Locational Analysis

A theory and methodology of spatial relationships, their flows and interrelationships that served as the core of the quantitative revolution. The intellectual approach of locational analysis did not arise with the new momentum of the revolution in the late 1950s, but could be found in much earlier efforts to investigate patterns manifest in space that appeared rational and explicable. The von Thunen model of agricultural land use is an example from more than a century earlier, and the work of theorists working in both urban and economic geography in the first decades of the 20th century may be taken as precursors of the later focus as well. Those scholars who promoted locational analysis as a framework for geographical study employed an array of mathematical and statistical techniques, including multivariate analysis, probability models, and other aspects of what was later termed “geomatics.”

Academic departments of geography in which locational analysis became prominent as a philosophy of spatial inquiry pioneered the use of early computers as a means of evaluating the patterns of spatially arranged data. This cutting edge technology solidified the claim for many university administrators and federal agencies that locational analysis was a more scientifically based kind of geography, and at least for a time garnered the young scholars who were the foremost practitioners of the methodologies support in the form of grants and contracts, as well as acceptance in many of the leading scholarly journals. Locational analysis became the primary set of methodologies in economic and urban geography and was widely used in the study of population dynamics, migration, and related topics.