Recent scholarship has questioned the value of spatial segregation for explaining how social ties form, a concern amplified in an era when digital platforms enable connections without physical proximity. Large-scale analyses of social networks indeed show levels of segregation far stronger than what traditional neighborhood-based approaches predict. This article argues, however, that geography remains central to understanding social connections if space is conceptualized correctly. Critiques of spatial segregation often rely on a flat, two-dimensional view of place that reduces people’s location to simple coordinates. In contrast, research on time-space geography, life-course perspectives, vertical segregation and activity-space segregation reveal that spatial context is multi-dimensional, adding time and altitude. Time matters both in the short term (daily mobility moves individuals through workplaces, schools, leisure settings or transit routes where co-presence and tie formation occur) and in the long term (as earlier spatial exposures create durable networks that can influence later-life residential decisions and therefore subsequent social ties). Altitude also matters: in multi-storey housing, opportunities for interaction are structured by floor level, with residents more likely to encounter neighbours on the same or adjacent floors than those many storeys apart. Viewing segregation as a four-dimensional geographic phenomenon —three physical dimensions plus time— offers a conceptual framework for more fully understanding the environments through which people move and interact. This 4D perspective invites a renewed theorization of geography’s role in shaping social structure, even in an era often assumed to have diminished its importance.
Javier San Millán (Thu,) studied this question.