The Research and Writing in Geography course is a seminar where a reading is discussed each session. Two students are assigned the task of providing written commentary and leading a discussion of the reading. It is a team-lead course (Rex Honey, Gerard Rushton and George Malanson) who provide the readings and prepare discussions of the state of professional research in Geography. During the course, one of the three pre-dissertation writings will be complete.

As the students prepare to discuss the weekly readings, consider the following questions:

• What was the author trying to do?
• Did the author accomplish their goal?
• Why is this an exemplary work in the discipline of Geography?
• How did it change the course of research in Geography?

The upcoming reading for August 30, 2009 is Borchert’s “American Metropolitan Evolution.”

Gerry Rushton discusses how people behave in space.  What sort of rules govern the spatial behavior?  And how do those rules manifest themselves into a spatial organization?  Though he started his career in theories of location of firms and other economic entities, but has moved to research into optimal location, based on allocation of resources, of services; particularly schools and health facilities.  Furthermore, an optimally located facility can have a measurable output in pre-determined healthfulness or educational goals.   I found it particularly interesting his discussion that “methods of optimal location” are not often found in a likely place.  That is, quantitative geography textbooks.  The reason being that these texts are often written by statisticians when these methods are often algorithmic and/or found in operations research rather than pure statistical analysis.

Rex Honey provided some interesting discussion about political geography and justice.  How do political entities concieve of a “just society?”  How do these entities create laws/constitutions and what are those spatial impacts?  How does the way we partition space affect the delivery of municipal services?  I am wondering about the multiscalar (jurisdictional) effects of these issues.  Also, he has a paper being reprinted called “Form, Process and the Political Organization of Space,” that I am looking forward to reading.

George Malanson is a biogeographer studying patterns of floral distributions in the Rocky Mountains.