Location

Lore & Background

In geography, location is used to denote a region—point, line, or area—on Earth's surface. The term generally implies a higher degree of certainty than 'place,' which often indicates an entity with an ambiguous boundary, relying more on human or social attributes of place identity and sense of place. A populated place is called a settlement. A locality, settlement, or populated place is likely to have a well-defined name but a boundary that is not well defined, varying by context; for example, London has a legal boundary that may not match general usage. An area within a town, such as Covent Garden in London, also almost always has some ambiguity as to its extent.

Reader's Guide

Location is a foundational concept in geography, distinguished from 'place' by its emphasis on geometric certainty. Relative location describes a displacement from another site, while absolute location can be designated using a specific pairing of latitude and longitude in a Cartesian coordinate grid, such as the World Geodetic System. For example, New York City's position can be expressed as 40.7128°N, 74.0060°W. However, absolute locations are also relative, since they are expressed relative to something else: longitude is degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian (arbitrarily chosen to pass through Greenwich, England), and latitude is degrees north or south of the equator. This interplay between absolute and relative location underscores the term's utility in precise geographic referencing, while the ambiguity of 'place' highlights the role of human perception. The concept is central to geocoding, geographic coordinate systems, and geopositioning technologies such as the Global Positioning System.

Did You Know?

• Location generally implies a higher degree of certainty than the term 'place.'
• A populated place is called a settlement.
• Absolute locations are also relative locations, since they are expressed relative to something else.
• Longitude is the number of degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian, a line arbitrarily chosen to pass through Greenwich, England.