Rethinking Remoteness

摘要

The sparsity and concentration of population are such dominating attributes of Australia's human geography that their measurement, mapping and interpretation should be a central concern witnin the profession. Yet such attempts are as rare as human residents in the Simpson Desert. Expectations are raised by Zhao and Guthridge's (2008) contribution in this journal, with its welcoming title: 'Rethinking Remoteness: A Simple and Objective Approach'. These expectations are short-lived. They are deflated in the second sentence which reads: 'In this study, remoteness is redefined simply as the average distance between two nearest people within an appropriate spatial unit where population distribution is assumed to be homogeneous.' (p. 413).