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This paper introduces the concept of black holes and loose connections in a global urban hierarchy. Black holes are defined as large cities, with a population of over 3 million, that are not classified as world cities. The paper draws upon a classification that uses advanced producer services as an indicator of world city status. Large, nonworld cities are identified, and provisional ideas about explaining their position are outlined. Connectivity and population data are used in a simple regression analysis to identify loose connections: cities whose connectivity is less than that predicted by their population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modem urban transportation systems continuously challenge, and are challenged by, the changing nature of 21st-century travel demand. Today, congestion is the norm in cities of the United States, and researchers and practitioners are seeking solutions to these problems. Urban commuting is identified as contributing to the suboptimal performance of transportation systems. This paper offers a review and critique of recent research on urban commuting, emphasizing geographical dimensions of this topic. Three broad areas of research related to urban commuting are discussed. These include (1) urban sustainability, (2) land use, and (3) geographic information systems (GIS). Major themes are examined in an effort to elicit thought on future geographic research. At the conclusion of the paper, summary remarks are provided and avenues for research are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the characteristics of areas with numerous group homes (residential care facilities) that cater to a variety of user groups. An overview of patterns of locational concentration precedes the results of an ecological analysts for the Minor Planning Districts of the City of Toronto. The pattern of ecological correlates among the three group home types analyzed supports results obtained elsewhere, but cautions against referring ecological associations Identified for one sort of facility to other facility types. The conclusion questions the suitability of present areas of locational concentration of group homes as host environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Port Authority of New York-New Jersey is a major actor shaping the regional development of the greater New York metropolitan area. This paper summarizes its historical development and current functions in terms of urban political economy, and offers a case study of the interpenetration of the local state and market forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classifications of urban settlements have traditionally used total employment data in place of basic (export-oriented) employment data, While urban analysts agree upon the superiority of basic employment data for these classifications, usually only total employment data are available. This paper uses the Arizona Community Data Set, a unique survey-generated body of information that describes the major economic characteristics of numerous Southwestern communities and includes both basic arid total employment data, to explore the extent to which misclassification results when using total employment data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Perceived social impacts of tourism development (in local residents in peripheral destinations are examined in the case of the resort city of Eilat (Israel) by utilizing a value-stretch methodology: Analysis shows that locals' perceptions are group differentiated. The less locals are affiliated with tourist occupations, the less affluent they are, and the less their sense of peripherality, the more they are affected by the social consequences of tourism development. Policy implications for tourism development in such peripheral settings are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents the author's comments on the paper "Shape Indices: Useful Measures or Red Herrings?," by D.A. Griffith, M.P. O'Neill, W.A. O'Neill, L.A. Leifer and R.G. Rooney. In their critique of C.P. Lo's use of a shape index in a study of Chinese urbanization, critics themselves commit some mistakes in their treatment of center points. They use the term centroid as a general or universal measure of bivariate central tendency. This use is inappropriate since the centroid is a specific point with unique properties. More fundamental misconceptions reveal when they claim distinctions between the centroid, center of mass and center of gravity.

This article borrows a statistical method from physical geography—topographical prominence—to suggest a new technique for measuring the relative significance or rank of population centers. Unlike raw population measures, prominence gives consideration to both the spatial intensity of concentrated population areas as well as the spatial dependence or independence of neighboring settlement clusters in relation to one another. We explain how to apply the topographic prominence calculation method to gridded population data and examine its practical utility through case studies of several U.S. states. We then discuss some ways in which parametric choices about point-to-surface transformations can result in considerably different outcomes and offer further suggestions for conceptualizing and measuring population center significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The U.S. and U.K. literatures have discussed “food deserts,” reflecting populated, typically urban, low-income areas with limited access to full-service supermarkets. Less is known about supermarket accessibility within Canadian cities. This article uses the minimum distance and coverage methods to determine supermarket accessibility within the city of Edmonton, Canada, with a focus on high-need and inner-city neighborhoods. The results show that for 1999 both of these areas generally had higher accessibility than the remainder of the city, but six high-need neighborhoods had poor supermarket accessibility. We conclude by examining potential reasons for differences in supermarket accessibility between Canadian, U.S., and U.K. cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent issue of , a number of key players in the 1960s and 1970s school of quantitative urban geography (called Chicago II in this article) set out some of the approach's key methodological premises and assessed its influence in the wider arena of urban studies. At about the same time, the 1920s and 1930s Chicago School of urban sociology (called the Chicago School in this article) was being reassessed in France ( ), and deconstructed in Los Angeles ( ). In this article, we outline a selection of basic models of urban space proposed by the Chicago School and further elaborated by Chicago II. We then consider certain aspects of three important critiques: humanist/aesthetic, Marxist, and postmodern. We argue that none of these invalidates the Chicago II approach to the study of urban areas, and we demonstrate its resilience and usefulness by way of the empirical example of Montreal. Though the results are of interest in their own right, the principal purpose of the analysis is to illustrate the type of insight that a structured quantitative approach provides and the way this approach rests on a theoretical understanding of processes at work in cities. We conclude by arguing that the humanist and Marxist critiques shed important light upon the possibilities and limits of the Chicago II approach, but that the postmodern claim that the spatial development of urban areas is not structured by at least some general processes is inaccurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the inter-urban income disparities of Western Europe using temporal and spatial analysis. Effectiveness of urban entrepreneurial efforts; Comparative analysis of three problem cities in Great Britain; Non-correlation between higher levels of economic development and improved urban performance.

