People, spaces and places - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 56

How should these pictures of spaces made up of people in places show us
social structure? What should they look like and how should they reflect society?
To answer these questions we must have some idea of what it is about the space
we want to see - the nature of society.
People in space create a near continuum, especially if we view the distances
between them in a relative sense. The spatial nature of our society is such that
nearby places usually exhibit very similar characteristics in their populations, but
occasionally they diverge widely. To see these patterns we have to stretch and
squeeze the space of physical geography into becoming the landscape of human
experience, opening up the cities and exorcising the empty space from the image.
The spatial nature of the society we live in holds more than divisions and
continuity, trends and correlations. It is intricately patterned. Social patterns of
power, control, deprivation and monotony are all reflected in spatial mosaics:
rings of the wealthy, holes of the poor, lines of accessibility, enclaves of distinc-
tion. However, none of this would be seen if we did not seek to see it. We must
know something of what we are looking for before we can know how to look.
Pictures of spatial social structure should have the power to reflect the com-
plex tapestry and delicate lacework of the relations between people through the
places in which they live and the spaces they create. All social organization
must take place somewhere, and aspects of that somewhere strongly shape what
structures are formed. 13
At the time of first writing these words, a new software package called a
geographic information system was just becoming more widely available (there
are now several such software packages). It was very limited in what it could do
and remains dedicated largely to replicating what it was possible to produce by
hand in the past, just very quickly. However, because of these developments it
was suggested back in 1984 that: 'Anyone at this stage writing their own software
of this type is therefore foolhardy.' 14
2.7 Adding time
A map of the earth with hundred-thousand-man-lost circles centred
on England in 1850 establishes the most distant place, not as New
Zealand, but somewhere around Moscow. The paths of least deaths
at right angles to the circles draw another set of real longitudes and
latitudes!
(Bunge, 1973, p. 286)
13 'Therefore, and this point is played down by Giddens, place is not just locale, as setting
for activity and social interaction, but also location. The reproduction and transformation of social
relations must take place somewhere' (Agnew, 1987, p. 27).
14 The quote, tellingly, continued: 'All of these maps, however (with the exception of those by
OPCS), deal with only up to about 1,000 or so zones on any one sheet of paper' (Rhind, Mounsey
and Shepherd, 1984, p. 65).