Thrall's Geography 5157: Business Geography and Real Estate Market Analysis

Spring 2009
(last revision, 06 January, 2008)


GEO 5157 & GEO 4938 & GIS 5540 Business Geography and Real Estate Market Analysis
Section 4814X Periods: Tuesday period 5-6 (11:45-1:20) Thursday period 6 (12:50-1:40)	This course is the third of the four courses at University of Florida on Business Geography. Prerequisites are explained below. This course is open to undergraduates after completion of Geo 4620.
Department of Geography, University of Florida Spring Term 2006	Classroom: 3018 Turlington Professor Grant Ian Thrall 3121 Turlington Hall 1-352-392-4652 thrall@geog.ufl.edu

Return to Professor Thrall's University of Florida WWW Page

Prerequisite:

This is the third course in a sequence of four courses that comprise the Business Geography stream.

Required Prerequisites For GEO 5157 & GEO 4938 & GIS 5540

students are required to have completed a course in Geographic Information Systems, and be knowledgeable of basic ArcMap by ESRI

Course Overview:

"Business geography integrates geographic analysis, reasoning, and technology for the improvement of the business judgmental decision. Without the demonstrated ability to improve the business decision, there is no business geography. This differentiates business geography from the traditional descriptive or explanatory objective of economic and urban geography (Thrall, 2002, i)."

Business geography is important to marketing, decision and information sciences, real estate, economics, and other business subjects. Business geography is also relevant to urban planning, particularly those who desire career paths to become economic development officers.

This class integrates ideas, methods, technologies, and objectives in an opportunistic manner to achieve the goal of providing information to improve the business decision. This class focuses on Part II of Professor Thrall's Business Geography and Real Estate Market Analysis book. Part I is covered in Geo 4620 in the fall semester. Geo 4620 covers concepts of spatial equilibrium, market and population segmentation, submarkets, data issues, and general procedures such as Applebaum's customer spotting and analog methods. Part II, in the spring semester, applies the general concepts to business geographic real estate market analysis of housing including apartments, office and industrial development, retail location and expansion, hotel, mixed use.

Required Reading:

Thrall, Grant I., 2002. Business Geography and New Real Estate Market Analysis. Oxford University Press: London and New York, 2002.
Links provided on this web page. Links will be added to this web page throughout the semester
Students are required to complete projects using GIS throughout the semester. Students will be provided an account in the GIS lab. Each computer has ArcMap 9.x installed. Students may also receive a student version of ArcMap for use on their own computer. Students are encouraged but not required to purchase Maptitude from www.caliper.com The student price is $250.00

Tentative Class Outline
Topic	In The News
Introduction Business Georaphy University Curriculum Lawrence E. Estaville, Brock J. Brown, Lisa Keys-Mathews and William R. Strong, 2005. Business Geography: Development of a Curriculum Model. Papers of the Applied Geography Conference, vol 28, 292-300
Review Thrall, ch 4
Housing and Residential Communities Thrall, ch 5 "Analyze This: GIS Offers Ways To Pinpoint and Evaluate Land Before The Competition Does" Builder News, May 2004, Frank Rockwood and Grant Thrall
Office and Industrial Thrall, ch 6
Retail Thrall, ch 7 Supermarkets 101 (by Tom Dwyer) Delineating Hospital Trade Areas: It's Practically Brain Surgery July 1, 2002 Geospatial Solutions By: Grant Ian Thrall , Edward Borden , Susan Elshaw Thrall Arising from concerns about possible discrimination at hospitals in Long Island, New York, the State of New York Department of Public Health and the U.S. Department of Justice contacted lead author Grant Thrall in early 2000 and asked him to demonstrate how GIS might be used to calculate hospital trade areas and service to a "diverse" population. http://www.geospatial-online.com/geospatialsolutions/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=22173 MarketEdge TrendMaps: Deriving Trade Areas November 1, 2001 Geospatial Solutions By: Grant Ian Thrall , John J. Casey Trade area refers to the geographic region in which a business' customers are located. In practice, deriving trade areas can be complex and resource intensive. Some multibranch retail firms allocate hundreds of staff hours to hand-digitize trade areas, and manual digitizing can result in inconsistent trade-area definitions and operator errors. http://www.geospatial-online.com/geospatialsolutions/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=1348
Hotel and Motel Thrall, ch 8
Mixed Use Thrall, ch 9
Getting Started Thrall, ch 10 Data issues Layout of the Florida Department of Revenue 12D.8 N.A.L. Record File Alachua County Parcel Polygon ESRI SHP File with 12D.8 Property Assessment Characteristics Note, this is a 16MB password protected ZIP file
Understanding geographic markets and submarkets http://www.geospatial-online.com/geospatialsolutions/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=61493 Trade Areas and LSPs: A Map for Business Growth April 1, 2003 Geospatial Solutions By: Grant Ian Thrall , Michelle Fandre By correlating trade areas and customer profile data, retailers can visualize market penetration and assess options for future expansion. http://www.geospatial-online.com/geospatialsolutions/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=52685

IMPORTANT DATES

see UF's www page

GRADING
Students are expected to behave in a mature adult manner. Any class disruptions will result in the reduction of your letter grade by one full grade for each disruptive occurrence. Disruptive behavior includes, while in class, sounds and use of beepers and celular telephones, and PDAs, accessing web pages that are not class materials. Professor Thrall is the sole judge of disruptive behavior.

There will be two exams, and a project/term paper. The exams will be a mixture of multiple choice, true/false, and short essay. Students will not be admitted to exam after exam begins. Students arriving late will be counted as being not present without an excuse. Be on time.

Study questions 2003

MC/TF Study Questions For Thrall (2002)

Previous study questions

First Midterm Exam - 1998 ... 35%
Midterm Exam Blue Book Study Questions - 1998
Midterm Exam Blue Book Study Questions - 2001

Second Midterm Exam ... 35%

Term Paper Project

OVERVIEW: A project term paper is required and accounts for 30% of the total grade. Small projects will be assigned throughout the semester. Students will present the results of their work in progress, and will submit a final portfolio of completed projects during the last class of the semester. More details will be provided in class..