Download AP Human Geography Lecture Notes Latitude and Longitude Lines

AP Human Geography Lecture Notes
Latitude and Longitude
• Lines on globes and maps provide information that
can help you easily locate places on the earth.
• These lines—called latitude and longitude—cross
one another, forming a pattern called a grid system.
Latitude
• Lines of latitude, or parallels, circle the earth
parallel to the Equator and measure the distance
north or south of the Equator in degrees.
• The Equator is at 0° latitude, while the Poles lie at
latitudes 90°N (north) and 90°S (south).
• Degrees are the angular measurement north or
south of the equator
Longitude
• Lines of longitude, or meridians, circle the earth
from Pole to Pole.
These lines measure distances east or west of the
starting line, which is at 0° longitude and is called the
Prime Meridian.
The Prime Meridian runs through the Royal Observatory
in Greenwich, England.
Lines of longitude go 180 degrees east and west of the
prime meridian
International Date Line: An arc that for the most part
follows 180° longitude, although it deviates in several
places to avoid dividing land areas.
When you cross the International Date Line heading
east (toward America), the clock moves back 24 hours,
or one entire day. When you go west (toward Asia), the
calendar moves ahead one day.
Absolute Location
The grid system formed by lines of latitude and
longitude makes it possible to find the absolute location
of a place. Many places can be found along a line of
latitude, but only one place can be found at the point
where a certain line of latitude crosses a certain line of
longitude. By using degrees and minutes (points
between degrees), people can pinpoint the precise spot
where one line of latitude crosses one line of
longitude—an absolute location.
Degrees are divided into minutes
• 1 degree equals 60 minutes
Minutes are divided into seconds
• 1 minute equals 60 seconds
(airplanes need to land on the correct runway and
bombs need to hit the right building.)
Degrees can be turned into decimals to make them
easier to work with
• 51 minutes = .85 degrees
• 30 minutes = .5 degrees
• 20 minutes = .33 degrees
Southern California Vernacular Regions
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Geography Introduction
There are two main branches of geography:
human geography and physical geography.
Human geography: the study of the location of people
and human activities across Earth’s surface, and of their
relationships to one another.
Physical geography studies the natural environment:
climates, landforms, and types of vegetation.
San Gabriel Mts, San Bernardino Mts, Santa Monica
Mts., Santa Ana Mts, LA River, San Gabriel River,
Santa Ana River, Puente Hills, Chino Hills, San Jose
Hills, San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley, Inland
Empire
Geography looks at the world from a spatial
perspective, seeking to understand the changing spatial
organization of the earth’s surface.
• the science of location
• spatial patterns,
• inter-relationships (interconnections,
interdependence)
• Geography is the study of Earth’s physical and
cultural landscapes,
• Geography’s slogan: Where, why, and why care.
Tobler's First law of geography: All things are related,
but near things are more related than far things.
One of the most important ideas in geography is
Distance decay: the effect of distance on cultural or
spatial interactions. The distance decay effect states
that the interaction between two locales declines as
the distance between them increases.
Related terms include friction of distance: the notion
that distance usually requires some amount of effort,
money, and/or energy to overcome.
Because of this "friction," spatial interactions will tend
to take place more often over shorter distances;
quantity of interaction will decline with distance.
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For example land decreases in value as distance
from the center increases
Distance decay is graphically represented by a curving
line that swoops concavely downward as distance along
the x-axis increases.
• Geographers try to understand the Human
Environmental Interaction: how places shape
culture and how culture shapes places.
• Geography is also considered the study of place and
space
Space or location is the where
Place: meaningful human associations with a location.
Human nature has a need to identify with a place and to
differentiate ourselves through that place. Place
suggests qualities of distinctiveness and identity with a
location.
sense of place: feelings evoked among people as a
result of the experiences and memories that they
associate with a place
Places exert a strong influence on people’s physical
wellbeing, and their opportunities.
Living in a small town dominated by petrochemical
industries, for example, means a higher probability than
elsewhere of being exposed to air and water pollution.
Small towns have only a limited range of job
opportunities, and may have a relatively narrow range
of lifestyle options because of a lack of amenities such
as theaters, specialized stores and restaurants, and
recreational facilities.
Cartography:
• The art and science of map making (paper maps,
globes, relief models, computer images or others)
• The most accurate way to depict the earth is as a
globe, a spherical scale model of the earth.
• A globe gives a true picture of the continents’
relative sizes and the shapes of landmasses and
bodies of water.
• Globes are proportionately correct accurately
representing distance and direction.
• A map is a flat drawing of all or part of the earth’s
surface that can show small areas in great detail.
• Maps have their limitations. As you can imagine,
drawing a round object on a flat surface is very
difficult.
• Think about the surface of the earth as the peel of
an orange. To flatten the peel, you might have to
cut it like the globe shown here.
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Cartographers, or mapmakers, use mathematical
formulas to transfer information from the threedimensional globe to a two-dimensional map.
• To create maps, cartographers project the round
earth onto a flat surface—making a map projection.
• There are more than a hundred kinds of map
projections, each with some advantages and some
degrees of accuracy.
Geographic Information Systems
• Technology has changed the way maps are made.
Most cartographers use software programs called
geographic information systems (GIS).
• A GIS uses data from maps, satellite images, printed
text, and statistics.
• Cartographers can program the GIS to produce the
maps they need, and it allows them to make
changes quickly and easily.
Types of Maps
• Maps are prepared for many uses. The information
depicted in the map depends on how the map will
be used.
Isoline: a line that connects places of equal data value
(air pollution or religion)
Isoline maps: show changes in the variable being
mapped across a surface by lines that connect points of
equal value
Topographic maps are isoline maps
Image map: Satellite images or aerial photos
Cartogram: space is distorted to emphasize a particular
attribute
Dot maps: use a dot to represent the occurrence of
some variable
in order to depict variation in density in a given area
Cloropleth Map: ranked classes of some variable are
depicted with colors for predefined zones (counties,
states, countries)
Scale
Spatial scale provides a "shorthand" for discussing
relative lengths, areas, distances and sizes.
small scale maps: the place being mapped looks small
on the map (i.e. a world map) but has a large
denominator (making it a small number)
Large scale maps: local area
(the place being mapped looks fairly large compared to
what is shown on a world map for example a stadium)
• Representative Fraction: The relationship between
the size of an object on a map and the size of the
actual feature on Earth’s surface. (This maps is
1:55,000,000)
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Just as ½ is larger than 1/10, 1:10,000 is larger than
1:10,000,000
Spatial Distribution Of Features
Distribution: The arrangement of something across the
earth’s surface
Density and Concentration
1. Density: frequency in a space
2. Concentration: the spread of something over space
Clustered: objects in an area are close together
Dispersed: objects are relatively far apart
California is not densely populated its population is
clustered
Malls in Southern California are dispersed
3. Pattern: The geometric arrangement of something in
a study area (space)
Four ways to identify location:
1. Name (a toponym is a name derived from a place or
region)
List 5 California cities that are toponyms?
• Riverside
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2. Mathematical
3. Site: the physical attributes of a location (ex. terrain,
vegetation). Economically the Land, labor and capital
4. Situation (relative location): the location of a place
relative to other places and human activities.
Economically it’s the transportation costs
California’s Situation
• On the Pacific Rim
• North of Mexico
• Far from U.S. populated East
• Cold current flows adjacent to the state
Regions:
• mental constructs (not absolute)
• that can be of any size
• are unique
• have boundaries that are broad areas of transition.
Terms that express the decreasing influence of a culture
with increasing distance from the center of the culture
region.
• core: the heart and soul of a culture region, its vital
center and focus of circulation.
• domain: the area in which the particular culture is
dominant but less intense.
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sphere: the zone of outer influence, where people
with the culture traits in question may even be a
minority within another culture region.
Why is mapping a culture region difficult and prone to
problems in geography?
Different people will use different traits in different
combinations to define the culture area
• Many regions have several characteristics, usually a
combination of physical and human, to describe the
regional character.
3 Types of Regions
1. Uniform Regions (or formal regions) -Areas with
distinctive characteristics and/or similar landscapes
These characteristics may be:
• economic
• cultural (religion, language, etc)
• agricultural (corn belt or wheat belt)
• land use
• physical
• or many others
Formal Region definition #2- all members legally share a
characteristic Example: a city, state, or country (every
one living in Canada has to follow their laws)
2. Functional region: defined by a node of activity and
distance decay from center
Examples: Newspaper, mall, a university, cell phone
coverage
3. Vernacular (or perceptual) region: a region perceived
to exist by its inhabitants.
Political Geography
Political Geography: the spatial study of political
processes; from self-determination to voting patterns
Political geography deals with the phenomena occurring
at all scales from the global to the local.
Nation State Section
Nation or nationality: a group of people sharing a
common cultural identity (religion, language, history,
art, and/or political identity) tied to a place through
legal status and tradition.
The Japanese (not Japan),
Nationalism: loyalty and devotion to a particular nation
(shared emotions, attitudes, emotions)
Nationalism may also be loyalty and devotion to a state
that represents a particular group's culture (but the
nation doesn’t always have a country)
State: An area organized into an independent political
unit (country)
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Necessary components to qualify as a full-fledged state:
1. has a defined territory
2. has an organized economy (regulates
foreign/domestic trade)
3. provides public services and police power
4. Sovereignty (control over its internal affairs)
5. external recognition
6. a permanent residence population
Are Indian Reservations states?
Native American tribes have some rights given to them
by the United States government. For example they are
given a large amount of autonomous rule over their
tribal lands.
However, the tribal governments do not have
independence from the federal government. However,
they are exempt from jurisdiction of some state laws
and regulations, such as allowing gambling on their
reservations.
Is Puerto Rico a state? No. It is not a country (State) or a
state of the U.S.
Puerto Ricans pay no federal income tax and they
cannot vote for president
On 6 November 2012, a two question referendum took
place.
The first question asked voters whether they wanted to
maintain the current status under the territorial clause
of the U.S. Constitution.
The second question posed three alternate status
options if the first question was approved: statehood,
independence or free association. For the first question,
54 percent voted against the current Commonwealth
status, and in the second question, of those who
responded, 61.1% favored statehood.
On April 10, 2013, the White House announced that it
will seek $2.5 million to hold another referendum, this
next one being the first Puerto Rican status referendum
to be financed by the Federal government.
Is Taiwan a state? It’s not recognized by the major
powers
Is Macedonia a state? It’s in the UN but not recognized
as an independent state by Greece.
Kosovo became a country in 2008. They broke off from
Yugoslavia, speak Albanian and follow Islam. Why
didn’t they become part of Albania?
Why are China and Russia almost always against new
countries forming?
How many countries are in the world?
United Nations
There are 196 members of the United Nations.
Although this number represents almost all of the
countries in the world, there are still two recognized
independent countries, the Vatican City and Kosovo,
that are independent and are not members of the U.N.
U.S. Department of State
The United States' State Department recognizes 198
independent countries around the world. Their list of
196 countries reflects the political agenda of the United
States of America and its allies. Missing from the State
Department's list is one entity that may or may not be
considered a country, depending on who you talk to.
The One Outsider
Taiwan meets the requirements of independent country
or state status. However, due to political reasons, it fails
to be recognized by the international community as
independent. Nonetheless, it should be considered as
independent.
Taiwan was actually a member of the United Nations
(and even the Security Council) until 1971, when
mainland China replaced Taiwan in the organization.
Taiwan continues to press for full recognition by other
countries, to become "part of the club" and fully
recognized worldwide but China claims that Taiwan is
simply a province of China.
That makes199 countries
However, there are dozens of territories and colonies
that are sometimes erroneously called "countries" but
don't count at all - they're governed by other countries.
Places commonly confused as being countries include
Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Greenland, Palestine, Western
Sahara, and even the components of the United
Kingdom (such as Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
and England)
Nation-State: A state that has the same boundaries as
a nation. (relatively rare, no perfect example but a lot
of good ones), most European countries,
Nation-states in Europe were formed by drawing
boundaries around nations based on language.
Denmark is a good example of a nation-state because
nearly all Danes speak Danish and live in Denmark.
Multinational State: a country that has more than one
nation.
Example: Canada, China, Rwanda,(and every other
country in Africa with the exception of Egypt)
The UK is also a multinational state. The English,
Scottish, and Welsh are all nations within the state of
the United Kingdom.
The people living in the United Kingdom are British.
Because they are not one people the British are not a
nationality.
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The Protestants in Northern Ireland call themselves
British and the Catholic call themselves Irish.
Protestants in Ireland are highly clustered in the
northern part of the island.
The goal of the majority of people living in Northern
Ireland is to remain part of the United Kingdom
Other countries in Europe that are multi-national states
include:
Nation-States in SW Asia include:
Other Nation-States in Asia include:
All other countries in Asia are multinational states.
Great examples would be India, Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Indonesia.
Predominant Ethnic Groups in Afghanistan: Pashtun,
Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek and Baluchi.
Ethnicities/nations in the same country come in conflict
when they have traditions of self rule.
