Towards A putationally Minded Scientific Human Geography.pdf

Environment and Planning A lt)9S. volume 30, pages 317 332 Towards a putationally minded scientific human geography S shaw School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, England; e-mail: sUui(?r>; htlp://. Received 7 October 1996; in revised form 25 June 1997 Abstract. The author offers a critical appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative geography, geographical information systems, and soft approaches to human geographic research. He argues the case for the revival of a scientific approach to human geography, in particular for exploiting a geoeomputational paradigm with the potential to build bridges between the different methodologies. 1 Introduction putational approach to human geography is rapidly ing feasible, but questions can be asked as to whether such a development would be worthwhile, how it may sit within the current debates and critiques about the merits of different method-ologies for human geography, and even whether it could in the longer term be regarded as socially irresponsible because of puter systems it may one clay spawn; see the futuristic description of People Control Systems in a Big Brother and Big Sister World (shaw, 1992). It is noted that there are two very strong driving forces behind the development of putational geographic paradigm and that both arc socially constructed. First, there is the belief that it is necessary to modernize the quantitative geographic analysis and modelling tools in order to cope with new needs and new expectations for applied gcoprocessing and geomodclling in the broadest sense in a rapidly changing world. Second, there is an opportunity for geographers to respond to fundamental developments in key information technologies (ITs) that impact on their traditional subject domains and which are creating new tools and new areas for study. Particularly important are: the continued rapid increase in the power of parallel puters, a growing number of applicable ar