Charles Joseph Minard's Napoleon map, along with several dozen others that he published during his lifetime, set the standard for excellence in graphically depicting flows of people and goods in space.

Years after its introduction in the 1960s, Hägerstrand's time-geography model of society continues to inspire new ways of understanding human activity in space, and promises novel solutions for solving problems in the temporal organization and spatial development of human built environments.

Wright was an early advocate of the adoption of quantitative statistical techniques in geographic study. In 1937 he published an article demonstrating how the Lorenz Curve could be applied to geographic areas in the investigation of inequality and for regional comparisons.

Mark Jefferson provided early cartographic attempts to map the world's railroad networks, invoking concepts on the advance of civilization, and progress. While these concepts have been challenged, his use of graphic elements of buffers and catchment zones link to current practices in geographic analysis and transportation research.

In a paper to the Statistical Society in England in 1885, E. G. Ravenstein outlined a series of "laws of migration" that attempted to explain and predict migration patterns both within and between nations. The ideas derived from his work continue to inform studies of human migration more than a century later.

In his 1962 book Streetcar Suburbs, Sam Bass Warner, Jr., using Boston as an example, highlighed how suburbanization,  the attendant abandonment of the urban landscape, and a lack of coherent planning contributed to social class segregation and dependence on long-distance commuting.

Tufte addresses two major objectives in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information—to identify many of the mistakes and abuses common to informational graphics and to develop a general theory of data graphics to increase their efficiency and effectiveness.

In Railroads and American Economic Growth, Fogle illustrates how the interpretation of economic history is enhanced through a spatial perspective. He uses distance buffers to represent ease of transport and to assess the likely impacts of regional economic expansion associated with different scenarios of change in transport technology.

In 1972 Lou Skoda and J.C. Robertson published an isodemographic map (a cartogram) of Canada that represented a population-oriented rendering of the 1966 Canadian census divisions. The map was developed with a physical analog model that kept all of Canada together in a contiguous mass while preserving recognizable divisions and province outlines.

McHarg's landmark book, Design With Nature, presented an environmentally conscious approach to land use, and provided a new method for multi-criteria decision making over the location of controversial facilities, e.g., highways.