Scales of (geo)space
Before we delve into spatial thinking with more detail, a necessary discussion on scale has to be made.
Montello (1993) divides space into four classes to reflect the size of space relative to the human body and the cognitive process required to understand spatial dimensions. This classification represents spatial scales and divides the three-dimensional space into:
- Figural space; humans can understand it entirely without having to move
- Vista space; includes the human body and its surrounding and can comprise a room or a town square
- Environmental space; larger than the human body and for it to be perceptible needs human movement about it, comprises of buildings, neighborhoods, cities and, finally,
- Geographical space; much larger of the human body, humans many not be able to understand even when they move in it. Thus, it may be perceived only through representations (maps, models, 3d terrains etc.).
It should be pointed out that the term “geospatial” refers to environmental and geographical scales according to the classification by Montello and it is used in the literature for representation and analysis of geographic phenomena, whereas the term “spatial” refers to any space (regardless of scale), while the term “geographical” refers to the surface of the Earth. Geographic and geospatial terms are essentially equivalent, but the first is mainly used to assign geographic context or properties to space. Geographers in the traditional curricula deal with the “geospatial” phenomena and refer to environmental and geographical space.
The article by Montello is available here (Montello, D.R. (1993). Scale and multiple psychologies of space. In: Frank, A.U., Campari, I. (eds) Spatial Information Theory A Theoretical Basis for GIS. COSIT 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 716. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57207-4_21).