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This chapter explores what the interactions of individuals and firms in their vicinity and in broader communities reveal about the spatial structure of cities as self-organization by agents. It first introduces a benchmark, the Alonso–Mills–Muth model of a city in its bare essentials, and examines its implications for urban density and the associated pattern of land prices in the case with a predetermined center, the central business district (CBD). It then considers the geometry of spatial equilibrium when there is no predetermined center and social interactions are dispersed, along with the location decisions of firms in urban space, monocentric versus polycentric models of the urban economy, and the Lucas–Rossi-Hansberg models of urban spatial structure with productive externalities. It also analyzes neighborhood effects, urban equilibrium when proximity is a conduit for the transmission of job-related information, and the link between choice of job matching and spatial structure.

This introductory chapter discusses some of the main threads of the analyses proposed in the remaining chapters and one of their general implications: that phrases composed of spatial prepositions, adverbs, particles, and DPs do not instantiate different structures but merely spell out different portions of one and the same articulated configuration.

This chapter seeks to establish a baseline of what a theory of linguistic structure must be responsible for. For linguists, the chapter should serve as a reminder of the scope of the enterprise and as an orientation into the outlook of the present study. Topics discussed include the structure of a simple sentence, phonological structure, syntactic structure, semantic/conceptual and spatial structure, connecting the levels, and anaphora and bounded dependencies.

This chapter describes methods that can be used to characterize communities of tree species based on a field survey, focusing on the methods that are most commonly used today. Information is also provided on techniques for estimating the species richness and diversity of forest communities, which has received increasing attention in the wake of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

This chapter addresses the encoding of spatial semantics at Conceptual Structure (CS) in the framework proposed by Jackendoff. Jackendoff envisions CS as a language-independent faculty of cognition that generates noniconic conceptual representations of an algebraic internal structure (a recursive predicate-argument calculus that is syntactically different from both language and predicate logic). Reasoning and any transfer of information between different peripheral systems is divided between CS and another module of higher cognition, Spatial Structure (SpS). SpS encodes geometric properties in an “image-schematic” fashion. This chapter focuses on the representation of Motion events in language and cognition. Jackendoff advanced a number of arguments to the effect that CS encodes notions of Translational Motion (T-Motion) and Path, based on English data. It is argued, based on evidence from Yucatec Maya, that these arguments do not apply universally, and that Yucatec Motion event descriptions do not involve a semantics based on T-Motion and Path, but merely a State-Change semantics. In the account proposed here, cognitive representations of Motion are comparable between English and Yucatec at the level of SpS, but not at CS.

The structure of a system of retail centres as described by their size, composition, and location, is a result of competition among the centres for customers. The evolution of the system is described by a set of cost and revenue equations. The revenue equations include a distance decay parameter. When this parameter is below a critical value, retail activity tends to agglomerate in a major, centrally located centre; otherwise, it tends to be dispersed among a number of similar centres. This fundamental bifurcation appears in actual retail systems. It underlies such phenomena as itinerant medieval trade fairs, the historical migration of the major retail centre of cities like London and New York, and innovations like the department store, the regional mall, and power centres. Since a lower distance decay parameter is associated with higher energy densities, a direct link is established between spatial structure, energy, and technology.

The fundamental premise of the book is that cities and regions are complex, self-organizing, adaptive systems, and that they are therefore best understood by focussing on the processes by which they grow and structure themselves. The approach is thus algorithmic, using cellular automata (CA) based models, and emphasizes spatial structure as it appears in land use, population distribution, and economic activity, since cities function by virtue of that structure. Studies of urban form by architects and urban historians have tended to emphasize street patterns, and emerging from these studies is an opposition between planned and “organic” forms. Organic forms are the signature of self-organized systems, and they emerge naturally from the models described in this book. The models integrate the city with its region, and socio-economic with natural phenomena. They also raise fundamental issues in the methodology and philosophy of science.

The political and social context of any conflict affected strategy and operations, but variations were constrained systematically by the limitations of the military technology being used and by the underlying structures of an organic economy. High-level warfare involved the disposition of concentrated force in space and time. Its operational conduct was shaped by the interplay of strategy and logistics. The goal of high-level warfare was the destruction of enemy forces, the seizure of territory, or the looting and destruction of large swathes of countryside. Chronic armed conflict arose where neither side was able to expel the other from a given territory or where controlled areas bordered, overlapped, or were otherwise liable to continuing incursions from outside, resulting in endemic small-scale fighting between locally based forces, usually relying on point defences of some kind. The resource limitations and spatial structure shaped the strategic goals and the operational conduct of military campaigns.

This chapter explores how variability in food web structure in space and time can be critical to the stability, persistence, and function of ecosystems, a premise that it approaches in two ways. The first begins with models based on static connectedness food web structures, and discusses how these model results are sensitive to assumptions that the systems are in steady state and carry solutions which keep them stable. The chapter also takes a look at the dynamics food web structure approach, taking it one step further by discussing the importance of transient behaviour and spatial structure. It thus discusses alternatives to using asymptotic stability as the principle guide to studying food web dynamics.

