Geography Commons^™

Internal And External Commuting And Their Role In Explaining Demographic Change In Nonmetropolitan Areas: A Case Study Of Simcoe County, Ontario, 1971-1991, Robert Gregory Atkinson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Since the 1970's, nonmetropolitan areas have grown at rates in excess of those experienced by metropolitan areas. Two opposing arguments have been put forth in attempting to explain such a trend. Such arguments focus on the processes of counterurbanisation and metropolitan overspill. This paper ascertains to what extent these processes determine population change in Simcoe County, Ontario, between the years of 1971 and 1991. Associated physical factors, such as metropolitan distance and accessibility, settlement size, and settlement form, are all assessed. Emphasis, however, is placed on an examination of internal and external commuting patterns and their role in explaining recent …

An Investigation Of The Effects Of Multiple Distance Measures In Regression Modeling: Predicting House Prices, Dawn Maire Porter

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In today’s society people’s locational residential preference is no longer dependent on the distance from the Central Business District. With the demise of the concept of the friction of distance other accessibility nodes, besides the central business district, such as retail and suburban employment are necessary attributes towards the determination and influence of land rents. Where this is the case, the hedonic regression methods analysis to explain house prices should employ distance variables corresponding to each of the urban nodes. However, these distance measures may be highly intercorrelated, thereby posing a problem of “spatial collinearity.” Two authors have examined and …

Recent Changes In Domestic Accessibility In The Canadian Airline Industry: The Pre- And Post-Deregulation Situation, Ruben Jose De Castro Furtado

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In 1987 the Canadian National Transportation Act was amended. Airlines became free to enter/exit markets as they saw fit, and a network-wide reform of airline services began. This thesis examines the extent of network development since 1970, and attempts to determine the some of the spatial effects of the 1987 deregulation of the airline industry on nodal accessibility. Accessibility is a relative term and difficult to define explicitly. While it can be measured in distance or time, it may also be measured as the frequency of links between places over time. In this thesis the connectivity among places is used …

A Test Of The Multiquadric Technique Of Interpolation With An Application To Fluid Speeds In A River (Ontario), James Patrick Dozois

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Hardy's (1971) technique of interpolation was tested using fluid speed data from Big Otter Creek, a gravel bed stream, in South-Western Ontario. Fourteen cross-sections were selected from a 500 m-long reach of the river. Each cross-section was divided into 10 verticals. Fluid speed was sampled as different positions in these verticals starting at 0.025 m off the channel bed using an electromagnetic current metre. Bed roughness at each cross-section was determined by collecting samples of the bed material and by measuring the long, intermediate and short axes of particles at the 10 verticals. To test the multiquadric technique of interpolation, …

A Test Of The Multiquadric Method Of Interpolation Using Drumlin Data From The Lunenburg, Nova Scotia And Peterborough, Ontario, Fields, Catherine Treena Conrad

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The multiquadric method of interpolation has been used to generate surfaces from irregularly distributed points of geophysical data, and has proven to be a successful means of mapping such data. There are four stages involved in the implementation of the method (Saunderson, 1994): (1) solution of a system of simultaneous, linear equations; (2) interpolation of new z values, for a number of locations within the x,y area of an initial sample space of points; (3) plots of all the z values at their respective locations, using colour graphics instead of contouring; and (4) plots of the partial derivatives of z …

Pandemic Influenza: An Analysis Of The Spread Of Influenza In Kitchener, October 1918 (Ontario), Niall Phillip Alan Sean Johnson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Influenza remains one of the major killers in modern society. In addition to the mortality it causes, it exacts a huge medical, social and economic toll. Due to its propensity to undergo change, through antigenic drift and shift, this disease continues to torment humankind. These changes are the driving force that enables influenza to periodically become epidemic and pandemic. The study of past pandemics thus may provide useful insight to comb-it the disease now and in the future. The 1918-19 pandemic is one of the three worst outbreaks of disease in recorded history, with only the Justinian plagues and the …

An Analysis Of Canadian International & Interprovincial Manufacturing Export Flows: 1974-1990, H. Lillian Kucsma

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis examined the changing internal and external export patterns of Canadian manufactured products in the years 1974, 1979, 1984, and 1990. Hechscher—Ohlin's comparative advantage trade framework was used to guide the analysis. Internally, provincially biased shipping patterns were found over the four time periods analyzed. The percentage of intraprovincial shipments increased, and interprovincial shipments decreased through time. This suggests that the provinces exhibited signs of increasing provincialism. Externally, except for 1990, primary export flow destinations to the USA as a percentage of total exports increased over time while those to the other OECD countries decreased. Secondary export flow destinations, …

