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Geography 153E: Geography of Everyday Life

                                                                                   

Winter 2003     MWF 11:00-11:50 am Ellison 3621                                        

 

Instructor:         Dr. James Marston       e-mail: marstonj@geog.ucsb.edu         

TA:                     Meri Marsh                email:   marsh@geog.ucsb.edu

 

Office Hours:  MW 12:00-1:00 pm                   North Hall 1016                                              

 

Labs:    W  1-2 pm; R  12-1 pm           Ellison 2610 (Star Lab)

 

Course Text:     Reader Available

 

Goal:

The purpose of this course is to explore and formalize the “natural” geographic knowledge that we acquire through our lifespan. Most people are “aware” of more geography than they acknowledge. We aim to make some of this implicit knowledge explicit.

 

Course Outline

 

Mon:    Jan 6th       Introduction to Course and Labs. Discussions and Introduction to Common Sense Geography

Wed:    Jan 8th       Geographic Concepts and how they occur and are used in everyday life (Golledge, R. G. [2002] The Nature of Geographic Knowledge)

Fri:       Jan 10th     Derived Geographic Concepts - giving structure to what you already “know” (Golledge, R. G. [2002] The Nature of Geographic Knowledge)

Mon:    Jan 13th     Understanding our Urban Society (Hägerstrand, 1970) *hC4

Wed:    Jan 15th     Scheduling your day: episodes, frequencies, intervals, constraints (Axhausen & Gärling, 1992) *Ch9

Fri:       Jan 17th     Your options as a commuter, a shopper, and a tourist (Hanson & Hanson, 1993)

Mon:    Jan 20th     Holiday - Martin Luther King’s Birthday

Wed:    Jan 22nd    The Language of Geography: Absolute and relative locations & fuzzy spatial prepositions  *Ch11

Fri:       Jan 24th     Finding your way (Golledge, 1992) *Ch 5

Mon:    Jan 27th     Proper placement of “You-are-here” maps (Levine, Marchon, & Hanley) (not in Reader)

Wed:    Jan 29th     Shopping behavior and shopping center location *Ch 10

Fri:       Jan 31st      “Knowing” your environment (Golledge [2002] Cognitive Maps) Ch 7

Mon:    Feb 3rd      What you learned as a child about geographic space *Ch 5 H&M

Wed:    Feb 5th      How adults acquire spatial knowledge *Ch 5

Fri:       Feb 7th      Mental Maps and distortions: How “common sense” distorts your world.

Mon:    Feb 10th    Globalization (Golledge & Stimson, 1997) (Not in Reader)

Wed:    Feb 12th    Globalization (cont.) (Mid-term Review)

Fri:       Feb 14th    Mid-term

Mon:    Feb 17th    Holiday - President’s Day

Wed:    Feb 19th    Hazards and risks (Cutter, 2001) and (Kates, 1967) Ch 6

Fri:       Feb 21st     The Places we Like and Dislike: Space Preferences and Place Images (Jenkins, et al., 1999)  *Ch 11

Mon:    Feb 24th    Transportation planning and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS): How smart are we? and how smart can our highways become? (Hodge & Morrill, 1996) (Not in Reader) *Ch 9

Wed:    Feb 26th    The world through the senses of the disabled (Golledge [2002] Disability, Disadvantage, and Discrimination)

Fri:       Feb 28th    Activity patterns, behavior and transit use of non-drivers (Marston et al., 1997) Not in reader.  (Blind guest)

Mon:    Mar 3rd     Helping blind people access environments

Wed:    Mar 5th      Helping wheelchair users access environments (Marston, J Web link) (http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~marstonj/INTRO_TO_ACCESS.htm)

                              (Wheelchair using guests)

Fri:       Mar 7th      Wayfinding myths - do men not ask for directions? and can women not find their car in a parking lot? *Ch 5

Mon:    Mar 10th    Do men and women have equivalent spatial abilities? (Montello, et al., 1999)

