His research has helped to make Sweden, and particularly Lund, a major center of innovative work in cultural geography.

Several of Hägerstrand's students speculated that his holistic and visionary thinking was rooted in his early education:[3] He was taught local geography, history and folklore at home in the Pestalozzi tradition which was being introduced at that time.

Cartography, geology, botany and agronomy were all interrelated parts of a more holistic understanding of processes within a spatial area.

Forty years later, geographer Andrew Cliff remarked on the foresight of Hägerstrand's methodology: "Bearing in mind that much of the research upon which the book is based dates from a time when computers were almost nonexistent, let alone used by geographers, it is remarkable that the simulation methodology which is so critically dependent upon computing power should have been contemplated.

[11] His work informed the likes of Allan Pred and Nigel Thrift, who helped take it to the English speaking world.

[14] Still, his methods were critiqued by feminist geographer Gillian Rose, who claimed that his models showed a masculine and falsely-ordered view of the world.

[...] Time-geography makes it possible to go beyond social constructionism by emphasizing the physical constraints on human action and the wider networks of competing opportunities that they set up which act to steer situations.

Perhaps one way of looking at Hägerstrand's work is as a means of saying 'hello' in a language many can understand: drawing as a kind of visual Esperanto.

The commendation accompanying the honorary degree at Ohio State University noted that "his work on innovation diffusion, carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, continues to be cited as a standard against which current research is measured" and that "this distinguished individual...inspired a generation of scholars around the world."