Beyond Space (As We Knew It): Toward Temporally Integrated Geographies of Segregation, Health, and Accessibility - Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience - page 39

As recent research suggests, three geographic notions conceived largely in static
spatial terms to date will benefit enormously from integrating time as a critical
dimension (e.g., Delafontaine et al. 2011 ;Kwan 2012b ). These three notions
are racial and ethnic segregation, environmental exposure, and accessibility. They
together address a wide range of social issues of interest to geographers and social
scientists (e.g., social inequality, social isolation, environmental justice, environ-
mental health, and access to social services and health care facilities). This article
revisits these notions and argues that expanding our analytical focus beyond space
to include time and human mobility will considerably enrich our understanding of
how individuals of different social groups experience racial and ethnic segregation,
exposure to environmental influences, and access to social facilities. For instance,
although racial segregation is conceived as the extent to which members of one
racial group live apart from those of other racial groups, people's segregation
experiences are also affected by how much time they spend in areas outside of
their residential neighborhoods and how much social contact they have with other
racial groups there (Ellis et al. 2004 ; Wong and Shaw 2011 ). Examining segregation,
environmental exposure, and accessibility in terms of residential space or location
alone will only yield a partial understanding of human spatiotemporal experiences.
This article elucidates how temporally integrated geographies of segregation,
environmental health, and accessibility can shed new light on many issues geog-
raphers and social scientists have been examining for decades. It suggests that
new insights can be gained when commonly used spatial concepts take into
account human mobility and incorporate various facets of time as integral elements.
Informed by recent work on human mobility and geographies of encounter (e.g.,
Sheller and Urry 2006 ; Valentine 2008 ;Adey 2010 ), the article emphasizes that
people's spatiotemporal experiences are influenced not only by where they live
but also by other places they visit, when they visit these places, how much time
they spend there, what they experience as they travel between these places, and
who they interact with while at those places. It argues that by going beyond static
residential space and examining how individuals reach relevant social opportunities
or come into contact with other people or social/environmental influences as their
lives unfold over space and time, our understanding of the effects of social difference
on racial/ethnic segregation, health outcomes, quality of life, and many other critical
social issues will be deeply enriched.

4.2 Racial and Ethnic Segregation

Geographers and social scientists have examined racial/ethnic segregation, social
exclusion, and social isolation for decades (e.g., Massey and Denton 1988 ; Wong
1993 ; Darden and Kamel 2000 ; Schnell and Yoav 2001 ). Research on the segrega-
tion of different racial or ethnic groups in urban areas have been conducted largely
with a focus on people's residential location (e.g., Brown and Chung 2006 ; Johnston
et al. 2007 ). In these studies, segregation was examined in terms of the extent to