Cobweb of flows - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 196

could not be shown are the changes over the fifteen consecutive years that were
recorded up to 1990 between the ninety-seven mainland family practitioner areas
to which NHS migration records were aggregated.
What the images that have accompanied this text illustrate is how the official
and conventional place and time based information about people can be turned
into pictures depicting the spatial social structure of this country made up from
their lives. A tapestry can be woven, the warp and weft of which are made up
from the flows of people to work and to new homes, movements in different
directions - holding the picture together. Both sets of lines can be placed on a
single image, illustrating how the two are linked. Without pictures we would
never be able to appreciate such ideas. 22
Much is missing from this as a view of British society. Flows of money,
wealth and goods would be essential to add, as well as knowledge about their
static distributions. However, what have been accomplished here are illustrations
of ways of extending the depiction of this type of information visually. A change
from tables to pictures, from numbers to colours, from words to drawings, allows
us to move away from very vague impressions towards more solid images.

22 Migration does not necessarily mean changing who you work for. Even the majority of moves
between regions did not involve a change of employer: ' in 1981 over half of inter-regional

migrants in the UK (defined as those employed both one year before and at the time of the Labour
Force Survey) did not change employer. The figures for 1975 and 1979 were similar' (Salt, 1990,
p. 54).

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