Bridging the Qualitative–Quantitative Divide in Transport Geography∗

∗The authors wish to acknowledge Mei-Po Kwan and Tim Schwanen for editing this Focus Section of The Professional Geographer based on a series of paper sessions they organized at the 2007 AAG meeting. We wish to acknowledge both of these editors, as well as editor of The Professional Geographer and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on this article.

Abstract

Recent viewpoints concerning the state of research in transport geography have touched on the issue of insularity and the need to bridge the divide between the largely spatial–analytical or quantitative research in transport geography and the critical or qualitative research prevalent in urban, economic, and most other subfields of human geography. Transport geography has been criticized by some for being a quiet corner of our discipline that has lost its centrality largely because it remains within the analytical framework of the 1960s. This article explores these sentiments by reexamining recent transport-oriented research in highly cited geography journals to assess the degree to which the qualitative–quantitative divide exists within transport geography and between transport and other subfield in human geography, as well as to explore issues of productivity and centrality of transport-oriented research in geography. Results indicate that geographical research involving transport topics is much more prevalent and reflects a wider range of epistemological and methodological approaches than is frequently assumed. Nevertheless, there is still a considerable divide between “mainstream” transport geography and other human geographical research that necessitates much more interaction between transport and other subfields and greater incorporation of alternative research approaches within the mainstream of transport geography. To that end, we propose a preliminary critical transport geography research agenda that is open to a variety of methodological approaches, including quantitative analysis.

Opiniones recientes relacionadas con el estado de la investigación en geografía del transporte tocan el tema de la insularidad y la necesidad de salvar la divisoria entre la investigación predominantemente espacial–analítica o cuantitativa en geografía del transporte, y la investigación crítica o cualitativa prevalente en urbana, económica y la mayoría de los demás campos especializados de la geografía humana. La geografía del transporte es criticada por algunos de permanecer en un tranquilo rincón de nuestra disciplina, perdiendo su centralidad en gran medida por continuar dentro del marco analítico de los 1960s. Este artículo explora estos sentimientos reexaminando recientes investigaciones orientadas alrededor del transporte, publicados en revistas muy citadas, para evaluar el grado con el que la divisoria cualitativa-cuantitativa se manifiesta dentro de la geografía del transporte, y entre ésta y otras subdisciplinas de la geografía humana; explora también aspectos de productividad y centralidad de la investigación geográfica orientada hacia el transporte. Los resultados indican que la investigación geográfica que involucre temas de transporte es mucho más prevalente y refleja una más amplia gama de enfoques epistemológicos y metodológicos de lo que a menudo se supone. Sin embargo, todavía existe una considerable separación entre la “corriente mayor” de la geografía del transporte y otras ramas de investigación en geografía humana, lo cual requiere mucha más interacción entre la del transporte y otras subdisciplinas, y una más grande incorporación de enfoques alternativos de investigación dentro de la línea central de la geografía del transporte. En soporte de tal propósito, proponemos una agenda de investigación preliminar en geografía crítica del transporte, abierta a una variedad de enfoques metodológicos, incluso el análisis cuantitativo.

Key Words:

• centrality
• critical geography
• critical transport geography
• qualitative–quantitative divide
• transport geography

关键词:

• 历史
• 地理
• 方法
• 政策
• 实证
• 后实证主义

Palabras clave:

• centralidad
• geografía crítica, geografía crítica del transporte
• divisoria cualitativa-cuantitativa
• geografía del transporte

ANDREW R. GOETZ is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Denver, 2050 E. Iliff Avenue, Denver, CO 80208. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include transportation, urban, and economic geography.

TIMOTHY M. VOWLES is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Geography Program at the University of Northern Colorado, Room 2200 Candelaria Hall, Greeley, CO 80639. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include air transport geography, especially issues pertaining to spatial determinants of air fare pricing, air service patterns, emergence and evolution of low cost carriers and airport intermodal systems.

SEAN TIERNEY is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Denver, 2050 E. Iliff Avenue, Denver, CO 80208. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include the economic, urban, technological, and environmental nexus of energy production, distribution, and consumption, with a particular focus on the geographic discrepancies of the emerging cleantech industry.

Notes

∗The authors wish to acknowledge Mei-Po Kwan and Tim Schwanen for editing this Focus Section of The Professional Geographer based on a series of paper sessions they organized at the 2007 AAG meeting. We wish to acknowledge both of these editors, as well as editor of The Professional Geographer and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on this article.

¹It should be acknowledged that this broad categorization might not account for cross-over studies that incorporate both quantitative and critical approaches in the same research. At this stage of the analysis, we simply wished to see how many studies used quantitative methods as opposed to those that did not.

²This result is a consequence of the journals selected for analysis in this study. There is a second tier of geography journals in which mostly quantitative articles appear, such as Geographical Analysis, Journal of Transport Geography, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (TESG), GeoJournal, Growth and Change, and Environment and Planning B. If these were to have been included for the period considered, the picture would be different (especially because there are fewer qualitative–critical counterparts publishing many articles on transportation and mobility). The picture would be even more different if the output of geographers in nongeography journals were to be taken into account—for example, Transportation Research Parts A and D and Transportation—where much work has been published by people who consider themselves transportation geographers.