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@GeogBristol's final instalment of the Quantitative Geography Progress reports is online from @ProgHumGeog! In it, we take a decisive stance on what the future of quantitative geography ought to look like. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0309132520924722
In the article, we argue that geography must address four central challenges. We must become more replicable in our designs, more inclusive in our self-concept, more specific in our theory, and more open in our execution.
We suggest that it's probably a better idea to *enforce* the first law of Geography to simplify problems, rather than check whether things *obey* this law, referring readers to Rick Church's great contemporary example in the IRSR https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0160017616650612
Beyond that, we suggest that we probably can't solve the MAUP, because it's "not an empirical problem: it is a theoretical problem," as @kinggary argued back in the debates around context in human geography. https://gking.harvard.edu/files/abs/contxt-Abs.shtml
Aggregation is a *theoretical* act with empirical effects. Changing the aggregation changes what place is acting in the data, and thus what effects that place might have on the process under study. The MAUP can't be "fixed" with methods alone.
We spend the latter half of the article discussing replicability, inclusion, open science, and causality in geography. We think that specific, replicable theories are needed in geography, and that quantitative geographers should try harder to work together on common problems.
