European Journal of Geography The publication of the EJG (European Journal of Geography) is based on the European Association of Geographers’ goal to make European higher education a worldwide reference and standard. Thus, the scope of the EJG is to publish original and innovative papers that will substantially improve, in a theoretical, conceptual or empirical way the quality of research, learning, teaching and applying geography, as well as in promoting the significance of geography as a discipline. Submissions should have a European dimension. Contributions to EJG are welcomed. They should conform to the Notes for authors and should be submitted to the Editor, as should books for review. The content of this journal does not necessarily represent the views or policies of EUROGEO except where explicitly identified as such. Editor Kostis C. Koutsopoulos Professor, National Technical University of Athens, Greece [email protected] Assistant Editor Yorgos N. Photis Associate Professor, University of Thessaly, Volos Greece [email protected] Book Review Editor Gerry O’Reilly Lecturer, St. Patrick’s College, Dublin, Ireland [email protected] Editorial Advisory Bailly Antoine, Prof., University of Geneva, Geneva Switzerland Board Bellezza Giuliano, Prof., University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy Buttimer Anne, Prof., University College Dublin, Ireland Chalkley Brian, Prof., University of Plymouth, Plymouth UK Martin Fran, S. Lecturer, Graduate School of Education Exeter S. Vice President of the Geographical Association Gosar Anton, Prof., University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia Haubrich Hartwig, Prof., University of Education Freiburg, Germany Nazmiye Ozguc, Prof., Istanbul University, Istanbul Turkey Strobl Josef, Prof., University of Salzburg, Salzburg Austria Van der Schee Joop, Prof., VU University, Amsterdam The Nederlands © EUROGEO, 2011 ISSN 1792-1341 The European Journal of Geography is published by EUROGEO - the European Association of Geographers (www.eurogeography.eu). 1 European Journal of Geography Volume 2 Number 2 2011 CONTENTS 1 Letter from the Editor 6 DYNAMIC OPPORTUNITY‐BASED MULTIPURPOSE ACCESSIBILITY INDICATORS IN CALIFORNIA Pamela DALAL, Yali CHEN, Konstadinos G. GOULIAS 21 "GLOKAL CHANGE": GEOGRAPHY MEETS REMOTE SENSING IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT Markus JAHN, Michelle HASPEL, Alexander SIEGMUND 35 CHILDREN’S MAP READING ABILITIES IN RELATION TO DISTANCE PERCEPTION, TRAVEL TIME AND LANDSCAPE Ekaterini P. APOSTOLOPOULOU, Aikaterini KLONARI 48 USING GIS‐BASED PROJECTS IN LEARNING: STUDENTS HELP DISABLED PEDESTRIANS IN THEIR SCHOOL DISTRICT Ali DEMIRCI, Ahmet KARABURUN, Mehmet ÜNLÜ, Ramazan ÖZEY 62 A MICROECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF GREECE’S CORE‐PERIPHERY IMBALANCES (1994‐2002): CONFIRMING KRUGMAN’S INITIAL NEW ECONOMIC MODEL Constantinos IKONOMOU 78 STANDARDIZATION OF GEOGRAPHIC DATA: THE EUROPEAN INSPIRE DIRECTIVE Gabor BARTHA, Sandor KOCSIS 2 3 Editorial Dear Fellow Geographers, It is a great pleasure as well as an immense satisfaction to see this SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE EJG materialize. Indeed this is a turning point between a process that started several years ago with the formation of the network HERODOTE which was later evolved into EUROGEO, the Association of European Geographers, and a new era whereby our Association has organized its first annual meeting without any outside help or support as well as start publishing the European Journal of Geography. These new exiting activities became possible because there are many geographers full of new ideas and energy and Geography in Europe is still a young and productive science. As you know, the European Association of Geographers ‐ EUROGEO is interested in improving the quality of learning, teaching and creating geographic knowledge as well as promoting the significance of Geography as a discipline. Therefore it should not be a surprise that in our Athens conference there were approximately 120 papers presented in 18 sessions ranging from environmental issues, to spatial economics and problems of the Mediterranean region. Most of these high quality papers were submitted for publication for this special issue of the EJG. Such a massive submission of papers however, on one hand advanced successfully the universally accepted notion that Geography is indeed the best way to study our world we live in, but on the other hand because of their quality created a pleasant but difficult editorial problem of choosing a small number from a set of many excellent papers. To partially overcome this problem very shortly a new issue of the EJG will appear to provide the scientific community with Geographic knowledge that should be available. Kostis Koutsopoulos National Technical University of Athens 4 European Journal of