Agro-Climatic Hazards And The Political Economy Of Food Insecurity In West Africa: A Case Of A Rural Food Economy, Raphael Lawer Djabatey

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Variability and declining food production and accessibility in West Africa have characterised the food system in the region’s rural economy. These phenomenon have contributed to the fluctuation and declining per capita food supply and calorie intake, falling wages of farmers, rising food prices and increasing reliance on food imports and food aid by the governments and people of West Africa. The cause of the problem still remains an illusion and continues to baffle policy makers. Very often the problem is attributed to drought. However, to reduce the problem of household food insecurity to natural forces is to miss the centre …

Theoretical And Empirical Examinations Of Spatial Scale And Aggregation Effects On The Principal Axis Factoring Technique When The Observations Are Areal Units, Len Michael Hunt

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Previous assessments of factor analytic invariance to scale and aggregation effects have led to discrepant results. To determine the true effects, this study comprehensively examines the influence of scale and aggregation on factorial ecologies. This investigation is completed for three data sets, four scales, and thirty aggregations at each scale. Of these three data sets, two are artificial. These two data sets differ only by levels of spatial autocorrelations as one data set contains independent areal unit observations while the other set includes modest positive spatial autocorrelations. The third data set consists of variables from the 1986 Saskatoon enumeration areas. …

Voronoi Diagrams As A Visualization Technique For Spatial Autocorrelation In Point Data Sets, Martin A. Cassel

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis explores a new way of visualizing spatial autocorrelation in a GIS environment. It explores some relationships between spatial autocorrelation models, spatial interaction models and weighted Voronoi diagrams. Since the weighted Voronoi diagram is equivalent to a form of spatial interaction models, any GIS with the ability to generate a gravity model can be utilized to perform this new technique of exploratory spatial data analysis. This thesis demonstrates how the cross product form of‘ spatial autocorrelation models like the Geary and the Moran statistics is equivalent to the form of a multiplicatively weighted distance utilized in the definition of …

Multiple Hazard Research In Kananaskis Country, Alberta: A Geographical Information System Approach, Alastair J. Small

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research is concerned with the application of Geographical Information System techniques to multiple hazard research in Kananaskis Country Recreation Area, southern Alberta. The study is focused on Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, a high mountain environment in the front range Rockies. Increasing human activity in the area is putting more and more people at risk from natural hazards, thus the need for more efficient land use planning is evident. This research attempts to map and predict avalanche, forest fire, rockslide/rockfall, and flood hazard occurrence, and estimate the degree of risk associated with each. Data relating to the physical characteristics and …

The Energy Crisis: The Case Of The Economic Community Of West African States (Ecowas), With Special Reference To Nigeria, Ghana And Burkina Faso, Francis Bliss Lagbo

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The energy crisis of West African countries has assumed major importance over the past few decades. The oil price increases of the 1970s have posed innumerable problems to these countries. But that is hardly the entire story. The vegetation cover of most places have been stripped so bare that people must walk for hours to find the day's supply of firewood, the traditional energy source. Doing something about the problem involves, first of all, understanding what the situation really is. This study provides an analysis of the spatial, sectoral and social inequalities in energy production and consumption in BCOWAS. Scrutiny …

The Benefits Trickled Up: The Political Geography Of Water Provision In Paris, Ontario, 1882-1924, John Solomon Hagopian

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The social and political factors which affected nineteenth-century waterworks development have been relatively well researched in the United States. The few Canadian studies have found inequities in the systems of water provision. Using Paris, Ontario as a case study, an attempt is made to fill this research gap in Canada. The research centres on the identification of the social classes which paid for the Paris waterworks and which received the benefits. The spatial distribution of these social classes is determined and then compared to the spatial pattern of waterworks development. A similar comparison is done between the functional zonation of …

Rapid Population Growth And Its Impact On Residential Land Use In Ghana: The Case Of Madina-Adenta In The Accra Metropolitan Area, Louis Awanyo

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Rapid population growth rates coupled with low levels of economic development in developing countries have created among others immense obstacles to the provision of adequate housing to the majority of residents. Population growth rates are growing faster than the provision of new housing and housing infrastructure. This has resulted in intensive usage of the existing stock of housing and deterioration of housing environments. Some of the manifestations of housing and residential land use intensification are increasing room occupancy levels, in—situ housing adjustments involving physical changes in housing space and housing space conversions. Intensification of residential land use also has environmental …

The Campus Map: The Case Of Wilfrid Laurier University, Tanya Dykshoorn

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

University campus maps are not generally designed for navigational purposes. However, they are often employed by universities for image-building purposes. A collection of campus maps of universities across Canada have been examined with regards to navigation and image-building. The final focus of this thesis is on the Wilfrid Laurier University campus map.

