Lelek maps and n-dimensional maps from compacta to polyhedra

For a natural number m⩾0, a map from a compactum X to a metric space Y is an m-dimensional Lelek map if the union of all non-trivial continua contained in the fibers of f is of dimension ⩽m. In [M. Levin, Certain finite-dimensional maps and their application to hyperspaces, Israel J. Math. 105 (1998) 257–262], Levin proved that in the space C(X,I) of all maps of an n-dimensional compactum X to the unit interval I=[0,1], almost all maps are (n−1)-dimensional Lelek maps. Moreover, he showed that in the space C(X,Ik) of all maps of an n-dimensional compactum X to the k-dimensional cube Ik (k⩾1), almost all maps are (n−k)-dimensional Lelek maps. In this paper, we generalize Levin's result. For any (separable) metric space Y, we define the piecewise embedding dimension ped(Y) of Y and we prove that in the space C(X,Y) of all maps of an n-dimensional compactum X to a complete metric ANR Y, almost all maps are (n−k)-dimensional Lelek maps, where k=ped(Y). As a corollary, we prove that in the space C(X,Y) of all maps of an n-dimensional compactum X to a Peano curve Y, almost all maps are (n−1)-dimensional Lelek maps and in the space C(X,M) of all maps of an n-dimensional compactum X to a k-dimensional Menger manifold M, almost all maps are (n−k)-dimensional Lelek maps. It is known that k-dimensional Lelek maps are k-dimensional maps for k⩾0.