People, spaces and places - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 40

Box 2.2 Storing the geometry

The entire ward geometry of Britain was generalised using an algorithm that
recorded a pair of vertices every five kilometres along the (original) length
of each boundary. The list of boundaries was then stored with the following
coded information: left ward, right ward, original length, number of vertices
and ( vertex coordinates.

In spite of programming at the binary level the file was still over one
megabyte in length.
A lookup table was also constructed as a binary file, giving the different
area codes for each ward. These were its level II European region, county
or metropolitan area or Scottish region, family practitioner committee area,
postcode, local education authority, functional city area, local labour market
area, travel-to-work area, local authority government district, parliamentary
constituency and amalgamated office area.
A drawfile for a particular geography was
produced using the draw library and a linked
list of relevant boundaries constructed using
the lookup table. The list for each area type
was transformed into a series of polygons and
the resulting group (path) tagged by its area
identification.
The software could handle over 10 000
units, and complex structures such as lakes within islands within lakes. The
drawfile can be shaded or edited on the screen later, or further manipulated
by other applications.

X, Y )

2.3 What are spaces?

Whether in prose or paint, on canvas or on digital photographs, on
postcards or in poems, landscape representations are vehicles for the
circulation of place through space and time. They take places out of
their physical boundaries and move them around, shaping geograph-
ical imaginations.

(della Dora, 2011, p. 7)

Spaces are constructed from the relationships between places. Just as the
individual attributes of people are not the main interest, so the collective attributes
of single places do not hold the key to our understanding of society. Places are
not things that can be rigidly defined and have a meaning of their own. They are
abstract collections of people whose depiction can shed some light on the spatial
social structure of our lives.