Balkanization: breakdown of a state due to conflict
among nationalities
Ethnic cleansing: The process when a group forcibly
removes another group
Nation-building refers to the process of constructing or
structuring a national identity using the power of the
state. This process aims at the unification of the people
within the state so that it remains politically stable and
viable in the long run. Nation-building can involve the
use of propaganda or major infrastructure development
to foster social harmony and economic growth.
Irredentism: a movement to reunite a nation’s
homeland when part of it is contained within another
state.
Examples: Somali’s in Ethiopia (Horn of Africa)
Kashmir, (a Muslim state in India that would like to be
part of Pakistan)
Germany (historically)
Serbs
Dutch
Non State Nations are stateless nations or people
without a country
Centripetal forces: those that strengthen and unify the
state.
Centripetal force in the United States
 network television
 the flag
 "The Star Spangled Banner"
In the United States nationality is shared by all
Americans.
The former Soviet Union used language as the primary
centripetal device.
centrifugal forces: those that divide or tend to pull the
state apart. (multiple: religions, ethnicities, languages,
ideologies)
The groups often desires land, independence, and/or
autonomy.
Kurds in Iraq have some
Autonomy.
Centrifugal forces in Africa:
1. the European colonial boundaries were unnaturally
imposed often combining or dividing ethnic groups
2. numerous ethnic groups
3. language differences
self-determination: The concept that nationalities have
the right to govern themselves
without the influence of any other country
Example: Slovakia broke away from Czechoslovakia but
is not homogeneous: about 11 percent of the
population is Hungarian. The Hungarian minority facing
discriminatory policies involving language and other
aspects of its culture, is demanding greater autonomy.
Devolution: the process whereby regions within a
state demand and gain political strength and growing
autonomy at the expense of the central government
Most of the world’s nearly 200 states have multicultural
populations, and conflict among cultural sectors can
lead to devolution.
 They occur on the margins of states.
 Devolution areas lie on a coast or on a boundary.
 Distance, remoteness, and peripheral location are
allies of devolution.
 The areas most likely to be affected are those that
lie far from the national capital, are separated by
water, desert, or mountains from the center of
power, and adjoin neighbors that may support
separatist objectives.
Example: Ethnic groups in China occupy peripheral
areas.
Many islands are subject to devolutionary processes:
Corsica (France), Sardinia (Italy), Taiwan (China), Hawaii
In some countries, "ethnic cleansing" results in
 forced migration
 channelized migration
 cultural homogeneity
Genocide develops in eight stages:
1. Classification
2. Symbolization
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3.
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Dehumanization
Organization
Polarization
Identification
Extermination
Denial
Boundary, Frontier, Shapes
A frontier, in contrast to a boundary, is an area or zone
rather than a line.
Example: Antarctica is really a frontier without
boundaries
Boundaries may be Physical characteristic, Geometric,
or Cultural characteristics
Physical Boundary: Political boundaries that coincide
with prominent physical features in the natural
landscape, such as rivers or the crest of mountain
Mountains examples: India with China and Nepal (the
Himalayas), France with Spain (the Pyrenees), Italy with
France, Switzerland and Austria (the Alps), Caucasus,
Morocco and Algeria (Atlas Mountains), Chile and
Argentina (Andes),
Rainforest: Brazil and north and west countries
Rivers Examples: U.S. and Mexico (Rio Grande), China
and North Korea (the Yalu Tumen), Laos and Thailand
(the Mekong), Romania and Bulgaria (Danube), France
and Germany (Rhine), Zambia and Zimbabwe (the
Zambezi)
Lakes: France and Switzerland (Lake Geneva), Kenya and
Uganda (Lake Victoria) Canada and the U.S. (Great
Lakes),
Desert: U.S. Mexico, Countries in North Africa, China
and Mongolia (Gobi), Pakistan and India (Thar Desert).
Geometrical Boundary are regular, often perfectly
straight lines drawn without regard for physical or
cultural features.
Examples: Indonesia/ Papua New Guinea, U.S./ Canada,
U.S./Mexico, Syria/Iraq.
Aozou Strip: is a good example of a Geometric Boundary
The straight boundary between Libya and Chad was
drawn by European powers, and the strip is the subject
of controversy between the two countries.
The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a strip of land
running across the Korean Peninsula that serves as a
buffer zone between North and South Korea which runs
along the 38th parallel north. The DMZ cuts the Korean
Peninsula roughly in half, crossing the 38th parallel on
an angle, with the west end of the DMZ lying south of
the parallel and the east end lying north of it.
Cultural boundaries: some culture trait (often
language, religion, and ethnicity)
Language: Most European countries, Brazil/South
American
Religion Examples:
Ireland/N. Ireland, Israel/Arab countries,
Pakistan/India,U.S./Mexico,
Borders with more than one characteristic?
U.S/Mex, Spain/France, India/China, India/Pakistan
Superimposed boundary: A political boundary placed by
powerful outsiders. Usually ignores preexisting culturalspatial patterns.
Ex. Island of New Guinea, North and South Korea
The border between Germany and Poland established
after World War II was further west than the boundary
before World War II.
Relict boundary: A political boundary that has ceased to
function, but the imprint of which can still be detected.
E.W Berlin
Boundaries between states cause discontent for some
nationalities if:
 One state with many nationalities/ethnicities
 One nationality in more than one state
 A boundary between states is actually a vertical
plane that cuts through the rocks below (called
subsoil) and the airspace above
United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS III)
1. State boundaries can extend to 14 miles from their
shoreline
2. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). State’s economic
rights extend 230 miles
median-line principle: States on opposite coasts divide
the waters separating them
the Great Lakes
Ex. Caspian, the Caribbean, South China, and
Mediterranean Seas,
Territorial Morphology: size, shape, and relative
location of a state. Shape can influence the political
geography of a state:
Compact State: A state in which the distance from the
center to any boundary does not vary significantly (most
desirable shape).
Good communication can be more easily established to
all regions, especially if the capital is in the center.
ex. Poland, France, Hungary, Kenya, Uganda
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Fragmented states are discontinuous, separated by
water or another state.
 Transportation and communication are difficult
causing administrative problems
 Separatist movements away from capital.
Inhibits national cohesiveness
Examples: U.S., Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines,
Palestine,
Azerbaijan has recently faced war because of
fragmentation
elongated: A state with a long, narrow shape.
They often suffer from poor internal communication
and have difficulty defending its borders.
Examples: Chile, Norway, Vietnam,
Protruded or prorupted state: A type of state territorial
shape that exhibits a narrow, elongated land extension
leading away from the main body of territory.
Often provides the state with access to a resource such
as water.
Ex. Afghanistan, Thailand, Namibia, Congo, Israel,
 the Germans established the proruption known as
the Caprivi Strip in present-day Namibia for all of
the following: access to resources in central Africa
 disruption of British communications
 access to the Zambezi river
exclave: a piece of territory separated from the main
body of a country by the territory of another country.
exclave problems:
Isolated from their fellow countrymen and may develop
separatist feelings
Transportation and communication are difficult causing
administrative problems.
ex. Alaska, Kaliningrad, Gibraltar (a British exclave
located on the southern end of Spain at the entrance of
the Mediterranean. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major
landmark of the region. Population: 30,000)
Historically: Berlin, East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh)
enclave: a piece of land which is totally surrounded by
a foreign territory
Examples: Lesotho in South Africa, The Vatican (where
the Pope lives, an independent country in the city of
Rome. Population of <1000), San Marino (surrounded
by Italy), Historically, West Berlin was an enclave of East
Germany,
An ethnic enclave is a community of an ethnic group
inside an area in which another ethnic group
predominates. Ghettos, Little Italys, barrios and
Chinatowns are examples.
Approximately one-fifth of the world's countries are
landlocked and have no access to the oceans. There are
43 landlocked countries that do not have direct access
to an ocean or ocean-accessible sea (such as the
Mediterranean Sea). They have the disadvantageous
situation of needing to rely upon neighboring countries
for access to seaports.
Landlocked countries are typically poor because it
affects the ability of some countries to participate in the
global economy.
Examples: Bolivia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe,
Central Africa Republic, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Chad,
Niger, Mali, Ethiopia, Zambia
However, relative location is a factor. For example
Switzerland is very rich.
Large size is an asset for a state because it is able to:
 produce a larger supply of food
 possess a larger supply of raw materials
 withstand a limited nuclear war
A microstate or ministate is a sovereign state having a
very small population or very small land area, but
usually both. Some examples include Andorra,
Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, and Singapore.
The smallest fully sovereign microstate is Vatican City,
with 826 citizens as of July 2009 and an area of only
0.44 km².
Autonomous cities in unitary states
In nations without a federal administrative structure,
cities may sometimes enjoy a greater degree of
autonomy.
Hong Kong and Macau
Because of Hong Kong's and Macau's long histories as
colonies of the British and Portuguese empires,
respectively, and the unique "one-country, twosystems" policy, the two former city-states are given a
high degree of autonomy even after their return into
the China.
While geographically they are cities, having legal
systems, police forces, monetary systems, customs
policies, and immigration policies that are independent
from China, makes their status almost equivalent to
independent nations.
Division or unification?
Devolution or Suprantionalism?
Devolution:
• Breakup of a state
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The granting of powers from the central
government of a state to government at a
subnational level
• Very different from federalism (provinces within a
country can make their own laws)
• Examples
Yugoslavia (Balkans), former USSR, Austria Hungary
after WWI, India
Supranationalism:
• Collection of states working together
• political power given to a higher authority above
the state (country) government
Examples: EU, NAFTA, UN, NATO, WTO
supranational organizations: collections of individual
states with a common goal that may be economic
and/or political in nature; such organizations diminish,
to some extent, individual state sovereignty in favor of
the group interests of the membership.
The more states participate in such multilateral
associations, the less likely they are to act alone in
pursuit of a self-interest that might put them at odds
with neighbors.
States cooperate with each other for the following
reasons: military, political, economic
Examples of Military Cooperation:
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)- a crossAtlantic military alliance/organization An attack against
one is an attack against all.
The growth of NATO was a major concern to Russia,
where this has become a leading political issue. Russia’s
sense of encirclement on the Eurasian landmass has
always been a factor in Russian nationalism.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or SCO is an
intergovernmental mutual-security organisation which
was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of
China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and
Uzbekistan.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization original
purposes of the SCO was to serve as a counterbalance
to NATO and the United States and in particular to
avoid conflicts that would allow the United States to
intervene in areas bordering both Russia and China
Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union,
formed in 2004. More a version of the United Nations
Security Council than a true military alliance.
South American Defense Council (SADC) of the Union of
South American Nations, developed form 2008. Full
extent of provisions yet to be agreed.
South Korea and the United States entered into a
military alliance following the Korean War.
Examples of political cooperation:
African Union (AU): a cultural alliance to promote
shared goals and resolve disputes
Arab League: a multinational alliance of Muslim states
in North Africa and Southwest Asia.
The United Nations (UN) is an international organization
(supranational) whose stated aims are facilitating
cooperation in international law, international security,
economic development, social progress, human rights,
and the achieving of world peace established at the end
of World War II.
Over the past half century, the number of sovereign
states in the world has increased by more than a
hundred
It now includes 196 member states (not including the
Taiwan, Kosovo, or the Vatican)
The United Nations is not a world government; member
states participate voluntarily. Although member states
do not formally yield any sovereignty to the UN they
may agree to abide by specific UN decisions.
At the very least, the UN provides a place for the
nations of the world to have dialogue.
In a world where free trade and market-based
development continues to grow, the UN has
successfully improved: problems of infant mortality,
nutrition, education, in many parts of the world.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of
the principal organs of the United Nations and is
charged with the maintenance of international peace
and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations
Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping
operations, the establishment of international
sanctions, and the authorization of military action.
International Economic Sanctions: penalties imposed by
one or several states on another state to compel that
state to amend its behavior.
Economic sanctions include, but are not limited to,
tariffs, trade barriers, and import duties.
The most famous example of an economic sanction is
the fifty-year-old United States embargo against Cuba.
Economic sanctions are not always imposed because of
economic circumstances.
For example, the United States has imposed economic
sanctions against Iran for years, on the basis that the
Iranian government sponsors groups who work against
US interests.
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The United Nations imposed stringent economic
sanctions upon Iraq after the first Gulf War, and these
were maintained partly as an attempt to make the Iraqi
government co-operate with the UN weapons
inspectors' monitoring of Iraq's weapons and weapons
programs. These sanctions were unusually stringent in
that very little in the way of trade goods were allowed
into or out of Iraq during the sanction period.
There is a United Nations sanctions regime imposed by
UN Security Council against all Al-Qaida- and Talibanassociated individuals.
The cornerstone of the regime is a consolidated list of
persons maintained by the Security Council. All nations
are obliged to freeze bank accounts and other financial
instruments controlled by, or used for the benefit of,
anyone on the list.
There are 15 members of the Security Council,
consisting of 5 veto-wielding permanent members
(China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the
United States) and 10 elected non-permanent members
with two-year terms.
The UN does not have its own army, so the Security
Council borrows forces for each mission from the
armies of member countries.
Peacekeeping: nonaggressive use of military force to
help nations in conflict reach a settlement.
• the UN’s peacekeeping forces play a neutral role,
working to calm regional conflicts in several ways.
