Using a geographic concept
Geographic terminology is required all the way through
- What is required is geographic terminology, at every depth — not a labelled section about concepts. It has to be in the description of the pattern, in the explanation of the factors, and in the evidence you attach to both.
- The geographic concepts are where that terminology comes from. Pattern, process, interaction, change, perspective, sustainability, location are concept words, and using one precisely is what turns an everyday sentence into a geographic one.
- So use concepts as tools, not as a topic. A concept earns its place when it makes a sentence about your city sharper. It earns nothing when it is defined in a paragraph of its own.
- You choose which concepts fit, so choose the ones your evidence best supports, not the ones you find easiest to define.
- One concept used properly beats three named in passing. A paragraph containing five concept words and no evidence is extremely common, and it says nothing at all.
The concepts, and what each one asks about an urban pattern
- Patterns — is the arrangement describable in one sentence? Spatial, temporal, or both.
- Processes — what is the sequence of actions producing it? Suburbanisation, gentrification, decentralisation.
- Interaction — what affects what, and in which direction? Land use and transport interact both ways, and saying which way is the point.
- Change — what is different now, over what period, and how fast?
- Perspectives — what does each group believe that makes their view of the pattern reasonable to them?
- Sustainability — can this continue, and what would break first?
- Environments — what are the characteristics and features here, natural and cultural, and what produced them?
- Level 2 usually adds location — absolute (a grid reference, an address) or relative (nine minutes from the CBD by bus), and treated as an advantage or a constraint.
Naming a concept, and using one
- A concept word can appear in a sentence and do nothing. Interaction means elements of an environment affecting each other. In Tawharau, the road network and the retail centres interact. That is true, and it says nothing about Tawharau that a person who had never been there could not have written.
- The concept starts working when it is attached to something specific, in a stated direction. Interaction runs from the road network to retail here: the junction of the ring road and the eastern arterial carries over 20,000 vehicles a day on each road, and 24,000 m2 of bulky-goods retail located on it between 2007 and 2011, taking the strip to 42,000 m2. Now the concept has named which two things, which way round, and how much.
- It does most work when it explains something the rest of your writing could not. Because interaction runs both ways, the strip's own success is now funding two new intersections that will raise the accessibility that put it there — which is why this pattern deepens rather than drifts. The concept is not decorating the argument there; it is the argument.
- The deletion test is the fastest check you have. Cross out every sentence with the concept word in it. If your explanation reads exactly the same without them, the concept was decoration.
- Precise language belongs everywhere, not in a labelled paragraph. A section headed Geographic Concepts at the end is the clearest possible signal that the vocabulary was added afterwards rather than used.
Making a figure carry its weight
- A bare fact supports a statement and stops there. Kowhai Mall holds about 31,000 m2 of floorspace. Correct, and it settles nothing.
- Quantified, located and compared, the same fact starts describing. Kowhai Mall's 31,000 m2 is half the CBD's 62,000 m2, and it sits 8 km east of it at the ring road junction. One figure, three jobs — size, ratio and position.
- A figure carries the argument when the sentence it sits inside is the claim. Do not write a paragraph of facts and then a paragraph explaining them; put the number in the sentence that makes the point, and use the same number again where it links a second part of the study.
- Every piece of evidence needs a source and a date. Field data: what you counted, where, when, how many. Secondary data: who published it and when.
- Twenty solid facts are enough for this topic. Students who collect a hundred and use eight are collecting instead of thinking.
Structuring the submission
- Introduction — name the city, the pattern and the variable you measured, in three sentences. No history of the city.
- Description of the pattern and its variation — the four-part structure, with your map and graph placed where they are referred to.
- Explanation of the factors — one factor per section, each with a mechanism and a figure, tied to the part of the variation it accounts for.
- The concept, woven through, not bolted on at the end.
- A short conclusion that answers the question the study asked, states which findings are firm, and says what your data cannot settle.
- Refer to every figure in the text. A map nobody was asked to look at is not evidence.
What makes a claim worth making
- Describing the pattern is the easy half. Describing the variation — what differs, by how much, and between which two places — is the half most submissions leave short, and it is the half the explanation has to hang on.
- Where the interesting claim usually is: a factor that explains one part of the variation and not another; two things that look like one process and turn out to be two; a number everyone quotes that means something different from what they think; a link that runs both ways.
- A good claim is not a bigger vocabulary. It is something your evidence supports and a careful reader would not have reached without you.
- Test every claim against your own data before you write it. If you cannot point at the figure that would be different if the claim were false, it is an impression rather than a finding.
Worked Example
Here are three students' concept paragraphs. All three chose interaction and all three studied retail in the invented city of Tawharau. Say how much work the concept is doing in each, and exactly what moves each one on.
- Paragraph 1: Interaction means the elements of an environment affect each other. In Tawharau the transport network and the shops interact with each other, and this has affected the retail pattern.
- Paragraph 2: Interaction is shown between the road network and retail location. The junction of the ring road and the eastern arterial carries over 20,000 vehicles a day on each road, and 24,000 m2 of big-box retail was built there between 2007 and 2011, taking the strip to 42,000 m2. Because a bulky-goods store's catchment is measured in driving time, the traffic volume directly set the value of that site.
- Paragraph 3: The interaction between roads and retail in Tawharau runs both ways, and the second direction is the one that explains the pattern's persistence. The road junction located the retail in 2007. The retail is now relocating the road: the council's transport programme funds two new intersections and a bus route to serve the strip. The factor that selected the site is being strengthened by what it selected, which is why this pattern deepens over time instead of drifting — and it predicts that the gap between the strip and the vacant second rezoned block, which shares its zoning but not its junction, will widen rather than close.
Step 1 — apply the deletion test to each.
Delete paragraph 1 and nothing is lost, because it contains no claim about Tawharau that survives its own removal. Delete paragraph 2 and a specific, evidenced link is lost. Delete paragraph 3 and the explanation of why the pattern persists disappears entirely, and so does a prediction.
Step 2 — say what each one actually contains.
Paragraph 1 states the concept and nothing else. It is correct and it is connected to the pattern. Nothing is wrong with it; there is simply nothing about Tawharau in it.
Paragraph 2 puts the concept to work. It names which two things interact, which direction the effect runs, and it carries three pieces of quantified evidence and a mechanism.
Paragraph 3 makes the concept do the explaining. It identifies a second direction of interaction, uses it to account for something the rest of the study could not account for — the pattern's persistence — and generates a checkable prediction about a specific site.
Step 3 — name the single move between each one.
From 1 to 2: attach the concept to specific evidence and state the direction. The transport network and shops interact becomes this junction, this volume, this floorspace, this way round.
From 2 to 3: find the second direction, and make it explain something. Paragraph 2 describes the interaction correctly. Paragraph 3 notices the loop and uses it — and a loop is the most useful thing you can find in an urban pattern, because it turns a description into a prediction.
The first paragraph states the concept, the second attaches it to specific evidence in a stated direction, and the third uses it to explain something nothing else in the study could — and produces a prediction that could be checked.