In order to understand the importance of the navigational process on the campus, it is necessary to examine the professions that depend upon maps to navigate through the environment. Children, orienteers and marine navigators provide us with the basic foundations and some of the finer details of employing …

Consumer Spatial Shopping Behaviour Analysis: A Case Study Of The Kitchener Cma (Ontario), Yalin Wu

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Many marketing geographers concern themselves with the study of consumer spatial choice behaviour. Addressing some of the concerns, this thesis provides an evidence of customers’ spatial shopping behaviour at the study region of Kitchener Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). A customer’s spatial choice decision-making in the study area was first assumed to be a two-levelled process: regional and subregional level. This study was to identify the factors motivating consumers’ choice on where to shop at these two levels. A previous 804 households’ shopping behaviour survey conducted by Dr. A. Hecht in 1986 was used as the data basis of this study. …

Population Concentration Or Deconcentration In Ontario? An Examination Of Recent Patterns And Probable Causal Factors, Sinisa Aleksa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The process of population deconcentration has received little attention from a methodological and causal perspective. In the early 1970’s, most western and industrialized nations including Canada experienced an intense movement of the population away from the larger metropolitan and urban areas. As a result, much of the growth during this time period was taking place at lower levels of the settlement hierarchy. In fact, much of the growth in those areas had in the past been characterized by heavy out-migration and overall population losses. Research in the 1980’s has been of a critical nature. There have been two main criticisms. …

Identifying Directional Properties Of Spatial Point Patterns An Investigation Of Two Methods, Rolf Puchtinger

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Analyses of spatial point patterns tend to focus on deviations from randomness by either clustering or regularity. One assumption of these analyses implies that the point generating process is equal in all directions. However, the association of the location of points with a process biased in one or more directions is widely neglected due to a lack of appropriate statistical procedures. This is surprising, since patterns generated by directional processes are important in Geography. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the blunt-triangle method and the third moment method for their potential of identifying directionality in spatial point patterns. …

High Technology Industry And Material Linkages In The Toronto Region, Jim Torretto

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study examines the material linkage patterns of a sample of 80 high technology establishments located in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). The main focus of the research is to relate the spatial spread of linkages to aspects of plant structure, most notably ownership. In addition, an attempt is made to compare linkage arrangements of firms in Toronto with other regional studies of high technology industry. The results reveal the expected linkage patterns with respect to ownership. Foreign owned companies show much lower levels of purchasing and selling within the Toronto economy than domestic firms. Further dimensions of plant …

Elderly Housing Choice: A Case Study Of Brantford, Ontario, David Owen Diegel

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

As Canada’s population ages, policy analysts are increasingly concerned with issues related to housing the elderly. Addressing some of these concerns, this thesis provides evidence of the characteristics of the elderly who choose to move to Senior Citizens’ Apartments (SCAs), as opposed to staying in their own homes. Choice based sampling and binary logit analysis are used to investigate the connection between the choice made and the characteristics of the elderly. The results indicate that being married and owning a car increase the odds of elderly persons staying in their own homes as opposed to moving to an SCA, while …

The Impact Of Teaching Cartographic Lexicon And Of Geographic Experience On Map Use, James Cuame Saku

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Although maps are often thought to be easily understood, for many people they are not. Research into how best to make the map more useful to the user has taken different forms including applied psychology. While some researchers focus on the map maker, others are concentrating on the map user. In this study, attention is focused on the map user. Specifically, the study tries to look at how “years of geographic instruction” and teaching of “geographic lexicons” can enhance the performance of map use activities. Since maps are more associated with geographers, it is believed that they are in a …

The Changing Canadian Inventive Spatial Economic Pattern: An Urban And Regional Analysis Between 1881 And 1986, S.L. Brian Ceh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Canadian urban and regional patent and trademark data was analysed between 1881 and 1986 in an attempt to distinguish spatial inventive patterns in Canada over time. Inventive activity, as a pre—condition for economic development, is a viable indicator for predicting future economic growth in an inventive spatial economy. As such, it will be possible to extend the description of spatial inventive patterns in Canada after 1986. The percentage and relative level of inventive activity in urban centers and regions in Canada will help distinguish spatial inventive patterns in Canada over time. This information was based on a 25 percent systematic …

Housing Policy And Housing Satisfaction In The People’S Republic Of China: A Behavioural Approach Applied In The City Of Xian, Jidong Zhang