They can:
• go into an area of conflict as observers, making sure
agreements reached between opposing sides are
being followed.
• provide a buffer between warring parties by
physically interposing themselves in the middle.
• negotiate with military officers on both sides,
providing a channel of communication.
• monitor cease-fires, supervise elections, and
provide humanitarian aid.
Despite problems, the United Nations’ peacekeeping
role has continued to grow, and its successes have far
outweighed its failures. In places such as East Timor and
Kosovo, for example, UN peacekeepers have helped
bring stability after upheavals in the late 1990s.
More than 115,000 peacekeeping troops from some
117UN member states
Why do some Americans hate and fear the UN?
 The UN constrains the United States by creating the
one coalition that can rival U.S. power—that of all
other nations.

The United States has a streak of isolationism in its
foreign policy that runs counter to the idea of the
UN.
Multilateralism: decision making and participation by
more than two countries, parties, etc.
Unilateralism: one sided decision making and
participation. Unilateralism may be preferred in those
instances when it's assumed to be the most efficient.
Multilateralism may involve multiple nations acting
together as in the UN or may involve regional or military
alliances, pacts, or groupings such as NATO.
Proponents of multilateralism argue that it would
provide a country with greater resources, both militarily
and economically, and would help in defraying the cost
of military action.
However, with divided responsibility inevitably comes
divided authority, and thus slower military reaction
times and the demand that troops follow commanders
from other nations.
“The Bush Doctrine" came to describe the controversial
policy of preventive war, which held that the United
States should depose foreign regimes that represented
a potential or perceived threat to the security of the
United States, even if that threat was not immediate;
a policy of spreading democracy around the world,
especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for
combating terrorism; and a willingness to unilaterally
pursue U.S. military interests.
Debates about unilateralism recently came to the
forefront with the Iraq War. While over 30 countries
have supported the U.S. policy, some previous
American allies, such as France, Germany and Turkey,
are not participating.
Many opponents of the war have argued that the
United States is "going in alone" in Iraq without the
support of multilateral institutions—in this case NATO
and the United Nations.
Advocates of U.S. unilateralism argue that other
countries should not have "veto power" over matters of
U.S. national security.
Proponents of U.S. unilateralism generally believe that a
multilateral institution, such as the United Nations, is
morally suspect because, they argue, it treats nondemocratic, and even despotic, regimes as being as
legitimate as democratic countries.
Economic Cooperation:
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC), is a cartel of twelve developing countries made
up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya,
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Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
and Venezuela
Its principal goals are to
• eliminate the harmful and unnecessary fluctuations
in the price of oil
• securing a steady income to the producing
countries
• produce a regular supply of petroleum to
consuming nations,
• and produce a profit to those investing in the
petroleum industry.
OPEC's influence on the market has been widely
criticized, since it became effective in determining
production and prices. Arab members of OPEC alarmed
the developed world when they used the “oil weapon”
during the Yom Kippur War by implementing oil
embargoes and initiating the 1973 oil crisis.
Escalation in oil prices caused severe economic
problems during the 70s
OPEC's ability to control the price of oil has diminished
somewhat since then, due to the subsequent discovery
and development of large oil reserves in Alaska, the
North Sea, Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, and the opening
up of Russia.
OPEC nations still account for two-thirds of the world's
oil reserves, and, as of April 2009, 33.3% of the world's
oil production, affording them considerable control over
the global market.
As early as 2003, concerns that OPEC members had
little excess pumping capacity sparked speculation that
their influence on crude oil prices would begin to slip.
Other Examples of economic cooperation:
Often called trading blocs: a type of intergovernmental
agreement, often part of a regional intergovernmental
organization, where regional barriers to trade (tariffs
and non-tariff barriers) are reduced or eliminated
among the participating states.
NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Agreement
(Jan.1994) a free-trade area between the U.S., Canada
and Mexico; provides for the tariff-free movement of
goods and products, financial services,
telecommunications, investment, and patent
protection.
The largest economic organization is the World Trade
Organization (WTO) is an organization that intends to
supervise and liberalize international trade. The
organization deals with regulation of trade between
participating countries; it provides a framework for
negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a
dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing
participants' adherence to WTO agreements.
The WTO has 153 members, representing more than
97% of total world trade and 30 observers, most
seeking membership
World Trade Organization (WTO): sets up the ground
rules of international trade (tries to eliminate trade
barriers) suprantional in scope
The best example of supranationalism is: the European
Union: an economic and political union of 28 member
states.
Western European countries have increased economic
integration by:
• lowering and eliminating trade barriers
• allowing labor to move freely
• coordinating a common foreign policy
• creating a common currency
The population of 500 million inhabitants, generated an
estimated 28% share (US$ 16.5 trillion) of the nominal
gross world product in 2009. As a trading bloc the EU
accounts for 20% of global imports and exports.
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of
the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU). The
currency is also used in a further five European
countries and is consequently used daily by some
327 million Europeans. Over 175 million people
worldwide use currencies which are pegged to the euro,
including more than 150 million people in Africa.
Euro-zone: The EU counties using the euro
U.K., Sweden, and Denmark do not use the euro.
They worried that a shared European currency would
threaten their national identity and governmental
authority.
Expansion of EU:
• Under the rules of the EU, the richer countries must
subsidize the poorer ones
• Economically weak countries will become a burden
European countries have different cultures but similar
Ideology:
• democracy
• rule of law
• market economy
Turkey and others want in the EU but their
poor human rights record (Kurds) or lower economic
level keeps them out.
An unspoken sense among many that Turkey is not
“European” enough to warrant membership.
Changes resulting from supranationalism in Europe FR
• political stability
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
less conflict/increase in military power
economically stronger
free trade/lowering and eliminating trade barriers
labor can move freely
euro/Common currency
rich countries subsidize the poor ones
diminishes state sovereignty or loss of local
autonomy
Changes resulting from devolution in Europe
• new states
• political instability
• conflict/war
• migration (from fighting)
• economic instability
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) any non-profit,
voluntary citizens' group which is organized on a local,
national or international level. ex: Doctors without
borders, Amnesty International, World Wildlife Fed.
Supernational organizations have become a reality
because the state system is an inadequate instrument
for dealing with world issues and problems.
Interstate cooperation is so widespread around the
world that a new era clearly arrived.
Electoral geography: the study of the spatial aspects of
voting systems, voting behavior, and voting
representation.
There are 538 electoral college votes.
Congressional representatives in the United States is
fixed at 435 (House of Representatives).
House + Senate + DC
435+100+3
Supporters of the electoral college say it: contributes to
the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a
distribution of popular support to be elected president,
enhances the status of minority interests, contributes to
the political stability of the nation by encouraging a
two-party system
reapportionment: the process of allocating electoral
seats to geographical areas
redistricting: the defining and redefining of territorial
district boundaries
gerrymandering: the practice of redistricting for
partisan purposes
Unitary and Federal States
The governments of States are organized according to
one of two approaches:
1. unitary states: power is concentrated in the central
government, centralized power (ex. France and China)
2. federal states: allocates power to units of local
government within the country.
The United States is a federation of 50 states.
Different states, with different political cultures, have
different laws. Examples
The states are themselves subdivided into counties or
parishes, of which there are over 3,000. Counties and
parishes are further broken down into municipalities,
townships, and special districts, which include school
districts, water districts, library districts, and others.
Federal states allows ethnic regions to make decisions,
often larger countries are federations
Examples: Canada, India, Switzerland,
“Federation does not create unity out of diversity,
rather, it enables the them to coexist”
Why have some wanted to break California into two
states? resources are being taken from the north and
rural values/lifestyles are being changed
If a new state was formed north of San Francisco, what
do statistics show? it would be one of the poorest in the
country
How does California’s size enhance the division
between north and south? unique people
An increasing number of states have adopted a federal
form of government to satisfy the demands of
competing nationalities/
ethnicities
Poland delegated more authority to local governments
(under communism they were unitary)
Roots and Meaning of Culture
Environmental Determinism: is the view that the
physical environment, rather than social conditions,
determines culture.
Possibilism: humans are primary determinant of
culture.
Possibilism is the theory that the environment sets
certain constraints or limitations, but culture is
otherwise determined by social conditions. For
example: Laws, government, technology, religion,
education, etc.
Examples include: USA vs. Mexico, Japan vs. China,
Great Britain vs. Russia
The fundamental argument of the environmental
determinists was that aspects of physical geography,
11
particularly climate, influenced the psychological mindset of individuals, which in turn defined the behavior
and culture of the society.
For example, tropical climates were said to cause
laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the
frequent variability in the weather of the middle
latitudes led to more determined and driven work
ethics.
Environmental determinism's origins go back to
antiquity. Greek geographer Strabo who wrote that
climate influences the psychological disposition of
different races.
Some in ancient China advanced a form of
environmental determinism as found in works written
in the 2nd century BCE. We find statements like "Now
the water of Qi is forceful, swift and twisting. Therefore
its people are greedy, and warlike," and "The water of
Chu is gentle, yielding, and pure. Therefore its people
are lighthearted, and sure of themselves."
Later critics charged that environmental determinism
served to justify racism and imperialism.
The experience of environmental determinism has left a
scar on geography, with many geographers reacting
negatively to any suggestion of environmental
influences on human society.
However, Jared Diamond of UCLA argues that Eurasian
civilization is not created out of superior intelligence,
but is the result of a chain of developments, each made
possible by certain preconditions.
In our earliest societies, humans lived as huntergatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move
from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, with the
domestication and farming of wild crops and animals.
Agricultural production leads to food surpluses which
supported greater population growth. Such growth led
to larger workforces and more inventors, artisans, etc.
Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world,
Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater
availability of suitable plant and animal species for
domestication.
In particular, Eurasia had barley, wheat, and rice which
are high in fiber and nutrients. Grains can also be stored
for longer periods of time unlike tropical crops such as
bananas.
Eurasian animals include: goats, sheep, pigs, chickens
and cattle provided food, leather, and clothing.
Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large
animals (over 100 lb); South America just one (counting
the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same
species); the rest of the world none at all.
Sub-Saharan Africans had mostly wild mammals,
whereas Eurasians chanced to have the most docile
large animals on the planet: horses and camels that are
easily tamed for human transport; but their biological
relatives zebras are untameable.
Africans, developing alongside large mammals, had
available lions, leopards etc.
Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and
living in close proximity to livestock resulted in
widespread transmission of diseases, including from
animals to humans. Natural selection forced Eurasians
to develop immunity to a wide range of pathogens.
When Europeans made contact with America, European
diseases (to which they had no immunity) ravaged the
indigenous American population, so that relatively small
numbers of Europeans could maintain their dominance.
Maybe the environment can determine certain
outcomes even if culture makes many things possible.
FR Define environmental determinism and Possibilism.
What were Jared Diamond’s views on the topics above?
Diffusion
Spatial diffusion: the way that things spread through
space and over time.
In order of those who adopt an idea first, people can be
categorized as innovators, majority adopters, laggards
Hearth: The source area from which an idea, crop,
artifact, or good is diffused to other areas.
Hinterland: the area around a city or town. Also
describes the part of a country where only a few people
live and where the infrastructure is underdeveloped
maybe considered the "backcountry" or "the
countryside". Bush of Alaskan and the Outback of
Australia.
Diffusion seldom occurs in a random way jumping all
over the map, rather statistical probability.
Types of Cultural Diffusion:
Contagious Diffusion: from a center outward, as the
ripples which result from a stone thrown into a still
pond; a form of expansion diffusion (snowballing of an
idea or innovation)
Hierarchical Diffusion: associated with a hierarchy of
places, i.e., big places first (e.g., cities) no matter how
far apart, then down the hierarchy to smaller places
(e.g., towns) and rural areas; a form of expansion
diffusion
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Large cities have more interactions with other people
and places and the people in larger cities tend to be
more diverse, wealthier, and more accustomed to
change (willing to adopt new technologies and
practices).
Relocation Diffusion: often associated with migrants
who take their cultural traits with them over long
distances (often followed by expansion diffusion)
•
Spanish and Catholicism to Latin America
•
Blues to Chicago
•
Protestantism from Northern Europe to the US
and Canada
The early stages of AIDS diffusion (late 1980s) mostly
followed a pattern of hierarchical diffusion book says
contagious test is contagious early on it was hierarchical
The following U.S. cities contained the earliest cases of
AIDS: New York, San Francisco, Miami
Stimulus Diffusion: underlying principle of a
characteristic spreads although some of the
characteristics have failed (example: they have
hamburgers in India without beef, pop music,
Hollywood, religion)
Barriers to Diffusion
• physical (oceans, lakes, and mountain ranges)
• Writing system did not diffuse from Mexico to Peru
• Seeds, Writing, and metallurgy didn’t diffuse to Sub
Saharan Africa or Australia
cultural (language, religion, development/economic)
Landscape Interpretation
Cultural Landscape - The visible human imprint on the
land.
