Helen Couclelis

Cities are among humanity’s most important and most complex creations, and they have been steadily increasing in complexity since the advent of the digital age. Informatics, the science of information, has by now advanced to a point where high expectations of improved understanding and evidence-based actionable knowledge for urban researchers, managers, and planners appear justified. But while there is more information than ever before, many kinds of theories, models, approaches, and tools that we have relied on thus far may no longer be of much use in the city of the information age. This chapter provides an overview of the state of affairs in urban science and planning, pointing out the limitations of formerly reliable methods and tools in the face of dramatic developments in the life and function of cities in the developed world. The chapter closes with suggestions for data-oriented strategies that might replace the ways we have used urban data up until recently.

As a contribution towards the further development of user-centered information systems, I present an argument for a contextual and subjective view of events and related concepts in information science that is distinct from the factual view prevalent in empirical science and everyday life. The central notion is that of 'R-Event', where 'R' stands for 'Relevant'. Drawing on representations of process such as dynamic models or AI approaches to problem-solving and planning, R-Events would improve the precision and value of search results by foregrounding and ranking information about events of high relevance to the user. There is no suggestion here that this proposal is easily implementable. It is offered at this stage as a potentially fruitful thought experiment.

From our current vantage point, Michael Goodchild's ( 1992 Goodchild, M.F. 1992. Geographical information science. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 6: 31–45. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ) game-changing ‘Geographical Information Science’ paper roughly bisects the history of our field from its beginnings in the1960s to the present. This makes it an appropriate landmark around which to organize some reflections on the evolution of geographic information science, and more particularly on Goodchild's role in the developments that have defined it these past 20 years. The focus here is on intellectual leadership rather than on any direct scholarly contributions, though scholarship provides the backbone of the narrative. The clearly spelled out research agenda that lies at the core of the 1992 paper and a handful of subsequent essays greatly facilitate that task. This paper explores different facets of Goodchild's leadership in sections titled ‘Naming’, ‘Adapting’, ‘Accepting’, ‘Persevering’, ‘Educating’, and finally, ‘Leading’, and provides evidence that, like any other science, geographic information science is a social as well as an intellectual enterprise. An aspect of the social function of intellectual leadership is that Goodchild's continuing role as agenda-setter for the diverse field of geographic information science goes well beyond generating disciples and followers; it also stimulates dialectic responses from researchers coming from quite different perspectives, thus contributing to the broadening and deepening of the field.

This article explores the notion of a system of ontologies specifically designed for the needs of an information science. A framework for geographic information ontologies is outlined that focuses on geographic information constructs rather than on the direct representation of real-world entities or on linguistic terms. The framework takes the form of a generative hierarchy anchored by the notion of intentionality at one end and of a spatiotemporal field of potentially relevant information at the other. Two theoretical notions are used in the generation of the hierarchy. The first is the principle of semantic contraction, whereby, starting from a level of geographic information constructs specified so as to reflect user intentionality, semantically coherent domains of properties are removed over several steps until only the rudiments of a spatiotemporal information system are left. The second notion is that of object of discourse, which allows entities to be represented as the composites of geographic information constructs at the higher levels of the hierarchy, explicitly reflecting the connections between the purpose, function, appropriate internal constitution, and ensuing categorization of the entities represented. The framework's main contribution is thus twofold: first, it allows the notions of user purpose and object function to be directly built into geographic representations; second, it proposes a hierarchy of ontological levels that are linked by systematic semantic relations. Further, the framework presents an integrated view of object and field representations. It may also provide a novel perspective on a number of issues of ongoing interest in geographic information science.

As everyday activities are increasingly carried out at least in part through digitally mediated remote interaction, researchers interested in the complex relationships between urban activities, spaces, and travel are running up against the limits of familiar forms of time geography. This paper argues that because information and communication technologies (ICTs) are loosening the traditionally close links between activity, place, and time, physicalist models such as the space–time path and prism of time geography may need to be reexamined in light of the new realities. An important part of these new realities is the fact that virtual communications depend on specific kinds of material means (computers and mobile phones, in particular). These now compete with and complement a fundamentally different kind of material means (of physical transportation) which have traditionally been at the basis of time-geographic analyses. The paper proposes a novel conceptual framework for time geography, whereby people's space–time behavior is modeled not just in a three-dimensional space but in a multidimensional space. The framework amounts to a primitive domain ontology for conceptualizing human activity in an ICT-rich world, and can naturally accommodate activity in cyberspace as well as in physical space. The objectives are: (1) to expand our ability to understand activities in space and time in the age of ICT by explicitly representing choices of means (here, transportation-related and communication-related means) to serve specific ends: to be most useful, this should be done within the same model that also tracks people's spatiotemporal trajectories; (2) more specifically, to improve our ability to represent and analyze the increasing variety of activities carried out with the help of ICT as these relate to time and place, and (3) to do so in a way that conserves the power of traditional time geography and is practical enough to be implemented. A few simple examples are discussed and illustrated with the help of parallel coordinates plots.

The question this paper explores is the extent to which e-commerce may be liberating consumers and merchants from the constraints of space (and time) that have traditionally led to predictable regional patterns of retail location. Is distance dead, have the laws of regional organization dissolved away in the age of Internet shopping? Following a discussion of some figures, trends and definitions relating to e-commerce, the paper develops a tentative theoretical framework for the study of this question. First, the fragmentation of activity hypothesis suggests that the activity of shopping can be decomposed into a large number of different sub-activities, some of which can better be carried out physically and others electronically from a variety of different locations. Next, noting that the sub-activity of paying for a purchase is the single most critical one for the survival of a local retail presence, a general game-theoretic model is outlined to help to estimate the relative amounts of physical vs. Internet shopping that would help to safeguard a healthy local retail presence. The paper concludes that e-commerce is not about to end the ‘tyranny of the region’. Regional structure principles remain important, although many familiar analytic approaches may have to be rethought or extended.

Considerable effort has been devoted over the years to fighting uncertainty in geographic information in its different manifestations. Thus far, research on handling inaccuracy, fuzziness, error and related issues has focused for the most part on problems with spatial data and their direct products, typically representations of spatial objects or fields. This paper seeks to broaden the discussion of uncertainty in the geospatial domain by shifting the focus from information to knowledge. It turns out that there is a surprising number of things that we cannot know (or questions we cannot answer) that are not the result of imperfect information. Forms of not knowing are pervasive in domains as diverse as mathematics, logic, physics, and linguistics, and are apparently irreducible. This being the case it may help to explore how these realms of ignorance may affect our efforts. The paper distinguishes three different modes or forms of geospatial knowledge production, and argues that each of them has built–in imperfections, for reasons of logical principle and not just empirical fact. While much can and needs to be done to manage and resolve uncertainties where possible, I argue for accepting that uncertainty is an intrinsic property of complex knowledge and not just a flaw that needs to be excised.