Introduction/ Social Space and the Planning of Residential Areas

The initiative to assemble the following essays in one volume came from Professor Torsten Hågerstrand at the University of Lund in the fall of 1977. Ideas and questions which I had shared there during 1976 had aroused curiosity and concern. Issues such as environmental perception, values, subjectivity, language, stress – could these be regarded as legitimate objects for geographic study? Even if one could appreciate the humanistic or even logical grounds for such interests, how could one operationalize research on them? Often I referred to work being done by colleagues and students at Clark University and elsewhere in North America, and indeed since then there has been more exchange of ideas between Swedish and American scholars. Those who had worked directly with me did not, I felt, constitute an identifiable group: each individual had pursued his or her own line of work in conjunction with many others. In fact, we had encouraged one another to pursue topics which seemed important in their own right and none would claim the role of pioneer or spokesman for new kinds of disciplinary orthodoxy. But that is what is attractive, Professor Hågerstrand insisted: fresh beginnings and provocative theses are far more inspiring that finished products. It is in this spirit that we have responded. We present here a selection of ‘excursions’ – benchmarks on intellectual journeys begun at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University and now traversing fresh territory – rather than faits accomplis within a unified field of expertise.