Culture + Time + Natural Landscape = Cultural
Landscape
Culture is expressed in the landscapes and landscapes in
turn represent cultural identity. (ap syllabus)
Carl Sauer (Berkeley) tried to understand different
cultures by focusing on their built landscapes
Sauer argued that landscapes should provide the focus
for the scientific study of geography because they
reflect the outcome, over time, of the interdependence
of physical and human factors in the creation of
distinctive places and regions.
Sequent occupance - previous residents often leave
lasting imprints on the cultural landscape that can be
observed
Visible evidence can reveal much about a past long
forgotten by the present inhabitants, and about the
choices made and changes wrought by a people.
Three figurative expressions of human worth:
1. height
2. durability
3. central location.
Culture is evident everywhere throughout the
landscape, not only in adaptations to the natural
landscape, but also in such things as
• monuments
• religious icons
• commercial signs.
• house types
• types of architecture
Elite Landscape
• symbolize status
• reinforce class
• maintain differentiations from lower-status
landscapes
Always look for the subtle as well as the overt in cultural
landscapes.
landscape as text: the idea that landscapes can be read
and written by groups and individuals and may have
different interpretations.
Example: The Islamic City
• Principal mosque is centrally located
• Privacy of individual residences is paramount (esp.
for women)
• Entrances are L-shaped or angled
• Doors do not face each other across a minor street
• Windows are small and above normal eye level
• Cul-de-sacs
• Large homes are built around courtyards
Uniform landscapes:
standardization of landscape that diminishes cultural
variety and the unique sense of place
Also known as Placelessness: everything looks similar
and expressionless.
• diminishes the unique sense of place
Convergence hypothesis: cultural differences between
places are being reduced by improved transportation
and communication systems,
Working against the convergence hypothesis are
Diverging individualistic regions: popular culture’s
flexibility allows personal preferences to diverge rather
than converge creating distinct regions
Examples: politics, religious affiliation, alcohol
preferences, and spectator sports all exhibit regional
differences.
Familiarity with popular culture does not create a global
culture
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•
One can drink coca-cola and eat at McDonald's
without becoming American
• American products are changed to fit a countries
culture (for example: K-Pop)
Many American things have not traveled well
• Baseball and American football
• United States uses British Imperial measurements
while the rest of the world uses metrics
Folk and Popular Culture
What is Culture?
• Culture is learned behavior that is passed on by
imitation, instruction, and example.
• Culture is almost entirely relative. Proper behavior
shifts from culture to culture.
Geographic Importance of Culture
Geographers study culture because it leaves dramatic
imprints on the earth.
Culture includes:
What people care about (nonmaterial culture)
Language, religion, ethnicity, ideas, beliefs, and customs
Example folklore: the teaching of a folk group, the
traditional tales, and superstitions that are transmitted
orally
Culture also includes what people take care of (art,
food, clothing, and shelter)
Material Culture: the visible aspect of culture
All tangible objects made and used by members of a
cultural group, such as clothing, buildings, tools and
utensils, instruments, furniture, and artwork
Folk Medicine
People in folk societies commonly treat diseases and
disorders with drugs and medicines derived from the
root, bark, blossom, or fruit of plants.
Food and medicine in folk cultures comes from intimate
knowledge of the physical environment
Traditional Chinese Medicine: Science or Wishful
thinking?
Taboo: A restriction on behavior imposed by social
custom
Some taboo activities or customs are prohibited under
law and transgressions may lead to severe penalties.
Other taboos result in embarrassment, shame, and
rudeness.
Taboos can include dietary restrictions (halal (Islam) and
kosher (Judaism) diets, and religious vegetarianism.)
A large majority of people in folk societies are directly
involved with food production
Therefore folk cultures often have unique landscapes
and characteristics: fields, terraces, grain storage, beast
of burden, dirt roads, lack of technology
Folk Culture: a rural homogenous group retaining the
traditional way of life
1. Much variation from Place to Place
Folk Landscapes are usually of limited size
2. Little variation from Time to Time (Temporal
Variation)
3. Little variation from Person to Person (The “culture”
decides.)
4. Communal (Individualism is frowned upon)
5. Isolated
6. Highly Immobile
7. Strong Attachment to Places
8. Resistant to Change (infrequently and slowly)
9. Conservative
10. Strong Interpersonal Relationships
11. Strong Extended Family Structure
12. Strong Religious Institutions (to maintain order)
13. Dependent on Local Resources (self-sufficient,
subsistence economy prevails)
14. Customized Production (handmade goods)
15. Generalized Professions (Relatively little division of
labor. Rather, each person performs a variety of tasks,
although duties may differ between the genders)
16. Losing Ground
Popular Culture: a large heterogeneous group open to
change
Popular Culture diffuses on a global scale and extremely
fast because of T.V., satellites, the internet, and the
media (modern communication)
Advertising may be the most effective device for
diffusion in the popular culture
1. Little variation from Place to Place (Spatial
Variation)
2. Much variation from Time to Time (Temporal
Variation)
3. Much variation from Person to Person (The
“individual” decides.)
4. Competitive, and superficial
5. Interdependent
6. Highly Mobile
7. Weak Attachment to Places
8. Constantly Changing (progress, fads)
9. Progressive
Folk culture: a rural homogenous group retaining the
traditional way of life
14
10. Weak Interpersonal Relationships (Relationships
are more numerous but less personal, contractual
relationships)
11. Weak Extended Family Structure
12. Strong Secular Institutions (police, army, and
courts, take the place of family and church in
maintaining order) (science challenges religion for
dominance in our daily lives)
13. Dependent on Distant Resources
14. Mass Production (factories) and materialistic
15. Specialized Professions (A distinct division of labor,
with a highly specialized professions and jobs)
16. Gaining Ground
Popular and folk cultures have different geographic
patterns (in ap syllabus)
The US is almost completely dominated by popular
culture. How and where is folk culture preserved here?
• Indian reservations that speak and teach the native
language and traditions
• Museum cities such as Colonial Williamsburg
• The Amish – society cuts itself off from modern day
world (Western Pennsylvania and Ohio),
Folk Culture example (case study): The Amish
The various Amish or Amish Mennonite church
fellowships are Christian religious denominations that
form a very traditional subgrouping
of Mennonite churches.
The Amish are known for simple living, plain dress, and
reluctance to adopt modern convenience.
Amish church membership begins with baptism, usually
between the ages of 16 and 25. It is a requirement for
marriage, and once a person has affiliated with the
church, she or he may only marry within the faith.
Church districts average between 20 to 40 families and
worship services are held every other Sunday in a
member's home. The district is led by a bishop and
several ministers and deacons.
The rules of the church must be observed by every
member. These rules cover most aspects of day-to-day
living, and include prohibitions or limitations on the use
of power-line electricity, telephones and automobiles,
as well as regulations on clothing.
As Anabaptists, Amish church members
practice nonresistance and will not perform any type of
military service. Members who do not conform to these
expectations and who cannot be convinced
to repent are excommunicated (kicked out of the
church).
In addition to excommunication, members may
be shunned — a practice that limits social contacts to
shame the wayward member into returning to the
church.
Amish church groups seek to maintain a degree of
separation from the non-Amish world. There is
generally a heavy emphasis on church and family
relationships. They typically operate their own oneroom schools and discontinue formal education at
grade eight. They value rural life, manual labor and
humility.
Folk and Popular Culture’s Human Environmental
Impact:
Folk cultures may be more sensitive than popular
cultures to the qualities of the soil, climate, and terrain,
it does not follow that they are wholly shaped by their
physical surroundings, nor is it necessarily true that folk
groups live in close harmony with their environment,
for often soil erosion, deforestation, and overkill of wild
animals can be attributed to traditional rural folk
Because popular culture is largely the product of
industrialization and the rise of technology, it might
seem less directly tied to the physical environment than
is folk culture
However, the environmental can have an impact on
popular culture. Affecting things such as: Sports,
migration, clothes, health
Some natural hazards are actually intensified by popular
culture. Examples
• Living on the coast
• Living in huge cities on faults
• Building homes on cliffs
• Improved transportation allows disease to spread
faster and further
Identify and Discuss the positive and negative aspects
of globalization.
Identify Positive aspects: It has created wealth
Discuss: Trade between countries has increased making
products less expensive and often has improved quality
Identify Overall health has improved in the last 100
years
Discuss
• Better health care
• Less infectious disease
• Acquiring food is much easier
• Infant mortality has been reduced
• Life expectancy has increased
Identify
• standard of living has improved
15
Discuss
Vague explanation: New technologies have been
introduced
Specific explanation:
Improvements in:
• housing has increased in size with better heating
and cooling,
• communication through the internet and cell
phone,
• travel is easier, cheaper, and faster because of
improved roads and highways and access to public
transportation and cars.
Identify
• Globalization can enrich ones culture
Discuss
• New ideas have been introduced: women’s rights,
education, entertainment, increases in the variety
of food, clothing, music etc.
Negative Aspects of globalization:
Identify
• The world economy is dominated by rich countries
and corporations
Discuss
• Poor people remain poor
• Some people are not able to provide for themselves
when growing cash crops (instead of food)
• Transnational corporations (TNCs) push out smaller
businesses
• Heightened economic differences among places
Identify: Globalization has created homogenous,
“placeless” landscapes
Discuss:
• Commercial structures are often big box stores,
housing is often bland, and cities are crowded with
traffic
• Franchises and brands have eliminated much local
variation in cuisine and beverages.
• These foods are often inexpensive, high in calorie,
and unhealthy.
Identify: Globalization has caused environmental
problems and accelerated resource use through
accelerated consumption
Discuss:
• Burning of fossil fuels creates air pollution and
other environmental problems
• Mining creates huge environmental problems
• New larger housing uses more energy and water.
• Deforestation
• Loss of natural habitat (housing, industry,
development, golf-courses, hotels, etc.)
•
Killing of animals for their fur, tusks, horns, and
meat on an industrial scale
• Increased consumption of meat
• Even leisure activities in MDCs are harsh on the
environment and consume a lot of energy.
• Other Examples:
Identify
• Globalization often destroys the traditional way of
life (folk culture)
• Homogenization of culture
Discuss
• Loss of traditional religion (secularization)
• Extinction of native languages
Examples:
• North America, Europe, and Australia have become
rather similar and are constantly in contact with
one another.
• Native Americans speak English follow Christianity
• Maori (Whale Rider)
• Tibet
• Amish
• Mayan in Mexico
• Aborigines in Australia
Identify: Globalization can change traditional roles and
values
Discuss
• The elderly lose respect for not being beautiful
and cool
• Empowerment of women can increase divorce
and decrease interaction with children
• Some children could be affected by lack of good
role models and turn to violence
• Drugs and alcohol use often increases
• Materialism often becomes significant
• Globalization of culture often glorifies violence,
and sexuality.
Commodification of culture: the transformation of
goods and services (or things that may not normally be
regarded as goods or services) into a commodity.
Folk Architecture
• The most visible aspect of the folk landscape
• Provide the unique character of each district or
province
• Change little from one generation to the next
• Dwellings range from: massive houses of stone for
permanency, to temporary brush thatch huts
• Structures tend to blend nicely with the natural
landscape
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•
•
Folk architecture is traditional and functional using
local materials: wood, brick, stone, skins
Climate and vegetation influence choice of
construction materials
Simple explanation of climate
Latitude and distance from ocean is very important to
climate:
Low latitudes are near the equator (0-30 degrees)
High latitudes are near the poles (60-90)
Middle latitudes are in between and where most people
live. (30-60)
There are 5 basic climates
Polar: ice with little people so not significant to this
class
Cold mid latitude: Very cold winters but pretty nice the
rest of the year
Mild mid latitude: Temperatures are mild and it rarely
freezes
Humid low latitude: it rains a lot and never freezes
Dry: Also called arid. Very little precipitation but it
might have very cold winters. Not all deserts are hot but
it rarely rains.
Simple explanation of biomes (large zones of a type of
vegetation)
Near the equator there is tropical forest
Between north pole and the northern forest there is
tundra (the soil is frozen most of the year but not
always covered in snow) in the colder mid latitudes
there is forest (Russia, Canada, U.S. etc)
There are deserts with brush (rarely sand dunes, usually
bushes with walking distance between them).
In between the two extremes of desert and forest,
grasslands are found (called savanna in the tropics
where there is a dry season)
Folk housing building materials.
• Stone Construction
• Most live in rocky, deforested lands
• Mediterranean farmers
• Rural residents of northern India and southwestern
China (Tibet)
• Andean highlands
Earthen construction including Sun-dried (adobe) bricks
• People in arid areas (deserts)
Sod construction
• In pioneer times, the American Great Plains
•
•
•
•
•
In prairie (mid latitude grasslands)
Russian steppes
The first Europeans in Northern Canada
Tundra areas
Canadian Barns were first made of sod
Tent housing
• Nomadic herders often live in portable tents made
of skins or wool
Logs and sawn lumber (wood)
• Where timber is abundant
• Middle and higher latitudes
• The United States and Canada, log cabins and later
frame houses
• Folk houses of northern Europe
• Eastern Australia
• Central India
Half-timbering
• Wood frame with building material in between:
such as clay or plaster.
