Modelling spatial relationships between belgian car manufacturers and their suppliers using choremes

Abstract

Models are useful instruments to understand and explain reality. The modeller is looking for a model that, at the same time, represents spatial organisation in the most efficient, the most reliable and the most powerful way. This can only be obtained, however, when the modeller has a precise conception of the processes at stake. The starting point of the choreme model as Brunet conceived it is precisely the formulation of explicit hypotheses about the spatial organisation of society. In these hypotheses, the principle of dominance plays a major role. The choreme model was used to represent the networked territory that is the result of corporate strategy behind the network enterprise between Belgian car manufacturers and their supplying industry. The eventual model reveals that besides the principle of dominance, to which the car manufacturers’ decision power has to be assigned, the historically acquired territorial know‐how is the foundation of the geographical structure.