Euroquant at 21: “coming of age”?

• Main Author: David Unwin
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Unité Mixte de Recherche 8504 Géographie-cités 1999-11-01
• Series: Cybergeo
• Subjects: ECTQG; scientific movement; quantitative analysis; theoretical and quantitative geography; history of geography
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/563

This year's gathering in Durham marks 21 years of meetings of European quantitative geographers. The paper, originally presented at the 1999 Durham meeting, provides a review of what has been achieved. Initially the circumstances leading to the first meeting in Strasbourg (1978) are outlined. The subsequent ten meetings have seen a general, if not consistent, increase in the number of delegates and an increase in the number of nationalities represented. The papers have reflected larger changes in our discipline. Initially, work concentrated on statistical analysis of spatial data, but the 1980s saw an extension into formal mathematical modeling and what is nowadays sometimes called geographic information science. Despite, or perhaps because of, the group never having had any subsidy from EU, there have been a number of published outputs, not least of which have been research collaborations, a journal, several edited books, and inputs into other European initiatives such as the GISDATA programme. It is concluded that these gatherings can look forward to the future with confidence.