This book is the first contemporary book to compare and integrate the various ways geographers think about and use scale across the spectrum of the discipline and includes state-of-the-art contributions by authoritative human geographers, physical geographers, and GIS specialists. The editors place competing concepts of scale side by side, demonstrating how different aspects are significant for each, and providing a detailed comparative assessment. They set out from the premise that there is much acknowledged common ground between these different approaches and that valuable insight can be gained by exploring it. In light of the increased interest in global change and globalisation, there has been a huge surge of interest in the environmental and human sciences in the relationship between the global, the regional and the local. For this reason, this cutting edge survey of how geographers conceptualise scale should be of interest across a broad range of disciplines.

Eric Sheppard is Fesler-Lampert Professor in Geography at the University of Minnesota. He is the co-author and editor of a number of books, including A Companion to Economic Geography (Blackwell, 2001) and Reading Economic Geography (Blackwell, 2003), and of over 80 scholarly articles. His current research interests include spatiality and political economy, environmental justice, critical GIS and interurban policy and activist networks.Robert B. McMaster is Professor of Geography and Associate Dean for Planning in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. His areas of research include multiple scale databases and cartographic generalization, GIS and society, including environmental risk assessment and public participation GIS (PPGIS), and the history of US academic cartography. From 1990 to 1996, he served as editor of Cartography and Geographic Information Science, and is currently a Vice President of the International Cartographic Association.