• Middle and higher latitudes
• Often deforested regions where wood is scarce
• Central Europe
• Central China
Poles, bamboo, leaves and bark
• Traditional people living in tropical rain forests
Brush – thatched
• People in the tropical grasslands (tropics with a dry
season)
• Especially in Africa
• Australia
• Brazil
Folk housing in North America
• Few folk houses are being built today
• Popular culture with its mass-produced,
commercially built houses have overwhelmed folk
traditions
• Many folk houses survive in refuge regions
Important factor in distinguishing different folk housing
types in the U.S.:
• Choice of building materials
• Form in which the structure is arranged
• Climate in which the structure is built
Today, house types in the US are distinguished by the
following:
• They display few regional distinctions
17
•
•
•
They are usually mass-produced
Alternative styles have diffused throughout the
country
No longer three distinct regions
Geography of Language
The most common variable by which different cultural
groups are identified is language.
Languages are of interest to geographers because they:
• vary spatially
• tend to form homogeneous groupings
• facilitate cultural diffusion
The physical geography may:
1. Affect vocabulary
• the fact there are more than twenty Spanish words
describing mountains and hills illustrates
• the influence of topography in traditional Spanish
culture
• the human environmental interaction
• the connection between language and vocabulary
2. Protect a language (mountains, desert, rainforest)
• When people who speak a given language migrate
to a different location and become isolated from
other members of their tribe isolation usually
results in the differentiation of one language into
two.
Examples: Basque is spoken primarily in the
Pyrenees Mountains.
• The Icelandic language has changed less than any
other Germanic language because of Iceland's
relative isolation from other places.
• The Mexican Highlands and the Himalayas are
linguistic refuge areas.
• The large number of African languages has resulted
from
thousands of years of isolation between tribal
groups
Linguistic shatter belts: areas where diverse languages
are spoken.
• A good example are the Caucasus Mountains
• Native Americans in California created one of most
linguistically diverse region in the world
• Behind New Guinea and the Caucasus.
Tree model of languages
When languages are depicted as leaves on
trees, the branches represent language
branches, the trunk language families.
Language family: collection of languages related to each
other through a common ancestor long before recorded
history
Language branch: a collection of languages related
through a common ancestor that existed several
thousand years ago. Differences are not that extensive
or as old as with language families.
Language group: collection of languages within a branch
that share a common origin in the relatively recent past
and display relatively few differences in grammar and
vocab (not as important as family and branch)
• English and German are part of the Western
Germanic group
• Scandinavia is Northern Germanic
• East Germanic of the Germanic family is extinct.
American English is a dialect. English is part of the
Western Germanic group, the Germanic branch of the
Indo-European Family.
Indo-European Branches
• The four most frequently spoken branches of IndoEuropean Family include Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian,
Romance, and Germanic.
• The most widely spoken language in Brazil is
Portuguese.
The two most important languages in South
America are Portuguese and Spanish.
• The most widely spoken Indo-European language is
English (book says Spanish)
• Russian is the largest language in the Balto-Slavic
branch
• The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the
easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European
family of languages. It consists of three language
groups: the Indic, Iranian, and Nuristani.
• Today, there are an estimated 150-200 million
native speakers of Iranian languages. Persian has
about 65 million native speakers, Pashto about 40
million, Kurdish about 40 million, and Baluchi about
7 million.
• Persian (local names: Farsi, Dari, Tajik) is widely
spoken in Iran/Persia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and to some extent in Armenia, Iraq
• Indic has the most speakers of the Indo-European
language family.
Estimates: Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu, about 640
m), Bengali (about 260 m), Punjabi (about 100 m),
Marathi (about 90 m), Gujarati (about 45 m), Oriya
(about 30 m), Nepali (about 20 m), and others with
a total number of native speakers of more than 900
million.
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History of English in England
• Celts: BC Indo-European language
• Romans (Latin): AD 43 – 409
• Germanic Speakers:
• Angles, Jutes, and Saxons: 410 – 1065
• Vikings (Norway): 900-1000
• Born out of the dialects of three German tribes
(Angles, Jutes, and Saxons) who settled in Britain in
about 450 A.D. This group of dialects forms what
linguists refer to as Anglo-Saxon, and at some point
this language developed into what we know as Old
English.
This Germanic base was influenced in varying
degrees by Celtic, Latin, and Scandinavian (Old
Norse) - the languages spoken by invading armies.
• Normans (From French coast called Normandy):
1066 – 1362
• The Normans are really a Germanic people (Norman
means Northmen) who invaded Normandy from
Scandinavia in the ninth century. They learned
French but (keeping certain Germanic patterns of
pronunciation) but when they conquered Britain
were not Germanic speaking.
• During the Norman occupation, about 10,000
French words were adopted into English, some
three-fourths of which are still in use today.
• Words that are French are easy to spot in English:
Endings in – ion, ment
• French became the language of the government
and law and culture (art).
Latin the language of church, education, and
philosophy.
• English was the language of the people and second
class.
• English was "demoted" to everyday, unprestigious
uses. These two languages existed side by side in
England with no noticeable difficulties;
• In fact, since English was essentially ignored by
grammarians during this time, it took advantage of
its lowly status to become a grammatically simpler
language and, after existing side-by-side with
French, Old English segued into Middle English.
Old English: 500-1100
Middle English: 1100-1400 (change brought by
French)
Modern English since 1400
Dialects: mutual comprehension has not been lost
(spoken in a local area)
Linguists estimate that there are about 6,000-7,000
different languages spoken in the world today. The
imprecision in this estimate is largely due to the fact
that some dialects are in the process of diverging and it
is not clear that they have reached the stage of being
separate languages. If two people find each other's
speech unintelligible, they are usually thought to be
speaking different languages rather than dialects.
Dialects developed within England primarily because
different Germanic invaders settled in different regions.
British and American English differ in pronunciation,
spelling, and vocabulary
Dialects in the United States: 3 distinct regionsNorthern, Midland, and Southern
An isogloss is a boundary between language regions.
African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
• dialect of American English
• most commonly spoken by urban working-class
• and largely bi-dialectal middle-class African
Americans
• it shares parts of
its grammar and pronunciation with Southern
American English
• non-linguists sometimes call it Ebonics
Other language families and alphabets
The 2nd most widely spoken language family in Europe is
Uralic (Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian)
Basque is unrelated to any other language in the world.
Sino-Tibetan Family (second largest)
“Chinese” is in the Sinitic Branch
The language spoken by the greatest number of people
in the world is Mandarin.
Mandarin (common language) is imposed by
government (Han)
Around 8 different Chinese languages are spoken in
China:
• Mandarin,
• Wu (Shanghainese)
• Min (Taiwanese)
• Yue (Cantonese)
• Kejia (Hakka)
• Gan
• Xiang
Different tones are used in Chinese
Ideograms- symbols are used to represent an idea or
concept rather than pronunciations
Based on 420 one -syllable words
19
Altaic Family also called Turkish languages are found in
Central Asia (the stans)
Turkmen is closely related to Turkish and Azerbaijani,
with which it is for the most part mutually intelligible.
Western China (the Uyghurs pronounced Wegers)
Macro-Altaic would add Korean, Japanese, and the
Ryukyuan languages for a total of about 74.
The Afro-Asiatic Family is found in the Middle East,
North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Semitic language.
The Semitic Branch is found in this family with Arabic
being the most widespread Semitic language.
Hebrew is another Semitic language which is spoken in
Israel.
The most important language family in Sub-Saharan
Africa is Niger-Congo.
African languages are distinguished by the fact that few
are spoken by more than one million people
Alphabets make a culture unique
A literary tradition is the written form of a language.
Development of alphabets/writing allowed certain
cultures to become more complex and dominant
English is written using the Latin alphabet but the world
uses what we call Arabic numbers (0-9). Really from
India.
The Cyrillic alphabet has been adapted to write over 50
different languages, mainly in Russia, Central Asia and
Eastern Europe.
Hindi (written in the Devanagari alphabet)
and Urdu (Pakistan) are very similar (same group).
Urdu speakers use the Arabic alphabet
Urdu and Hindi are mutual intelligible however, due to
religious nationalism and alphabet native speakers of
both Hindi and Urdu increasingly assert them to be
completely distinct languages.
Language and Religion
The Arabic alphabet is one of the most important in the
world. It is used by the followers of the Islamic faith-over 1 billion people.
Old Testament written in Hebrew
Jesus spoke Aramaic (a dying Semitic language)
New Testament: Greek
Hebrew is an example of a revived language with the
creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Lingua franca and the global dominance of English
Lingua Franca: a language mutually understood and
commonly used in trade by people who have different
native languages.
English is the lingua franca in the USA even though
about 40% of Californians speak languages other than
English at home.
An important lingua franca in East Africa is Swahili
Arabic is the lingua franca, within the Muslim world,
since it is the language in which the Qur’an is written.
Urdu was chosen as a national language of Pakistan to
act as a lingua franca although only 8% of people in
Pakistan speak Urdu as a first language. However, Urdu
is, increasingly, being adopted and spoken as a first
language by a new generation of urbanized Pakistanis.
English is often a lingua franca
• Of the internet (technology)
• Over two-thirds of the world's scientists read in
English.
• International conferences and scholarly journals are
often in English
• English is also the main language of books,
newspapers, airports and air-traffic control,
international business, technology, diplomacy,
sport, international competitions, pop music and
advertising.
Preserving language diversity
Some places resist cultural dominance through:
• Cultural nationalism is an effort to protect regional
and national cultures from the homogenizing
impacts of globalization, especially from the
penetrating influence of U.S. culture.
• The overall trend appears to be toward the loss of
indigenous language (and other forms of culture)
• Monoglot: a person able to speak only one language
• As the number of monoglots can be used to
measure the strength of the language
• Imperial Conquest often causes a decline in
indigenous languages
• English and French are spoken in many parts of
Africa because of imperialism and colonialism
Pidgin language is a simplified language that develops
as a means of communication between two or more
groups that do not have a language in common. It is
most commonly employed in situations such as trade. A
pidgin is not the native language, but is instead learned
as a second language… Pidgins usually have low prestige
with respect to other languages
A creole language is a mix of indigenous and colonial
languages
A creolized language is a mix of indigenous and colonial
languages.
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The Economic Development Model of Linguistic Decline
• Urbanization removes native speakers and
contributes to the breakup of the social structure
needed to perpetrate an indigenous language.
• The transition from subsistence farming to factory
laboring is destructive to minority tongues.
• Industrialization strengthens the dominant
language
• Welsh in the United Kingdom is an example of a
language declining in context of this model
Factors promoting the revival of minority languages in
the face of globalization:
Separatists: some newly independent states
reestablished the indigenous language as a statement
of political and cultural independence.
Nationalism: try to maintain their distinctiveness and
promote the local language as a way to resist the
dominate culture
Examples: Ireland/Gaelic, Israel/Hebrew, Native
Americans, minority languages in China, Welsh and
Gaelic in the UK, Basque in France/Spain
The central government promotes unity in multicultural
states by adopting two or more official languages to
reduce the threat of secession
Examples: Canada, South Africa, India, Nigeria
The Flemings/Flemish (Dutch speakers) and Walloons
(French speakers) live in Belgium.
The Flemings and Walloons speak languages belonging
to different language branches.
And Switzerland where the official languages are
French, German, Italian and Romansh.
Geography of Religion
Some of these notes have background information on
various religions. The exam will be predominately on
the geography. In other words study the spatial aspect
of the notes.
Vocabulary
Secularization: changing society so it is no longer under
the control or influence of religion
In some parts of the world, especially in much of
Europe, China and Japan, religion has declined.
Statistics on atheism are often difficult to represent
accurately for a variety of reasons. beliefs.
Pilgrimages: a long journey of great moral significance.
Sometimes, it is a journey to a shrine of importance to a
person’s beliefs and faith.
In religion, a relic is a part of the body of a saint or a
venerated person, or else another type of ancient
religious object, carefully preserved for purposes of
veneration or as a tangible memorial. Relics are an
important aspect of some forms of Buddhism,
Christianity, Hinduism, Shamanism, and many other
religions.
A large and fundamental division within a religion is a
branch.
A religious sect is basically the same as a religious
branch: a subdivision of a religious organization.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest sect/branch of
Christianity:
• Roman Catholic/1,000,000,000,
• Protestant/400,000,000
• Orthodox/200,000,000
Sectarianism is discrimination or hatred arising from
attaching importance to perceived differences between
subdivisions within a group, such as between different
denominations of a religion or class.
Sectarian violence is violence inspired by sectarianism,
that is, between different sects of one particular mode
of religion within a nation. Religious segregation often
plays a role in sectarian violence.
Judaism
is the oldest surviving monotheistic religion having
influenced Christianity and Islam
According to Judaism, God revealed his laws and
commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai.
The Torah is the first of three parts of the Tanakh (i.e.
Hebrew Bible) and is divided into five books, whose
names are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy
Jews are regarded as an ethnoreligious group, that
define them as a nation (people), rather than of a faith.
For most of the past 2,000 years, most Jews have been
dispersed around the world.
This is called a Diaspora: a spatial dispersion of a
previously homogeneous group.
The concept of a ghetto originally referred to the area
of a city where Jews were forced to live.
Judaism is numerically small because it does NOT seek
new converts.