Wed:    Mar 12th    Formalizing what we know: Males and females, common sense, and expert geography (Montello, et al., 1999)

Fri:       Mar 14th    Review

 

153E:   Laboratories

 

The labs will be designed to show the basic geography embedded within many everyday activities. Decisions on activity scheduling, destination choice, travel behavior, residential site selection, route selection, frequency of telephone communication, selection of a college or university or high school to attend, choice of supermarkets and shopping centers, and many other everyday activities represent the application of geographic concepts to help solve problems. In the labs, we formalize the processes at work and demonstrate how naive geography becomes expert knowledge. This will be done in part by using a GIS (Arcmap) to create representations of our spatial knowledge.

 

Laboratory Outlines will be provided separately

 

Exams:    1 Mid-term    (30% Final Grade)

               1 Final           (40% Final Grade)

Laboratories:                (30% Final Grade)

 

Labs are due at the end of the week after the lab is completed (i.e. 1:00 p.m. on the following Friday). Late submissions lose one full letter grade every 3 late days.

 

Cheating will not be tolerated on exams or laboratories.


Reader for G153E: Winter 2003

 

*Axhausen, K. W., & Gärling, T. (1992). Activity-based approaches to travel analysis - Conceptual frameworks, models, and research problems. Transport Reviews, 12(4), 323-341.

Cutter, S. L. (2001). The changing nature of risks and hazards. In S. L. Cutter (Ed.), American Hazardscapes: The Regionalization of Hazards and Disasters (pp. 1-12). Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press.

*Golledge, R. G., & Stimson, R. J. (1997). Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective. New York: Guilford Press. Chapter 3 (Globalization).

Golledge, R. G. (1992). Place recognition and wayfinding: Making sense of space. Geoforum, 23(2), 199-214.

Golledge, R. G. (2002). Cognitive Maps. In K. Kempf-Leonard (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Measurement (Submitted). San Diego, CA: Academic Press Inc.

Golledge, R. G. (2002). Disability, Disadvantage, and Discrimination:  An Overview with Special Emphasis on Blindness in the USA. In A. Bailly & L. Gibson (Eds.), Applied Geography . (Submitted).

Golledge, R. G. (2002). The nature of geographic knowledge. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(1), 1-14.

Hägerstrand, T. (1970). What about people in regional science? Papers of the Regional Science Association, 24, 7-21.

Hanson, S., & Hanson, P. (1993). The geography of everyday life. In T. Gärling & R. G. Golledge (Eds.), Behavior and Environment (pp. 249-269). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.

*Hodge, D. C., & Morrill, R. L. (1996). Implications of intelligent transportation systems for metropolitan forms. Urban Geography, 17(8), 714-739.

Jenkins, O., Golledge, R. G., & Stimson, R. J. (1999). Tourist destination images and stereotypes: A study of backpacker tourists playing 'Crocodile Dundee' in Australia. Environmental Behavior, submitted.

Kates, R. W. (1967). The perception of storm hazard on the shores of Megalopolis. In D. Lowenthal (Ed.), Environmental Perception and Behavior (Research Paper No. 109, pp. 60-69). Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Chicago.

*Levine, M., Marchon, I., & Hanley, G. L. (1984). The placement and misplacement of you-are-here maps. Environment and Behavior, 16, 139-157.

*Marston, J. R., Golledge, R. G., & Costanzo, C. M. (1997). Investigating travel behavior of nondriving blind and vision impaired people: The role of public transit. The Professional Geographer, 49(2), 235-245.

Marston, J.R., Web page (http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~marstonj/INTRO_TO_ACCESS.htm

Montello, D. R., Lovelace, K. L., Golledge, R. G., & Self, C. M. (1999). Sex-related differences and similarities in geographic and environmental spatial abilities. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 89(3), 515-534.

 

*Stored on library web site <http://eres.library.ucsb.edu>

 password =winter.