Time Geographic Analysis

Abstract

Time geography represents a four-dimensional physicalist view of the world that captures the connected human activities in time- and space-bound situations. Corporeality of human beings, equipment, and materials leads to limitations in the movement and presence of these material entities. In addition to these fundamental limitations, human beings are confronted by capability, coupling, and authority constraints that further restrict the opportunities they have to conduct activities in time and space. A time-geographical framework offers the opportunity to analyze the impact of these constraints on people's activities and travel. For that purpose, simulation models and geo-visualization tools have been developed to depict the impact of various temporal, transport, and spatial policies on activity and travel patterns. In the new millennium the time geographical framework has been conceptually as well as methodologically enormously extended. Space–time behaviors in real and virtual time–space can be analyzed in a multidimensional space, existential and relational needs can be addressed in a relational framework of time geography, and new geographical information systems methods and applied mathematics have increased its analytical power.