An alternative definition of coarse structures

Abstract

John Roe \cite{Roe lectures} introduced coarse structures for arbitrary sets $X$ by considering subsets of $X\times X$. That definition, while natural for analysts, is a bit more difficult to digest for topologists and geometers. In this paper we introduce large scale structures on $X$ via the notion of uniformly bounded families and we show their equivalence to coarse structures on $X$. That way all basic concepts of large scale geometry (asymptotic dimension, slowly oscillating functions, Higson compactification) have natural definitions and basic results from metric geometry carry over to coarse geometry.