Martino & Rob Claxton & Steven H Strogatz, 2010. "Redrawing the Map of Great Britain from a Network of Human Interactions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(12), pages 1-6, December.
    2. Taylor Shelton & Ate Poorthuis, 2019. "The Nature of Neighborhoods: Using Big Data to Rethink the Geographies of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Planning Unit System," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 109(5), pages 1341-1361, September.
    3. Martijn J. Burger & Evert J. Meijers & Frank G. Oort, 2014. "Multiple Perspectives on Functional Coherence: Heterogeneity and Multiplexity in the Randstad," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 105(4), pages 444-464, September.
    4. Anssi Paasi, 2013. "Regional Planning and the Mobilization of 'Regional Identity': From Bounded Spaces to Relational Complexity," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(8), pages 1206-1219, September.
    5. Ann Verhetsel & Joris Beckers & Michiel Meyere, 2018. "Assessing Daily Urban Systems: A Heterogeneous Commuting Network Approach," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 633-656, September.
    6. Jonathan JONES & Christophe CLOQUET & Arnaud ADAM & Adeline DECUYPER & Isabelle THOMAS, 2016. "Belgium through the lens of rail travel requests: does geography still matter?," LIDAM Reprints CORE 2826, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    7. Garrett Dash Nelson & Alasdair Rae, 2016. "An Economic Geography of the United States: From Commutes to Megaregions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-23, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Albina Gibadullina & Luke Bergmann & David O’Sullivan, 2021. "For Geographical Network Analysis," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 112(4), pages 482-487, September.
    2. Ding, Rui & Zhou, Tao & Zhang, Yilin & Du, YiMing & Chen, Shihui & Fu, Jun & Du, Linyu & Zhang, Ting & Li, Tongfei, 2022. "The influence of average speed ratio on multilayer traffic network," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 594(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ben Derudder, 2021. "Network Analysis of ‘Urban Systems’: Potential, Challenges, and Pitfalls," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 112(4), pages 404-420, September.
    2. Ruth Hamilton & Alasdair Rae, 2020. "Regions from the ground up: a network partitioning approach to regional delineation," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 47(5), pages 775-789, June.
    3. Ate Poorthuis & Michiel van Meeteren, 2021. "Containment and Connectivity in Dutch Urban Systems: A Network‐Analytical Operationalisation of the Three‐Systems Model," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 112(4), pages 387-403, September.
    4. Arnaud Adam & Jean-Charles Delvenne & Isabelle Thomas, 2018. "Detecting communities with the multi-scale Louvain method: robustness test on the metropolitan area of Brussels," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 363-386, October.
    5. Madeleine I. G. Daepp, 2022. "Small-area moving ratios and the spatial connectivity of neighborhoods: Insights from consumer credit data," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(3), pages 1129-1146, March.
    6. Beckers, Joris & Vanhoof, Maarten & Verhetsel, Ann, 2019. "Returning the particular: Understanding hierarchies in the Belgian logistics system," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 315-324.
    7. Kang Wu & Jingxian Tang & Ying Long, 2019. "Delineating the Regional Economic Geography of China by the Approach of Community Detection," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-18, October.
    8. Emanuele Strano & Matheus Viana & Luciano da Fontoura Costa & Alessio Cardillo & Sergio Porta & Vito Latora, 2013. "Urban Street Networks, a Comparative Analysis of Ten European Cities," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 40(6), pages 1071-1086, December.
    9. Kauffmann, Albrecht, 2021. "Befindet sich die "Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland" auf dem Weg zur räumlich integrierten Region? Eine empirische Untersuchung der Berufspendlerverflechtungen," Arbeitsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Rosenfeld, Martin T. W. & Stefansky, Andreas (ed.), "Metropolregion Mitteldeutschland" aus raumwissenschaftlicher Sicht, volume 30, pages 76-95, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    10. Taotao Deng & Chen Gan & Yukun Hu, 2021. "Do hotel business benefit from increased tourist accessibility? Evidence from China’s high-speed railway program," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(7), pages 1357-1374, November.
    11. Nikhil Kaza & Katherine Nesse, 2021. "Characterizing the Regional Structure in the United States: A County-based Analysis of Labor Market Centrality," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 44(5), pages 560-581, September.
    12. Bilong Shen & Weimin Zheng & Kathleen M. Carley, 2018. "Urban Activity Mining Framework for Ride Sharing Systems Based on Vehicular Social Networks," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 705-734, September.
    13. Duco Vos & Evert Meijers & Maarten Ham, 2018. "Working from home and the willingness to accept a longer commute," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 61(2), pages 375-398, September.
    14. Christof Parnreiter, 2014. "Network or Hierarchical Relations? A Plea for Redirecting Attention to the Control Functions of Global Cities," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 105(4), pages 398-411, September.
    15. Mark He & Joseph Glasser & Nathaniel Pritchard & Shankar Bhamidi & Nikhil Kaza, 2020. "Demarcating geographic regions using community detection in commuting networks with significant self-loops," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-31, April.
    16. Sol Gamsu & Michael Donnelly, 2021. "Social Network Analysis Methods and the Geography of Education: Regional Divides and Elite Circuits in the School to University Transition in the UK," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 112(4), pages 370-386, September.
    17. Adam, Arnaud & Finance, Olivier & Thomas, Isabelle, 2021. "Monitoring trucks to reveal Belgian geographical structures and dynamics: From GPS traces to spatial interactions," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    18. Yao Shen & Michael Batty, 2019. "Delineating the perceived functional regions of London from commuting flows," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(3), pages 547-550, May.
    19. Enwei Zhu & Stanislav Sobolevsky, 2018. "House Price Modeling with Digital Census," Papers 1809.03834, arXiv.org.
    20. Poorthuis, Ate & van Meeteren, Michiel, 2019. "Containment and connectivity in Dutch urban systems: A network-analytical operationalization of the three-systems model," SocArXiv y7dxf, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:tvecsg:v:112:y:2021:i:4:p:351-369. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0040-747X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.