ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the average effects, recognizing that there are individual idiosyncrasies, but declaring all the same that these average effects estimated, even if the friction of distance probably vary between one group of people and another. Working with air passenger movements, an area of research pioneered by Edward Taaffe, geographers have estimated these effects of distance for 100 cities involving thousands of pairs of interactions. The cities of Linearia interact with each other strictly in accordance to their size, and distance has no attenuating effect at all. In southwest England, for example, the technological innovation of the bicycle sharply lowered the friction of distance as young swains could court the apples of their eye at much greater distances, with dramatic consequences for marriage distances and less close inbreeding. But whether over space in northern Italy, or over time in southwest England, we cannot compare the pure distance effects because the geographic patterns of two people interacting also change.
