Beyond Space (As We Knew It): Toward Temporally Integrated Geographies of Segregation, Health, and Accessibility - Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience - page 38

Chapter 4
Beyond Space (As We Knew It): Toward
Temporally Integrated Geographies
of Segregation, Health, and Accessibility

Mei-Po Kwan

4.1 Introduction

Geographers and scholars in cognate disciplines have long recognized the impor-
tance of time and mobility for understanding a wide range of human experiences
(e.g., de Certeau 1984 ; Giddens 1986 ;RoweandWolch 1990 ; Valentine 1993 ;
Chai et al. 2002 ; Lefebvre 2004 ; Cresswell 2006 ; Urry 2007 ). Yet many notions
in geographic and social science research still tend to be conceptualized largely
in static spatial terms, ignoring how our understanding of the issues we study can
be greatly enriched through the lenses of time and human mobility. For instance,
accessibility still tends to be understood largely in spatial terms (e.g., in terms
of the distance or travel cost between facilities and the people they serve). Past
research also tends to ignore various facets of time - such as rhythm, duration,
and subjective experiences of time - that shape people's spatiotemporal experiences
of marginalization, discrimination, and social isolation (however, see May and
Thrift 2001 ; Valentine 2008 ; Dijst 2009 ; McQuoid and Dijst 2012 ; Merriman
2012 ; Schwanen and Kwan 2012 ;Schwanenetal. 2012 ; Rogaly and Thieme 2012 ;
Valentine and Sadgrove 2012 ).

This chapter has been reprinted with the permission of the Association of American Geographers
and Taylor & Francis, LLC. Originally published: Mei-Po Kwan (2013) Beyond Space (As We
Knew It): Toward Temporally Integrated Geographies of Segregation, Health, and Accessibil-
ity, Annals of the Association of American Geographers , 103:5, 1078-1086.