Examines how rural and urban are interpreted and applied to counties in eleven states in western United States. Analysis of county commissioners' perceptions and census data; Comparison of qualitative and quantitative survey and interview data; Population concentration; Agricultural land base.

Geographic research has not focused on the information we encode into our memories about the characteristics of locations. The accuracy of information encoded in urban cognitive maps, how information varies among individuals, and the structure of the information were studied. Experimental results indicated subjects were more accurate and consistent for socio-economic than for life-cycle characteristics. Some characteristics of the population in a neighborhood, such as race and income, may be more visible and easier to encode through direct contact than other less visible characteristics such as age. A theoretical argument is made that characteristics not encoded for locations can possibly be computed through their covariation with known characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specifying the location of a rural residence is a common geographic problem. Most addressing systems are designed for urban areas and art not applicable to rural areas. The mile marker addressing system meets all of the requirements for a rural addressing system. With the addition of computer mapping techniques, rural addressing can be done efficiently and can provide the basis for a county's computer mapping system. Projects in New Mexico provide several examples of computerized rural addressing projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the fog climatology of the Sacramento urban area in California through hourly meteorological records from airports for the six winter fog seasons of December 1979 -January 1980 through December 1984-January 1985. Frequency of winter fogs over cities than the surrounding countryside; Assessment of moderate to dense fog; Factor influencing light fog.

Examines census data from 1949 to 1982 in several metropolitan areas in the United States for six commodity types to detect regular patterns of change in sales value, area harvested number of animals and intensity of production. Declines in dairy farming; Recovery in vegetable crops; Increases in both low value field crops and high value horticultural specialties.

Mismatch of labor demand and supply, resulting from economic growth, is referred to here as structural tension. Spatial variations in structural tension are identified for Venezuelan states in 1971. Positive tens/on, indicating overutilization of human resources, prevails in urban areas. By contrast, rural locales exhibit underutilization due to rapid labor force growth without parallel increases in employment opportunities. Influence of structural tension, coupled with other migration determinants, upon destination choice by economically active immigrants is explored. Structural tension emerges as strongly significant for the total sample, displacing wages from the model. This is consistent with our contention that wages are a less precise indicator of labor supply and demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the morphology and vitality of business districts in upstate New York villages in the 1980s. Common elements of the commercial structure of the villages; Railroad-oriented districts and early automobile expansion zones; Mixed use areas and outlying commercial strips; Role of site and situation factors in the variation in the observed vitality of downtowns.

Focuses on the debate on the concentration of social services facilities within North American cities. Application of the location quotient and the coefficient of localization to data on adult services, children's services and psychiatric group homes in Toronto, Ontario; Demonstration of a high degree of localization in all three categories; Placement policies to relieve certain areas of the inner city of the social and economic pressures.

The article focuses on the development of geography as an academic discipline in Argentina. The initial development of geography in Argentina can be attributed largely to the influence of European scientists, many of whom came to settle permanently as part of the great wave of European immigration during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are twenty-two provinces in Argentina, most of which are served by a national university located in the respective capital city. In addition, there are normal schools for the training of public school teachers and private institutions.