The world Jewish population is estimated at 14 million
people, 41% of whom lived in Israel and 40% of whom
lived in the United States
4 Major Sects or Branches of Judaism: Hasidic,
Orthodox, Reform Judaism, and Conservative have small
clusters in urban areas.
21
Christianity
• Centered on the life and teachings of Jesus as
presented in the New Testament. The Christian
faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ (or
Messiah), the Son of God, the Savior, the
manifestation of God to humankind, and God
himself.
• Adherents of the Christian faith believe that Jesus is
the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (the
part of scripture common to Christianity and
Judaism).
• Christian theology holds that Jesus died from
crucifixion, and was resurrected from the dead to
open heaven to those who believe in him and trust
him for the forgiveness of their sins (salvation).
• Christians believe Jesus will return to judge all
humans, living and dead, and grant eternal life to
his followers. He is considered the model of a
virtuous life.
• Christianity first diffused from its hearth through
relocation diffusion.
• After its initial spread by relocation and hierarchical
diffusion, Christianity spread by contagious
diffusion
Christianity is not an important religion in the area it
was founded.
3 Major Sects or Branches of Christianity
• Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant
Western Christianity was initially identified with Rome
and the Latin-speaking areas, while the Eastern Church
dominated the Greek speaking world from
Constantinople (now Istanbul).
The split between the two churches became final in
1054
This split created the Eastern Orthodox Branch of
Christianity found in today in Eastern Europe
Poland = Pope
Countries that start with C are Catholic: The Croatians
keep Central Europe in Czech so they stay Catholic
In the 16th century the Protestants during the
Reformation broke off from Roman Catholic Church
under Martin Luther’s protests
What is the difference between Roman Catholicism and
Protestantism?
Patron saints are chosen as special protectors or
guardians over areas of life. These areas can include
occupations, illnesses, churches, countries, causes -anything that is important.
A patron saint is believed to be a good example of how
to live and is often asked for prayers to God.
Catholics follow the seven sacraments: Baptism,
Confirmation, Eucharist (communion), Penance,
Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Anointing the sick
Protestants take communion and perform baptisms: the
ritual act, with the use of water, by which a person is
admitted to membership of the Church. The New
Testament reports that Jesus himself was baptized.
Catholic churches tend to be large and elaborate
structures because Catholics perceive the church as the
house of God (not sacred sites)
Denomination: a division of a branch that unites a
number of local congregations in a single legal and
administrative body
Evangelical Christians
• The need for personal conversion, or being "born
again"
• A high regard for biblical authority (against gay
marriage, premarital sex, discuss Revelation the last
chapter of the bible)
• Actively expressing and sharing the gospel
• Conservative
Religious regions in the U.S.:
Roman Catholics are clustered in the southwest
(migration from Latin America) and Northeast and
New England (migration from Italy and Ireland)
A rich array of Protestant sects is best illustrated on the
religious map of North America
• The South is predominately Baptist
• The Northern Central states are Lutheran
• In between the North and South is very Methodist
Utah is very Mormon
Factors that influenced the Mormon region:
• Mormonism began in the eastern US and migrated
west to avoid persecution
• Lack of later in-migration of other religions
Factors that influenced the Lutheran region:
• Germans and Scandinavians migrated in large
numbers bringing their religion
• Lack of later in-migration of other religions
The problems with religion maps is they do not show
the diversity within regions
Islam
Language and Religion often coincide
Examples
22
Most Arabs are Muslim
Most of the world’s Muslims are NOT Arabs (only
around 20%)
Islam is a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion
• Based on the teachings of the Qur’an, considered by
its adherents to be the word of God as it was
revealed to Muhammad.
• An adherent of Islam is a Muslim, meaning "one
who submits (to God)".
• Muslims regard Islam as the completed
monotheistic faith revealed to peoples before,
including to Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus.
• Islamic tradition holds that previous revelations
were distorted.
• Adherents of Islam have controlled the Holy Land
for most of the past 1,500 years.
• Muslims controlled much of present-day Spain until
1492.
• Muslims are clustered in the Middle East.
However, Muslim missionaries followed trade routes
and implanted Islam from Morocco to Northwestern
China down to Indonesia including Central Asia, South
Asia and Somalia.
Five Pillars of Islam:
1. Belief: Declaration of Faith: accept & repeat “There is
no God but God, & Muhammad is his Prophet.”
2. Charity Muslims must give to the poor.
3. Fasting Fast during Ramadan believers may not eat or
drink between sunrise & sunset.
4. Prayer Pray 5 times a day
facing Mecca (Saudi Arabia).
5. Pilgrimage Muslims who are physically & financially
able must make a pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).
Mecca (Makkah): Muhammad’s place of birth and
location of the Ka’ba.
Muslims believe the Ka’ba was built by Abraham and
Ishmael. They also believe it to be the first house of
worship for God.
The Hajj is designed to
• develop a sense of spiritual uplifting.
• be an opportunity to seek forgiveness of sins
accumulated throughout life.
• bring Muslims from all around the world, to come
together in a spirit of universal brotherhood and
sisterhood to worship the One God together.
The pattern of pilgrimages to Mecca suggests a fairly
strong distance-decay effect, with most traveling
relatively short distances from Middle Eastern Arab
countries.
Medina is the second holiest city for Muslims
Muslims also believe:
• Muhammad is the last and greatest of the prophets.
• People should not drink alcohol, eat pork, or charge
interest (usury).
• No gambling
• Jesus was a prophet
Jews and Muslims discourage pictures and statues of
their leaders (esp. God and Mohammed)
The mosque is the most imposing religious structure in
the Islamic landscape
A mosque differs from a church, in that it is NOT a
sanctified place
Two Major Sects or Branches of Islam
1. Shi’a (also known as Shiites) clerics are empowered
to interpret God’s will (esp. Iran, Iraq) around 10%
of the Muslim population
Shias regard Ali as the first Imam and consider him and
his descendants the rightful successors to Muhammad
2. Sunnis: clerics are guides and the individual’s
relationship with God is direct (Majority of Muslims)
Hadith is the collective body of the sayings or customs
of Muhammad and his companions
Clash of Cultures
Religious Fundamentalism: a literal interpretation and a
strict adherence to basic principles of the religion
(Evangelicals)
The opposite is Secularism: non-religious
Sharia or Islamic law deals with many aspects of day-today life, including banking, business, contracts, family,
sexuality, hygiene, and social issues.
Hadd: the word often used in Islamic literature for the
bounds of acceptable behavior and the punishments for
serious crimes. Hadd usually refers to the class of
punishments that are fixed for certain crimes. They
include
• Theft
• Fornication
• Consumption of alcohol
• Apostasy (leaving the religion)
The Hadd punishments vary according to the offender:
Muslims generally receive harsher punishments than
non-Muslims.
In brief, the punishments include:
• Capital punishments - by sword or stoning
• Amputation of hands or feet
23
• Flogging with a varying number of strokes
Vigilante Justice Remains
Honor Killings: murder committed in retaliation for
bringing dishonor to the family.
Other pre-Islamic traditions exist that clash with
modern society.
• Female Genital Mutilation: clitoris removal called
“circumcision” and compared to male circumcision
• Adolescent marriages
• Polygamy
Islamism: The idea that Islam is not only a religion but
also a political system.
The basic intent of Islamism is to create an Islamic State
Islamist emphasizes the enforcement of:
• sharia
• pan-Islamic political unity
• the elimination of non-Muslim, particularly western,
military, economic, political, social, or cultural
influences in the Muslim world, which they believe
to be incompatible with Islam.
Islamism is an Islamic political movement that resists
the forces of globalization (secularization)
Not all Muslims are Islamists although Islamism is the
most extreme movement within Islam today.
Other terms associated with Islamism are
• Militant Islam
• Salafism strict and puritanical approaches to Islam
• Jihad: Muslims use the word to refer to three types
of struggles: an internal struggle to maintain faith,
the struggle to improve the Muslim society, or the
struggle in a holy war
• Jihadis espouse violent jihad against civilians as a
legitimate expression of Islam
Islamist has come into conflict with conceptions of the
secular, democratic state. Among human rights
disputed by fundamentalist Muslims are:
• Equality issues between men and women (work,
government, divorce etc)
• Separation of religion and state
• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of religion - Under Islamic law if a Muslim
converts then speaks against Islam then that is
considered as treason which is punishable by death
What is the Taliban?
• Political part that ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001
• Sunni mostly from Pashtun tribes
• Strongholds today in the southern region
• Followed a strict form of Sharia Law.
Banned the following
•
•
education, employment and sports for women
movies, TV, videos, non-Islamic music, VCRs,
computers
• clapping during sports events
• dancing
• kite flying
• women wear burqas
men: beards extending longer than a fist under the chin,
but head hair short, wear a head covering
no depictions of living things, pictures, dolls, stuffed
animals, paintings, drawings
theft punished by cutting off hand
rape, murder, adultery punished by public executions in
Kabul’s soccer stadium
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have the following in
common:
• Belief in one God
• Abraham and other prophets
• Prayer
• Began in the Middle East
• Jerusalem is a holy city
The Old City of Jerusalem is home to several sacred
sites: the Temple Mount and its Western Wall for Jews,
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Christians (built
where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified)
and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque for
Muslims (making Jerusalem the third holiest city to
Muslims)
Universalizing Religions
• attempt to appeal to people throughout the world
• individual historical founder
• message diffused widely
• followers widely distributed (exception Buddhism)
• holidays based on events in founder’s life
• biggest examples Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism
(Buddhism not diffused widely)
Ethnic Religions:
• meaning to people in a particular place
• highly concentrated in place of origin
• followers highly clustered (seldom diffuses)
• holidays based on local climate and agricultural
calendar
• do not convert people
• unknown origin
Since 1492, religions have become dramatically
dislocated from their sites of origin through conversion
and emigration.
24
Judaism considered an Ethnic Religion:
• Major holidays are based on events in the
agricultural calendar of the religion’s homeland in
present-day Israel
• 2 holiest days Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come
in the autumn (hope for crops being planted)
• Passover (date it begins every year) derived from
farmers making an offering (barley) of the first fruits
to God in the spring
• Judaism uses a lunar calendar (29 days a month)
which gets out of step with agriculture season so
the Jewish calendar solves this by adding an extra
month seven out of every 19 yrs.
• Judaism is an exception to ethnic religions in that
more Jews practice Judaism outside its place of
origin and Judaism is widely distributed.
Animism and folk religions
Animism: certain inanimate objects possess spirits and
souls (ethnic)
These spirits live in rocks and rivers, mountain peaks,
heavenly bodies, forests and swamps.
Sub-Saharan African is the greatest surviving stronghold
of animism both in terms of numbers of adherents and
in percentage of total population. (esp. Mozambique
and Madagascar)
Animism and Death
Most animistic belief systems hold that the spirit
survives physical death.
1. The spirit is believed to pass to an easier world of
abundant game or ever-ripe crops,
2. While in other systems, the spirit remains on earth as
a ghost.
From the belief in the survival of the dead arose the
practice of offering food, lighting fires, etc., at the
grave, at first, maybe, as an act of friendship or of
ancestor worship. The simple offering of food or
shedding of blood at the grave develops into an
elaborate system of sacrifice.
But all is not finished with the passage of the soul to the
land of the dead. The soul may return to avenge its
death by helping to discover the murderer, or to wreak
vengeance for itself. There is a widespread belief that
those who die a violent death become malignant spirits
and endanger the lives of those who come near the
haunted spot.
In Malay folklore, the woman who dies in childbirth
becomes a pontianak, a vampire-like spirit who
threatens the life of human beings.
People resort to magical or religious means of repelling
spiritual dangers from such malignant spirits.
It is not surprising to find that many peoples respect
and even worship animals often regarding them as
relatives. It is clear that widespread respect was paid to
animals as the abode of dead ancestors.
Shintoism is the Japanese animistic religion..
Shinto is a religion in where actions and ritual, rather
than words, are of the utmost importance. Shinto is
characterized by the worship of nature, ancestors,
polytheism, and animism, with a strong focus on ritual
purity, involving honoring and celebrating the existence
of Kami.
Kami are defined in English as "spirit", "essence" or
"deities", that are associated with many understood
formats; in some cases being human like, some
animistic, others associated with more abstract
"natural" forces in the world (mountains, rivers,
lightning, wind, waves, trees, rocks). It may be best
thought of as "sacred" elements and energies. Kami and
people are not separate, they exist within the same
world and share its interrelated complexity.
Chinese folk religion comprises the religion practiced in
much of China for thousands of years, which included
ancestor worship and drew heavily upon concepts and
beings within Chinese mythology. It is estimated that
there are at least 394 million adherents to Chinese folk
religion worldwide.
Chinese folk religion retains traces of some of its
ancestral belief systems, which include the veneration
of (and communication with) the sun, moon, earth, the
heaven, and various stars, as well as communication
with animals.