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Based on the behavioural approach, this thesis examines housing satisfaction in Xian, The People’s Republic of China, and its implications for housing policy. A conceptual framework of housing satisfaction along three dimensions, housing environment system, social structure, and housing policy, is presented and discussed. From this framework a set of hypotheses are stated and subsequently tested. The strongest factor found to affect housing satisfaction is people’s living space and housing condition is another important factor. Through examining housing policy and housing satisfaction, the centrally controlled Chinese housing policies are shown to need modification and changes in housing supply should be …

The Extent To Which The Geographic Proximity, Quantity And Quality Of Contact Predicts Dimensions Of Social Support Given To Elderly Women By Their Adult Children, Lori Ann Johnson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which the frequency of contact, geographic proximity, and the quality of the relationship between elderly women and their most supportive adult child accounted for the degree of social support obtained by these women, and to evaluate the applicability of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) (Parker, Tupling, & Brown, 1979) as a measure of the affectional and controlling aspects of the relationship between the two populations. One hundred noninstitutional elderly women from the City of Waterloo were interviewed in their homes and were asked to designate their most supportive adult …

An Analysis Of The Spatial And Economic Variations Of Ethnic Groups, Ontario, Jayati Ghosh

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study is concerned with six ethnic groups in the province of Ontario: the British, considered the “core group”, and the French, Italian, Indo-Chinese, Indo-Pakistani and Caribbean, the “peripheral groups.”

The principal interest of the research has been to study the ethnic mosaic in two ways, both in a core-periphery context. It was hypothesised that there has been persistence of socio-economic stratification between the British core and the peripheral groups. This thesis analyzes variation in the occupation-income between and within the ethnic immigrant groups.

The secondary objective is to examine these groups spatially, that is, in terms of a southern …

An Assessment Of Hybrid Poplar Biomass Plantations For Ontario, Peter Caleb Sturrup

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The search for an alternative to oil dominated political and economic thinking during the 1970’s and continues in this decade. In Ontario, one such alternative is methanol, which could possibly be supplied in large quantities from hybrid poplar biomass plantations. While the nature of these plantations has been debated at greath length, the exact quantity and location of land that could be available for plantations in Ontario has not been identified.

Using the Land Evaluation Model (LEM 2) developed at the University of Guelph an inventory of the land resources and the resulting land use patterns is determined. Throughout the …

Towards The Measurement Of Regional Inequities Through Patterns Of Ideally Generated Socio-Economic Indicators, Richard C. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Regional disparities are commonly described in terms of only one criterion when in fact they can be characterized by a number of social and economic variables. The objective of this study is to define regional data according to specific socio-economic indicators, and measure the disparities associated with them in comparison to those from ideally generated groupings. Socio-economic data from the Federal Republic of Germany was obtained from the West German Federal Institute for Regional Analysis and Planning. The variables will be grouped by factor analysis to create the indicators, and variation will be measured using analysis of variance. The ideal …

Communities In Transition Elmira And St. Jacobs, Ontario : A Study Of Resident And Retailer Attitudes Toward Tourism, Frances Hohol

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The present thesis examines the changes which tourism development has brought to two Canadian communities, Elmira and St. Jacobs, Ontario. They are "communities in transition". The research focusses on the local resident and retailer attitudes toward this development, and the possibility and desirability of further tourism development. Following analysis of the data collected through questionnaires, nine recommendations are presented.

Regional Variations Among Ethnic Groups In Ontario A Core-Periphery Model, Robert George Sharpe

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis performs a spatial analysis of Ontario’s structure of ethnic stratification. It examines several spatial manifestations of the contrasts in socio-economic well-being—income, education, and occupation—between Ontario’s British majority and seven ethnic minority categories. The major data source for this analysis includes published Canadian Census data and special tabulations of the 1971 Census. Regional patterns of spatial distribution shown by the various ethnic categories are described and compared using location quotients and the centrographic statistical technique. Applying a core-periphery model of regional structure and development, a tendency was found for ethnic categories of subordinate socio-economic status to be disproportionately concentrated …

Arson In Toronto: A Geographical Perspective (Ontario), James Richards

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis is an empirical study of the crime of arson in Toronto from a geographical perspective. Although empirical in nature there is a framework of analysis that hopefully provides a starting point for theoretical development. The study is loosely organized around the framework of four areas of arson research which include: antecedent environmental conditions, organismic variables, actual firesetting behavior, and the consequences of firesetting. To each one of these areas of research geographical analysis is possible. In most cases it was necessary in this study to incorporate the findings from the psychological and sociological literature into the geographical analysis. …