Topic 1

Geography and Economic Geography

Geography (today) is the science of interpretation of the organized space

It studies the issues connected to:

1) Localisation (= precise spatial position of objects within a particular area of Hearth’s surface)

2) Human – environment relationship

3) Regions and identification of the distinctive characters of particular partitions of space

Role of geography. Supply:

1) Positional information on the exact position of events; 

2) Environmental information on quality of particular areas;

3) Optimization = finding the ‘best’ position for things and the ‘best’ use of areas

Economic Geography focuses on:

1) the knowledge of the geographical space (as an index of human and natural evolutions) and on the management of space (as an index of the social, political and economical evolutions)

Also it focuses on: 

2) the processes of management of production of goods and services in cities and space (more in general).

Anderson W. P. (2012)

Economic geographers study and attempt to explain the spatial configuration of economic activities, including the production of goods and services, their transfer from one economic agent to another and their transformation into utility by consumers. The spatial configuration, which includes both the pattern of activities on the map and the relationships between activities occurring in different places, is the outcome of a vast number of distinct but interrelated decisions made by firms, households, governments and a variety of other private and public institutions. 

Spatial interaction

the easiest way to understand the relations between different places.

The non-availability of a product in one place is a sufficient condition to generate a movement towards another place where it is available

The presence of two or more places specialized in the production of different goods / services will set an interaction between them