Geography, 2:2 Copyright © European Association of Geographers, 2011 ISSN 1792-1341 5 European Journal of Geography 2 2: 6‐20, 2011. © Association of European Geographers DYNAMIC OPPORTUNITY-BASED MULTIPURPOSE ACCESSIBILITY INDICATORS IN CALIFORNIA Pamela DALAL University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Geography,3625 Ellison Hall, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060 , [email protected], http://geog.ucsb.edu/geotrans Yali CHEN University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Geography, 3625 Ellison Hall, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060, http://geog.ucsb.edu/geotrans, [email protected] Konstadinos G. GOULIAS University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Geography, 5706 Ellison Hall, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060 http://geog.ucsb.edu/geotrans, [email protected] Abstract Accessibility, defined as the ease (or difficulty) with which activity opportunities can be reached from a given location, can be measured using the cumulative amount of opportunities from an origin within a given amount of travel time. These indicators can be used in regional planning and modeling efforts that aim to integrate land use with travel demand and an attempt should be made to compute at the smallest geographical area. The primary objective of this paper is to illustrate the creation of realistic space-sensitive and time-sensitive fine spatial level accessibility indicators that attempt to track availability of opportunities. These indicators support the development of the Southern California Association of Governments activity-based travel demand forecasting model that aims at a second-by-second and parcel-by-parcel modeling and simulation. They also provide the base information for mapping opportunities of access to fifteen different types of industries at different periods during a day. The indicators and their maps are defined for the entire region using largely available data to show the polycentric structure of the region and to illustrate this as a method that can be applied in other polycentric regions. Keywords: hierarchical spatial choice, spatial cluster analysis, multi-scale representation European Journal of Geography - ISSN 1792-1341 Dalal P.- Chen Y.- Goulias K./ European Journal of Geography 2 2 6-20 1. INTRODUCTION Recent legislation in California aiming at stricter mobile source emissions control and planning for dramatic decreases in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions emphasizes the need for integrated land use policies with transportation policies. This is expected to happen with planning tools such as a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS), which among its many objectives also needs to understand residential location and relocation decisions and explain possible futures under different scenarios of policy to a variety of audiences including decision makers and professional planners and engineers (see http://www.ca-ilg.org/SB375Basics). Similar to many European jurisdictions land use planning is in the local level (e.g., the City) and transportation planning is at higher levels. In the US, transportation planning is a foundational activity of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) that were created in the 1960s to ensure coordinated planning among local jurisdictions. Two of the most important elements of this planning activity are the Long Range Regional Transportation Plan (LRTP), which every 4-5 years creates a vision and a path to reach goals that protect the environment, foster economic growth, and ensure equity and the second is the development of the regional Transportation Improvement Program, which is an multi-billion USD investment plan to satisfy LRTP goals. The recent legislation adds the land use and transportation goal with a SCS to the MPOs. In California the four largest MPOs (their region surrounds Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco) are also required to build simulation models to assess scenarios for meeting specific targets of GHG emissions by 2020 and 2035. At the heart of these urban simulation models are behavioral equations of residence, workplace, and school location choices by households and their members together with activity and travel behavior equations to represent the daily activities and movements of people in the region. All these models and simulation tools are currently developed and often face two major stumbling blocks: a) lack of understanding of the behavioral processes we try to change with the new policies; b) lack of suitable tools to explain spatio-temporal phenomena that emerge from complex interactions among people. The short statement below is indicative of the relationships we should disentangle, understand, and recreate in predictive urban simulation models. “A household’s decisions