Free The Dictionary of Human Geography by Michael Watts Page A

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Alonso model
A model of the zonal struc turing of land use within an urban area. Using accessibility (measured as transport time and cost: cf. friction of distance) as the key variable, it accounts for intra urban vari ations in land values, land use and land use intensity. Its simplest form assumes that all journeys are focused on the city centre. Land users balance transport costs to that point against those for land and property, with the highest prices being bid for the most accessible inner city land which only commercial and industrial enterprises can afford. The result (shown in the figure) is a distance decay re lationship between location rent and distance from the centre, with residential uses (which have the lowest bid rent curves) confined to the outer zone. Alonso?s now largely obsolete model of a unicentric city can be modified to accommodate a multi centred organization of urban land use (see centrifugal and centri petal forces; decentralization; edge city; (NEW PARAGRAPH) sprawl) and also gENtrification of inner city, formerly non residential areas, but is less relevant to spatial structures in which accessi bility to a small number of points (usually by public transport) is a minor influence on many locational choices. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alonso (1964a); Cadwallader (1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

alterity
A philosophical term for othEr/ othERNESS. Rather than referring to individual differences, it more often refers to the system atic construction of classes, groups and cat egories. Such groups or classes are seen as ?Other? to a dominant construction of the Self (Taussig, 1993). Occupying the position of outsiders, such groups are often denied the basic rights and dignities afforded to those who are included within such cultural units as community, ciTizENShip or humanity (Isin, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Alterity does not refer merely to a cast ing out. Instead, the logic of exclusion is such that the Other is immanent to the constitution of the dominant group. as (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Isin (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

alternative economies
Approaches to trade that challenge many of the principles of capitalism. As part of a broader set of critical commentaries on capitalism (see, e.g., Gibson Graham, 1996), work on alternative economies has revealed the importance of initiatives including gift economies, charity banks and Local Exchange Trading Systems (see Leyshon, Lee and Williams, 2003). Alternative economies are often seen as a viable strategy for dealing with forms of social exclusion caused by groups being bypassed or exploited by mainstream spaces of capitalism, such as the retail banking industry (Leyshon, Burton, Knights, Alferoff and Signoretta 2004). jf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Leyshon, Lee and Williams (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

America(s) (idea of)
The landmass in the Western Hemisphere consisting of the contin ents of North and South America (sometimes Central America and the Caribbean are iden tified as separate sub regions). The plural form is relatively recent, providing an alterna tive to a singular that typically refers to either the entire landmass or the United States of America on its own. The earliest use of the name America for the continents of the Americas is on a globe and map created by the cartographer Martin Waldseemiiller in 1507. The most popular story about the naming draws from a book that accompanied the map in which the name is derived from the Latin version of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci?s name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form, America, as all of the contin ents were given Latin feminine names by their European namers. From this viewpoint, Vespucci (directly or indirectly) ?invented' America (O?Gorman, 1961). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Most of the inhabitants of the Americas call themselves Americans, but in the English speaking world use of the word is often restricted to residents of the USA,