Distance decay is a geographical term which describes the effect of distance on cultural or spatial interactions. The distance decay effect states that the interaction between two locales declines as the distance between them increases. Once the distance is outside of the two locales' activity space, their interactions begin to decrease.
With the advent of faster travel, distance has less effect than it did in the past, except where places previously well-connected by railroads, for example, have fallen off the beaten path. Advances in communications technology, such as phones, radio and television broadcasts, and internet, have further decreased the effects of distance.
Related terms include "friction of distance," which describes the force that creates distance decay and Waldo R. Tobler's First law of geography, an informal statement that "All things are related, but near things are more related than far things."
Distance decay is graphically represented by a curving line that swoops concavely downward as distance along the x-axis increases. Distance decay can be mathematically represented by the expression I=1/d², where I is interaction and d is distance, among other forms. It also weighs into the decision to migrate, leading many migrants to move less far than they originally contemplated.
Distance decay is also evident in town/city centres. It can refer to:
-the number of pedestrians getting further from the centre of the Central Business District(CBD),
-the street quality decreasing as distance from the centre increases as well,
-the quality of shops decreasing as distance from the centre also increases
-the height of buildings decreasing as distance from the centre increases
-the price of land decreasing as distance from the centre increases
Famous quotes containing the words distance and/or decay:
“Though there were numerous vessels at this great distance in the horizon on every side, yet the vast spaces between them, like the spaces between the stars,—far as they were distant from us, so were they from one another,—nay, some were twice as far from each other as from us,—impressed us with a sense of the immensity of the ocean, the “unfruitful ocean,” as it has been called, and we could see what proportion man and his works bear to the globe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)