Representations of Space

Broadly, representations of space encompass all the ways in which humans bring geography into consciousness, including symbols, maps, remote sensing, models, art and photography, and textual descriptions. More specifically, however, the term representations of space comes from the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre's famous work, The Production of Space (1991). This entry provides an overview of Lefebvre's theory, describes some of the factors that create new representations of space, and examines the manifestation of representations of space in physical space. It then reviews some of the representations of space that have been produced by geographers, such as cartography, and discusses the impact of the quantitative revolution and the cultural turn on the representations of space created by geographers.