Power makes for a regional structure of places. This “structure of places” is made up of a set of loci for cultural interaction, and a set of ideologies about relative positions. “Places” are therefore both objective and subjective situations. “Culture” can be felt with conviction, or it can be played from an emotional distance. The spatial structures of cultural production that have been investigated reveal a kind of system to these processes of disaffection and conviction. Octavio Paz saw “masks” as reflections of solitude—as reflections of a personal and collective concealment because of their insecurity vis-à-vis others. He was probably right about the transition that Mexican culture was going through when he wrote The Labyrinth of Solitude. Paz also claimed that Mexican history was the history of a man looking for his filiation.

This chapter discusses a number of significant spatial structures to determine the practical shape that architectural references take in the world of video game spaces. These structures arrange the spatial units in their own way: paths, edges, and regions, as well as the use of textures, vistas, and colors, define their appearance and functionality. Based on the connection between the spatial logic of architecture and its implementation in game worlds, the chapter closes with an abstracted model for space-driven functionality. In many ways, this model is a large-scale version of the argument for evocative narrative elements in game spaces, one that projects them into larger terrains and levels.

This chapter investigates population spatial structure of exploited whale species in the North Pacific Ocean during the period of industrial whaling, 1952–1979. Little detailed information, such as fidelity to feeding or breeding grounds, is known about the whale species that were hunted in this fishery. This chapter aims to gain insights into the spatial dimensions of the North Pacific whale harvest and the whale populations that inhabited this area by analyzing the spatial pattern of local harvest and decline. It also aims to assess formally the spatial and temporal patterns of whale catch records in the North Pacific and Bering Sea and to determine whether or not the timing of the whaling fleet movement out of these local areas as indicative of substantial whale stock depletion.

From Chapter 4 onwards, the book switches from the brain’s extrinsic activity, e.g., stimulus-induced activity, as discussed in the first part on sparse coding, to the brain’s intrinsic activity, the activity that the brain generates by itself and that stems from inside the brain. The brain’s intrinsic activity is very much based on its anatomical structure. As an alternative to the traditional medial-lateral and subcortical-cortical distinction, The book here, based on neuroanatomical data, suggests a threefold anatomical structure. This threefold anatomical structure proposes three rings—inner, middle, and outer—that extend and span from subcortical to cortical regions.

This chapter provides an overview of the current understanding of the form of macroecological patterns in insect body size, with particular emphasis on global patterns, patterns through time, and patterns through space. There is evidence for a rich spatial and temporal structuring and variation in insect body sizes. However, many of the generalizations that can be made remain based on empirical investigations of a relatively narrow range of species, often drawn from a small number of higher taxa. The most significant question, then, is whether the patterns and mechanisms are expected to vary substantially between higher taxa and/or between species.

This chapter considers the evolution of restraint in simple ecosystems. It specifically presents both simulation and experimental data on the evolution of restraint. It argues that spatial structure may play an important role in setting the stage for egalitarian major transitions. It concentrates on the evolution of restraint in nontransitive ecological communities. This chapter reveals that spatial structure can favor the evolution of restraint. It also illustrates that restraint evolves in structured ecosystems with cyclic networks of interaction.

The urban lowland neighborhoods known as bottoms, hollows, and flats declined after 1940. Highway projects, public housing, zoning, redlining, immigration restrictions, population movements, and changes in transportation combined to remake urban spatial structure. Real estate developers and government agencies built low- and moderate-cost housing complexes on floodplains, especially inland locations and proximate to industrialized waterways, far from the recreational amenities and coastal environments that could be sold as “waterfront property.” The connections between class, race, immigration, and topography continued in new forms. Environmental hazards, social marginalization, and economic polarization in the twenty-first century echo nineteenth century urban problems. In the poorest neighborhoods and skid rows of disinvested and declining cities Americans continue to refer to the worst-off places as “the bottoms.” The long-lasting consequences stemming from the creation and destruction of urban lowland neighborhoods are present in the twenty-first century American city.

‘Ground’ is adapted from the term in cognitive grammar for the set-up of a conversation. In Roman philosophical works the basic grounds are populated by Romans, to whom treatises are addressed and letters written, and who participate in dialogues; the Greek and general material is given Roman settings. History is not usually addressed to anyone, and the Roman material is presented with some elements of distance over identity. Historical works have a spatial structure, in which Rome forms the centre of the spatial viewpoint. Speeches form an inset ground; Roman historians deploy the Greek idea inventively. Real Roman occasions are at the heart of oratory, but the reality is complicated by fictional grounds, by publication, and by the role of rhetoric. The handling of space transfers but differs from that found in Athenian oratory.

Long-term evolution studies are selection experiments that are particularly useful for understanding the causes of evolutionary change. Adaptive radiation is one of the major features of evolution that can be analyzed in detail using long-term experimental evolution. This chapter discusses long-term microbial experimental evolution studies to examine chance impacts on adaptation, and also presents experimental studies of adaptive radiations in microbial selection experiments. One example is the phenotypic diversification observed in the case of the rapid evolution of Pseudomonas fluorescens in a nutrient-rich spatially structured environment. In three days, a single genotype of P. fluorescens diversifies into at least three morph phenotypes that are easily differentiated when sampled onto nutrient-rich solid medium and allowed to form colonies. This experimental study identifies two key aspects of the environment that lead to diversification: spatial structure and nutrient richness. The absence of either precludes initial diversification or leads to loss of diversity if removed after diversification.