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Economic Geography Glossary

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Ubiquitous materials or inputs
Materials or production (or consumption) inputs which are available more or less everywhere in a similar quality and at approximately the same price. Still, ubiquitous inputs may have an effect on location: Inasmuch as such ubiquities affect the weight or bulk of the final product, the location of production (ceteris paribus) will tend to be relatively close to the market (in order to save transport costs).
Edward L. Ullman
(University of Washington until his death in 1976), well known for his work in urban- and transportation Geography. "Bases for spatial interaction: "transferability" (Goodall, p.478), "complementarity" (Goodall, p.84) and Stouffer's concept of "intervening opportunity" (Goodall, p.244) see also: Goodall, p.485. (Original Source)
Edward L. Ullman was also very interested in time/space substitution processes (early 1970s).

Uncertainty

Uncertainty: reference to the lack of knowledge (ignorance) about the state of the environment or other decision variables.
Uncertainty about the future vs. uncertainty about other places, events, structures and other phenomena
Risk: reference to the consequences of uncertainty, such as regret often expressed in terms of probabilities of such consequences uncertainty then reduced to uncertainty about actual occurrence and, possibly, about the reliability of probabilities.
it shall be suggested that "complexity" (at a point in time) and "instability" (over time) are two different root causes of uncertainty and (following Lawrence & Lorsch) that these two attributes of decision environments lead to

poor quality of information,
leads & lags in the economy resulting in delays in in formation feedback, and
a lack of causal understanding
and thereby contribute to the individual's uncertainty and can be identified as more immediate "causes" for uncertainty. [Otherwise: see Goodall]

Uniform delivered pricing
A common pricing scheme for consumer and other goods in which prices charged at different locations are uniform and independent of transport costs. "Romote buyers are subsidized by buyers near the production location." (Harrington & Warf, Industrial Location, 1995, p.41)
Untraded interdependencies
A term introduced by Dosi (1984) and Lundvall (1988, 1990) and now extensively used by Storper (1997) and others to refer to those cumulative-causation prone externalities which "take the form of conventions, informal rules, and habits that coordinate economic actors under conditions of uncertainty. These relations constitute region-specific assets in production", "a central form of scarcity in contemporary capitalism", ... and "of geographical differentiation in what is done, how it is done, and in the resulting wealth levels and growth rates of regions." (Storper, 1997, p.5)
Urban-Growth Boundary
A politically specified line around cities beyond which development is discouraged or prohibited. Some times also called urban-limit lines or rural-limit lines, urban growth boundaries exist in many cities, counties, and regions across the U.S., particularly in California. Source: Urban-Growth Boundaries and Housing Affordability: Lessons from Portland By Samuel R. Staley and Gerard C.S. Mildner, October 1999.
Urbanization economies
Benefits accruing to individual households or consumer-oriented activities resulting from the agglomeration of populations and the urbanization of an area or to other economic activities benefiting from the access to a general labor force. The population is assumed to have similar or complementary needs for residential infrastructures, schools, health-care and other service activities.
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Economic Geography Glossary

(http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/gloss/u.html)

Return to Econ & Bus Geog || Glossaries 2002 [econgeog@u.washington.edu]

Return to Econ & Bus Geog || Glossaries
2002 [econgeog@u.washington.edu]