Chinese Beliefs: Buddhism, Confucianism (ethnic), and
Daoism (ethnic) have fused together
Religion in China has been characterized by pluralism
since the beginning of Chinese history. Temples of many
different religions dot China's landscape
Hinduism is largest ethnic religion: 80% of the Indians
or 900 million people
• Polytheistic
Hindus Believe:
• Reincarnation after death you are reborn as
another person or organism
• Karma - cause and effect the things people do in
this life affects their next life
• Moksha: the ending of the suffering and cycles of
reincarnation
25
•
•
Cows have good karma
The Himalayas are the sacred snow-clad mountains,
on the summit of which are the heavens.
• The Ganges is the Holy River
Many of the sites that are sacred for India's Hindus
are located near rivers
• Hindus visit sacred pilgrimage sites for a variety of
reasons, including to seek a cure for sickness, wash
away sins, or fulfill a promise to a deity.
• Worship in Hinduism is most likely to take place at
home
Ghats: steps that lead down to the holy Ganges to
facilitate ritual bathing
Varanasi is one of the holiest places in Hinduism
Until only recently many Hindus considered it a calamity
to leave India and live with foreigners
A Hindu is born into a caste (Class), determined by a
person’s job and remains in it for life
Outsiders:
Untouchables are below the caste system and do the
jobs that no one else will:
• Clean the streets, toilets, or handle dead animals or
people
• Foreigners
Segregation by ancestry and occupation: Hindus only
marry & eat with people who belong to their caste.
Buddhism
• a universalizing religion
• largely based on teachings attributed to
Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the
Buddha.
• proper personal conduct and meditation are
essential to overcome desire, eliminate life's
suffering, and escape to a state of peace called
Nirvana
• not monotheistic (does not worship more than
one god TQ)
Two major branches of Buddhism are recognized:
Mahayanist emphasize Buddha’s compassion
Mahayana is found throughout East Asia.
Theravadist emphasize Buddha’s wisdom
Theravada has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and
Southeast Asia
While Buddhism remains concentrated within Asia, both
branches are now found throughout the world. Various
sources put the number of Buddhists in the world at
between 230 million and 500 million
There are eight holy sites associated with important
events in Buddha’s life in Northern India and Nepal
Very few Buddhist in India today and it is not globally
distributed
Sikhism: A universalizing religion that arose from an
attempt to unify Hinduism and Islam
Devout Sikhs have five symbols of their faith.
They are known as the five K’s
• Kesh (uncut hair) symbolizing obedience to God's
will, (men wear turbans)
• Kangha (wooden comb) symbolizing cleanliness,
• Kachh (shorts, worn under other clothes)
symbolizing goodness,
• Kara (steel bracelet, worn on the right wrist)
symbolizing eternity
• Kirpan (sword) symbolizing strength.
Some Sikhs want self-determination in the Punjab
Amritsar, Punjab is their holiest city
Islam and Hinduism as contrasting traditions
• The Hindu emphasis on the plurality of the divine
within the oneness of reality contrasts with the
Muslim affirmation of the oneness of God.
• The Hindu use the iconic representations of the
divine contrasts with the Muslim prohibition of such
representations.
• The Hindu tradition is associated with place and
linked to the land of India. It is more a way of life
than a creed. Islam, by contrast, is transcultural and
based on a creed.
• The Hindu tradition is socially hierarchical (e.g.,
caste system), while Islam is socially egalitarian.
• The Hindu tradition is vegetarian, while Islam
includes the sacrificial slaughter of animals.
Sacred sites: a geographic intersection between the
divine and the mortal
• sacred site shows the impact of religion on the
cultural landscape through:
• the ongoing preservation of space
• the visitation of holy sites/pilgrimages by adherents
• tension/conflict over use of sacred site
Examples of this tension are Native American site in
Hawaii and North America,
Jerusalem,
• The Partition of India in 1947 resulted in the
creation of the Hindu state of India and the Muslim
state of Pakistan (East and West)
• The Babri Mosque (destroyed in 1992 when a
political rally developed into a riot involving
150,000 people. More than 2,000 people, mostly
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Muslims, were killed in ensuing riots in many major
Indian cities)
•
•
Religion and the Environment
Religious ideas may be responsible for some of the
changes people make in the physical environment
One of the main functions of many religions is the
maintenance of a harmonious relationship between a
people and their physical environment.
Discuss how Christian, Animistic, and Taoist views on
nature are different.
Use specific examples with regards to Christianity in
your answer.
Religion can influence environmental perception and
modification (ap syllabus)
Religious Perspectives on Nature
Judeo-Christian-perspective: the earth was created
especially for humans, who are separate from and
superior to the natural world. (teleology)
Believing that the Earth was given to humans for their
use, early Christian thinkers adopted the view that
humans were God’s helpers in finishing the task of
creation, human modifications of the environment were
God’s work
Christians are more likely to consider floods, droughts,
and other natural disasters to be preventable and may
take steps to overcome the problem by modifying the
environment.
• cultivating the land
• draining wetlands
• clearing forests
• building cities
• dams, etc.
Some Christians regard natural disasters as punishment
for sins
animistic perspective: humans are extensions of
animate and inanimate nature.
• animistic principal goal is to mediate between
people and the spirit-infested forces of nature.
• Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by
mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the
soul/spirit restores the physical body. The shaman
also enters supernatural dimensions to obtain
solutions to problems afflicting the community.
• Adherents of ethnic religions do not attempt to
transform the environment to the same extent.
God/gods can be placated through prayer and
sacrifice
Environmental hazards may be accepted as normal
and unavoidable
Similarly, rivers, mountains, trees, forests, and rocks
often achieve the status of sacred space.
Taoist perspective: nature should be valued for its own
sake, not for how it might be exploited.
Doaist believe humans should try to live in harmony
with nature by balancing the opposite forces of nature,
called yin and yang
Modern Middle East Study Guide
Islam united the Middle East into the Arab Empire.
Arab rule and Islam spread from Spain to the Indus
valley (Pakistan today).
Even after the Arab Empire fell, Islam remained strong.
Palestine is the geographic region in Western Asia
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
The region is also known as the Land of Israel and the
Holy Land.
What is a Palestinian?
Palestinians are Arabs that are from Palestine. A vast
majority of them are Muslim but some are Christian.
Zionist are Jews that believe Israel should be made a
homeland for Jews
After WW II Jews started moving to Israel in large
numbers from Europe
and the Middle East.
• In 1947 the United Nations partitioned
Israel/Palestine.
• Jews and Palestinians were both given land to
control.
• Jerusalem was made an international city
• Palestinians rejected the partition
Many Arab countries do not recognize Israel as a
country and think it is an illegal occupation of land.
1948-49 War: Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan
attacked Israel.
• Israel won and acquired some of the Palestinian
land.
• Jordan took the West Bank
• Egypt took the Gaza Strip
• Palestinians became a people without a country
In 1948 most of the Muslim Palestinians became
refugees in the following areas.
Area
Raw #
1.
2.
3.
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4.
5.
6 Day War (1967)
Israel took over the so called Occupied Territories
• Golan Heights
• West Bank
• Gaza Strip
• Sinai Peninsula
1973 War Or Yom Kippur War
• Arab countries lose to Israel
Camp David Accords (1979)
• Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in
exchange for peace
This is what is called The Peace Process: an exchange of
peace for land through negotiations instead of war.
It now continues with the Palestinians.
Intifada: Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation
using rocks and suicide bombings to fight (1980s to 90s)
Hamas
Since June 2007 Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip.
Israel, the United States, Canada, the European Union,
and Japan classify Hamas as a terrorist organization,
while Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Arab nations do not.
Based on the principles of Islamic fundamentalism
gaining momentum throughout the Arab world in the
1980s, Hamas was founded in 1987 (during the First
Intifada) as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood.
4 major issues that stand in the way of peace:
1. Jewish settlements in the West Bank
2. Jews living in East Jerusalem
3. Palestinian Terrorist that demand land through the
use of violence
4. Foreign Islamist that want to eliminate Israel (Iran
and Hezbollah).
• This is why Israel does not want Iran to get
Nuclear weapons.
• The West does not want Iran to get nuclear
weapons because it could cause instability in
the Middle East. What would stop them from
supporting terrorism?
Options for Israel/Palestine today:
The two state solution: one for Israelis one for
Palestinians
Continued Israeli occupation/control of the West Bank
Why did 9/11 occur?
Geography of Ethnicity
An attempt to understand how ethnicity shapes and is
shaped by space
Does Race Exist?
Some scientist have stated that it is biologically
insignificant
Race is self-identification with a group sharing a
biological ancestor.
Self-identification includes: ethnicity, race, religion.
Racism is
• belief in biological classification of people.
• superiority because of racial identity.
• inferiority because of racial identity.
Blockbusting: when real estate agents convince whites
to sell their houses at low prices because blacks are
moving in. Then turning around and selling the house
at a high price to blacks an make a nice profit.
(Neighborhood changes in ethnicity)
However, one feature of race does matter to
geographers – skin color.
Because it is the most fundamental basis by which
people in many societies sort out where they reside,
attend school, and perform many other activities of
daily life.
Ethnicity: Identity with a group of people that share
physical traits and cultural traditions (religion,
language, skin color, and material culture)
African American and black are different groups,
although the 2000 census combined the two. Most
black Americans are descended from African
immigrants and therefore also belong to an AfricanAmerican ethnicity.
Some American blacks, however, trace their cultural
heritage to regions other than Africa, including Latin
America,
Asia, or Pacific islands.
non-Latino whites are not ethnic unless they were born
abroad
Knox is a Scottish last name, are Knox’s: ScottishAmerican, ethnically Scottish, or an American of
Scottish ancestry? (circle correct answer)
Ethnic identity for descendants of European immigrants
is primarily preserved through religion and food
1 in 3 Californians are Hispanic
United States Census Bureau does not consider
Hispanic/Latino a race. Can be any race
28
Perhaps the most problematic ethnicity category in the
2000 U.S. census was “Hispanic,” an umbrella term used
to refer to residents whose cultural heritage derives
from a Spanish-speaking country.
The largest Hispanic/Latino groups in the United States
are from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico
What Hispanics have in common is that they have
ancestral ties to Latin America or Spain.
Yet this apparent commonality masks a great deal of
cultural differentiation, because a self-identified
Hispanic can be Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban
American, Spaniard, or someone from any of the South
or Central American countries.
Ethnic group: people of common ancestry and cultural
tradition, living as a minority in a larger society
The people in the Soviet Union in the satellite states
were ethnic until they got independence
Acculturation: the process by which an ethnic group
chan ges in order to be able to function economically
and socially.
Assimilation: the loss of all cultural traditions and a
complete blending with the host society
intermarriage is perhaps the most effective assimilatory
device.
Melting Pot- a mixture of people, cultures and races
who blended together by abandoning their native
languages and customs.
Salad Bowl- when people of various
cultures/immigrants do not lose the unique aspects of
their cultures like in the melting pot model, instead they
retain them
Ethnic groups often occupy clearly defined areas,
whether rural or urban.
Ethnicity in Rural Areas
Ethnic Homelands cover large areas with a particular
landscape.
Ethnic islands: a small ethnic area in the rural
countryside
The largest single group in American ethnic islands is
German
While Germans and Scandinavians supplied most of the
rural settlers in the U.S.,
the cities drew much more heavily on Ireland and
eastern and southern Europe.
These groups were later joined by Southern blacks,
Puerto Ricans, Appalachian whites, Native Americans,
Asians, and other groups not of European birth.
Ethnicity in Urban Areas
ethnic neighborhood: a voluntary community where
people of like origin reside by choice.
In the process of urbanization and industrialization of
Northern America, urban ethnic immigrants tended to
cluster together in residential neighborhoods (LA).
In the US ethnicities have
• Regional concentrations
• Concentrations in cities and within cities
• Congregation: clustering of specific groups of
people
Advantages of Congregation
• pride of group (that you mean or represent
something greater than yourself.)
• mutual support of businesses
• a political power base
• familiar landscapes
• cultural preservation
• It allows religious and cultural practices to be
maintained esp. language
• friendships and marriage partners
• helps minimize conflict
• recreation outlets
Disadvantages
• Economic opportunity limited
• Isolated
Ghetto: areas of residential segregation where an
ethnic group lives because it has very little choice in the
matter
Invasion and succession: a process of neighborhood
change whereby one social or ethnic group succeeds
another in a residential area.
Regardless of the source of urban immigrants, the
neighborhoods they create tend to be transitory
Urban flight is when middle class people of any
ethnicity move out of older neighborhoods to the
suburbs
“white flight”: the middle class flee the cities with their
money. Poorer, disadvantaged, often minority
residents were left behind
Black flight is a term applied to the out-migration of
African Americans from predominantly black or mixed
inner-city areas in the United States to suburbs and
outlying edge cities of newer home construction. While
more attention has been paid to this since the 1990s,
the movement of blacks to the suburbs has been
underway for some time, with nine million persons
having migrated from 1960-2000.
Their goals have been similar to those of the white
middle class, whose out-migration was called white
flight: newer housing, better schools for their children,
and attractive environments. From 1990 to 2000, the
29
percentage of African Americans who lived in the
suburbs increased to a total of 39 percent, rising 5
percent in that decade. Most who moved to the
suburbs after World War II were middle class.
