Activities for Week 1

1. Identify the Connections Between Spatial Concepts

Purpose: this activity gives students hands-on practice classifying spatial concepts and recognizing the relationships between concepts.

Task: in small groups, identify the level of each concept in the following list. Then, for each concept above the primitive level, identify which lower-level concepts it is built from.

location, magnitude, distance, direction, boundary, region, pattern, distribution, network, hierarchy, spatial autocorrelation, scale, density, diffusion, proximity

Table 1: List of Spatial Concepts From Lobben and Lawrence (2015)

Simple	Difficult	Complicated	Complex
adjacency	adjacency	buffer	activity space
arrangement	angle	connectivity	association
boundary	area	corridor	buffer
class	center	gradient	central place
connection	change	profile	cluster
direction	cluster	representation	density
distance	grid	scale	diffusion
distribution	growth	surface	distortion
edge	isolated		distribution
enclosure	linked		dominance
movement	polygon		enclave
order	reference frame		gradient
proximity	spread		great circle
reference frame			hierarchy
region			interpolation
sequence			layer
shape			network
transition			overlay
			pattern
			profile
			projection
			relief
			scale
			social area
			subjective space

2. Draw a Map of Campus (10mins)

Purpose: To illustrate how basic spatial concepts have been identified across domains and in the general public. The to link the Lynch framework back to that of Golledge.

Task: Draw a map of campus.

Table 2: Elements of Mental Maps from Lynch (1960)

Element	Description
Paths	The channels along which people move (streets, walkways, transit lines, canals). Often the dominant element in people’s mental images.
Edges	Linear boundaries that are not paths; they separate one area from another (shorelines, walls, railroad cuts, edges of development).
Districts	Medium-to-large sections of the city that people mentally “enter” and recognize as having a common identifying character (a neighborhood, a business district).
Nodes	Strategic focal points that people can enter, typically intersections or convergence points (a town square, a major junction, a transit hub).
Landmarks	External reference points used for orientation but not typically entered; identified by their singularity or contrast with surroundings (a church steeple, a distinctive building, a monument).

3. Audit Your Research Question with Spatial Thinking

Purpose: This activity operationalizes the learning outcome - Identify and articulate the spatial concepts and reasoning strategies used in your work and explain how they connect to spatial thinking frameworks.

Task: Reflect on the research question and analysis you identified at the beginning of this class session. Attempt to answer the questions below.

1. What spatial concepts were/are you working with when answering that question? Classify each as primitive, simple, or complex.

2. What representations did/will you use? Why those and not others?

3. What level of reasoning did the task require (input, processing, output)?

4. What spatial assumptions did you make that you did not question at the time?

5. Where would you place your research question on the taxonomy of Jo and Bednarz (2009)?