TERRITORY

Charles François (2004). TERRITORY, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(2): 3523.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(2)
ID	◀ 3523 ▶
Object type	General information

That part of space

totally or partially controlled by a

living system , an ecosystem , or a sociosystem .

K. BOULDING, who discussed the concept of territoriality, wrote that: “It is relevant to the theory of niche

and to the determinants of

niches . Thus any organization

in competition with others will find that its advantage in the

interaction

diminishes as it goes away from some kind of 'home base', so that at some point the advantages of any further expansion fall to zero. This is what I have called the ”

boundary of equal advantage “ between two organizations , but the concept could easily be generalized. It is these boundaries of equal advantage

which really define the

niches

of an

ecological system . Economy has made an important contribution through location

theory, especially in the work of LÖSCH (1944 and 1954), who demonstrated that, even if we start with

resources

and

population

distributed uniformly in the geographical

field , the sheer pressures of maximizing behavior

will force the

field

into

clusters

and

structures

and will indeed create what are in effect

niches

in what previously had been an uniform

field ” (1972, p.69-70).

It should be noted that the pioneering work in location

theory was made by W. CHRISTALLER in 1923 (1933 and 1937).

See also