Attempt at Summarising Past Studies on Geographic Proximity
Attempt at Summarising Past Studies on Geographic Proximity

Summary/Abstract: The article is a review aiming to present the current research on the concept of geographic proximity and attempts to conceptualise it. The implementation of such a task required the identification of different ways of approaching the analysed issue, which was served by a systematic review of the literature, not performed on such a scale since the study of J. Knoben and L. Oerlemans (2006) (Micek, 2017). Proximity was captured in it using three types of logic: belonging, neighbourhood or similarity. Studies of proximity perceived as a value and trying to capture its intensity are rare. On the other hand, studies based on the proximity thresholds (most often expressed regarding physical distance) or affiliation to an administrative unit dominate. Meanwhile, proximity should be measured similarly as it is perceived and therefore using the logic of similarity. Therefore, there is a contradiction between the existing methods of measuring proximity and the essence of the concept itself. There is a need to capture proximity on a continuum that illustrates its intensity. The assessment of proximity, however, requires joint consideration of both objective and subjective measures, as well as the rejection of the thesis on the binary nature of the concept of proximity (Torre, Rallet, 2005).

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