The large inner-city area of South Los Angeles offers an
example of change caused by ethnic succession, where
new immigrants replace former residents who move
away or where an older generation is replaced by young
people with children.
In 1985 African Americans made up 72% of the
population of the area.
By 2006 the black proportion of the population had
decreased to just 24%.
The Latino population had risen from 21% in 1985 to
69% in 2006, as one population replaced another.
From 2004-2005, Latino demand for housing caused
prices to rise more than 40 percent in Watts and South
Central Los Angeles.
crude birthrate (CBR): the number of live births in a
single year for every 1000 people in the population.
Why did people traditionally try to have a lot kids?
1. work for them (Farm, make money)
2. take care of them when they are old
3. high infant mortality
ethnoburb: when ethnic groups voluntarily relocate
from ethnic neighborhoods or ghettos to the suburbs
Many younger individuals often do not feel the need for
the security and familiarity of ethnic neighborhoods and
decide where to live on other factors.
Girl Power
The developing world holds an overlooked resource:
millions of adolescent girls.
Often forced to leave school and start families by their
mid-teens, many fall prey to violence, disease, and
complications of childbirth.
Studies shows that keeping these girls in school and
delaying marriage benefits both them and their
communities by reducing infant mortality, increasing
family income, and slowing the spread of HIV.
Groups are looking at ways to make girls more valuable
to their families as breadwinners than as child brides.
Income
Completion of secondary school can increase a girl’s
average future earnings by as much as 18 percent.
Early Marriage
In developing nations (China expected) about one in
seven girl marries before age 15. If their daughters do
the same, many will be grandmothers before 30.
Pregnancy
Complications of pregnancy are the leading cause of
death for girls ages 15-19 worldwide. Adolescent girls
are more likely to die in childbirth.
Population Geography
World Population: over 7 billion
U.S. Population: 320 m
CA: almost 40 m
LA area: 18m
LA county: 10 m
City of LA: 4 m
Walnut: 38,000
5 major global population clusters:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What types of climates do people typically avoid?
cold lands, dry lands, wet lands, high lands
Therefore we can say people are unevenly distributed
on all scales.
Population Geography: the spatial study of
demographics
Demography or demographics: the study of
population characteristics (human statistics)
i.e. fertility, gender, health, age, nutrition, and
mortality
What influences birth rates?
1. economic development
2. availability of birth control
3. high infant mortality rate
4. government policies (China’s one child policy or
policies to encourage having children)
5. religion (Utah, Islamic countries, Philippines)
6. social customs (Son mania, age of marriage etc.)
7. demographic structure of the population (population
pyramid)
8. education of women (number 1 reason)
Fertility rate: the average number of children a woman
will have throughout her childbearing years (15 to 49)
replacement fertility: When the total fertility rate is 2.1
since some girls die or don’t have kids but a country like
the US may need fertility to be lower if immigration is
high
30
Death rate (CDR): the number of deaths in a single
year for every 1000 people in the population.
CDR is influenced by economic development and the
demographic structure (% of the population in different
age groups)
More elderly people or low levels of development
usually mean higher death rates.
Death comes in different forms geographically.
In the developed world, most people die of age-induced
degenerative conditions, such as:
• Heart disease
• Cancer (caused by modern life)
• Obesity
By contrast, contagious diseases are the leading cause
of death in underdeveloped countries.
Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across
the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of
age-related causes.
In industrialized nations, the proportion is much higher,
reaching 90%
In 2000, the United Nations estimated global maternal
mortality (death from being pregnant or giving birth) at
529,000, of which less than 1% occurred in the
developed world.
However, most of these deaths have been medically
preventable for decades, as treatments to avoid such
deaths have been well-known since the 1950s.
Birth Rate - Death Rate/10 = Natural Increase or
Annual Percentage Increase
World
MDC
LDC
Africa
BR
21
11
23
38
DR
9
10
8
15
=NI
= 1.2%
= .1%
= 1.5%
= 2.3%
Turn BR-DR into a % for example
Country
BR
DR
=NI
USA
14
8
= .6%
Mexico
25
5
=
Taiwan
10
6
=
Nigeria
43
19
=
The World’s annual natural increase rate is currently 1.2
percent.
Doubling Time: The amount of time for a given
population to double, based on the annual growth rate.
To determine doubling time, divide the growth rate as a
percentage into 70. i.e., a growth rate of 3.5 represents
a doubling time of 20 years.
Examples: Afghanistan has a current growth rate of
4.8%, representing a doubling time of approximately
14.5 years (70/4.8=14.5).
Growth Rate
Doubling Time
1%
70yrs
2%
35yrs
3%
23yrs
4%
17yrs
If the birth rate goes down the doubling time
____________
Why did people start having a lot less kids in Western
Europe, US, Japan, Taiwan?
• Birth control
• Few children die
• Retirement plans
• Women working
Population pyramids (age-sex pyramids) determine the
structure of a population
• Types of Population Pyramids
Rapid population growth has a wide base
• Slow population growth has fairly even distribution
• Negative Population growth has a narrow base
When deaths equal births the population has Zero
Population Growth.
Three basic age cohorts
<15
15-64
>64
dependency ratio: the economic impact of the young
and old on the more economically productive
members of the population
Population pyramids can be used to find the number of
economic dependents being supported in a particular
population.
Economic dependents are defined as those under 15
(children who are in full time education and therefore
unable to work) and those over 65 (those who have the
option of being retired).
Of course, in some less developed countries children
start work well before the age of 15, and in some
developed countries it is common to not start work
until 30 (like in the North European countries), and
people may work beyond the age of 65, or retire early.
Therefore, the definition provides an approximation.
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Demographic Transition Model
The demographic transition is a model of population
change when high birth and death rates are replaced by
low birth and death rates.
Stage 1
• Preindustrial
• High birth rates
• High death rates
• The population fluctuates because of famine,
disease, wars, natural disasters
• Low population growth
• High infant mortality rate
• Children economic asset (help farm)
• Children help parents in old age
• Medical care is often inadequate
• Poor sanitation
Examples: isolated areas in the world
Stage 2
• Death rates fall
• Birth rates remain high
• High population growth
Causes: New Technology introduced into society
1. Agriculture Revolution (2nd)
(fertilizer, mechanized agriculture, herbicides,
fungicides, pesticides)
2. Industrial Revolution: The developments of modern
healthcare, and medicine like antibiotics and
vaccination, drastically reduces infant mortality rates
and extends average life expectancy.
3. Medical Revolution: When advances in medicine
diffused to LDCs
• Improved sanitation
Examples: Afghanistan, or any Sub-Saharan African
country
Stage 3
• Birth rates fall
• Population increase slows
• Family planning/birth control
• People choose to have fewer children
• Urbanization
• Decrease in infant mortality
Examples: Chile, or most countries in Asia or Latin
America
Stage 4
• Postindustrial/little or no growth
• Birth rates low
• Death rates low
• Often declining population
• Education of Women/rights/enter the labor force
• Large percentage of old people
Example: Europe, USA, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan
Some countries do not enter stage four.
• Culture supporting the idea that large families are
better.
• Large amount of immigration
• The US is affluent and has a low population density
(a lot of space)
There are fluctuations of birth rates in stage four
because of:
• Economic ups and downs
• Government policies
• Immigration changes
Critics of demographic transition theory argue that the
theory does not work for non-European countries
demographic trap: some LDCs appear to be stalled in
the transitional phase (stage 2/3) of the model, with
potentially catastrophic results.
4 Stages of epidemiological transition
Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and
effects of health and disease conditions in defined
populations
1. The Age of Pestilence and Famine: Where mortality is
high and fluctuating, precluding sustained population
growth, with low and variable life expectancy,
vascillating between 20 and 40 years.
2. The Age of Receding Pandemics: Where mortality
progressively declines, with the rate of decline
accelerating as epidemic peaks decrease in frequency.
Average life expectancy increases steadily from about
30 to 50 years. Population growth is sustained and
begins to be exponential.
3. The Age of Degenerative and Man-Made Diseases:
Mortality continues to decline and eventually
approaches stability at a relatively low level. Life
expectancy rises and exceeds 50 years.
4. Age of delayed degenerative diseases: life expectancy
above 70. MDCs
Demographic or Population momentum refers to
the tendency for population growth to continue beyond
the time that replacement-level fertility has been
achieved because of a relatively high concentration of
people in the childbearing years.
Population momentum occurs towards the end of Stage
Three of the Demographic Transition.
It takes many years for the large population base of
today to work itself upward into older age groups
where deaths typically occur.
32
But note that this requires 50-60 years to happen -therefore substantial growth continues even after
replacement fertility has been attained.
Once momentum has stopped then births (additions at
the base of the pyramid) equal deaths (losses primarily
at the top of the pyramid) and growth ceases. We are
then truly in Stage Four of the Demographic Transition.
In China, the total fertility rate is 1.8 (below
replacement levels) and yet the population continues to
grow.
What happens if India were to achieve replacement
fertility instantaneously?
Even at replacement fertility, the population growth of
India would continue until the year 2060, and the
population would grow to over 1476 million.
Demographers predict that by 2030, India's population
will pass China's population and India will be the world's
most populous country with about 1.53 billion people
Why does world population continue to grow at a fast
rate even though people are having less kids?
• People are living longer/decline of death rates
• Lower infant mortality
• Demographic momentum
Malthus’s theory
The debate about population and resources originated
in the work of an English named Thomas Robert
Malthus (1766—1834), whose theory of population
relative to food supply established resources as the
critical limiting condition upon population growth.
• Population growth grows geometrically while food
production increases arithmetically
• Population would therefore grow faster than food
supply
carrying capacity: the maximum number of users that
can be sustained by a given set of natural resources.
In some places Malthus was right and others he was
wrong:
How is Malthus right?
• Population continues to rise in certain areas of the
world because
• Some people have limited access to contraception
• Medical Revolution
• Some countries are still in stage 2 of the
demographic transition with a declining death rate
In many places there is not enough food (world hunger,
undernourished)
• Failure to adopt modern agricultural techniques
•
Environmental degradation (desertification,
overgrazing, deforestation, soil erosion)
How has Malthus been wrong?
Population growth has NOT been rising in many places
• Declining birth rate
• Expanded use of contraception
• Political policies (one child)
• Education/empowerment of women
• Many countries in 4th, &/or 5th stages DTM
There is enough food
• Mechanization, use of chemicals, irrigation,
Expansion of agricultural lands
• (new technologies is too vague)
• There has also been an increase in trade: ability to
distribute food to areas of need is much greater
than during Malthus’ time
• Improvements in transportation (highways,
containerization, refrigerated trucks)
• Improvements in food preservations (refrigeration,
packing, processed food)
3 Sides to the Population Debate
1. Neo-Malthusians (Antinatalist): High fertility rate is
one of the biggest problems facing the world today
Developing countries have large numbers of children
and youth that will swell the childbearing ranks for
years to come (Demographic momentum) causing
economic, social and environmental problems.
Negative economic aspects of rapid population growth:
• Poverty (low GDP per capita)
• Unemployment
Negative Social aspects of rapid population growth:
• Population growth may outstrip a country’s ability
to provide social services to its entire population.
• Poor education
• Housing shortages (squatter settlements)
• Inadequate health care
• Crime
• War (caused by overuse/lack of resources)
• Inadequate amount of fresh water
• Inadequate sanitation
Negative environmental aspects of rapid population
growth
• Air pollution
• Global warming
• Ozone depletion
• Acid rain
• Over fishing
• Loss of habitat from Deforestation
• Loss of habitat from growth of cities
33
•
•
Erosion (major problem as farmland is overworked)
Desertification: Overused semiarid lands that
deteriorate to a desertlike condition
Government policies to address high fertility rates:
• investments in family planning or access to
contraceptives
• investments in the education of girls
• improve equality/rights of women
• investments in reproductive and child health (if
infant mortality decrease so will the natural
increase)
2. Cornucopians:
Continued progress can be met by advances in
technology. Fundamentally they believe that there is
enough matter and energy on the Earth to provide for
the estimated peak population of about 9.22 billion in
2075.
Human creativity and innovation will provide
opportunities for people to overcome the limitations of
their environment.
Ester Boserup argued that population determines
agricultural methods.
Farmers will adopt new and modern methods to keep
up with demand caused by an increasing population
A major point of her book is that "necessity is the
mother of invention". It was her belief that humanity
would always find a way and was quoted saying "The
power of ingenuity would always outmatch that of
demand.”
Cornucopians are often pronatalist: population decline
is the major problem
• the world population explosion is a thing of the
past. People should be having more children.
• falling fertility rates have caused
• aging populations
• shrinking workforces
• inadequate demand for goods and services
• intergenerational conflict
• immigration tensions(someone has to work and pay
taxes but they often bring a different culture).
• and overall economic decline
• examples: Japan and Europe
Paying for retirement is easy when the population is
growing and people don’t live long. When it isn’t, there
are three unwanted choices
1. Raise taxes of workers (middle cohort)
2. Decrease benefits
3. Raise retirement age
What government can do to raise fertility rates:
• money for having children or tax breaks
• longer maternity leaves
• subsidized (government pays) day care
• day care at places of work
• shorter work days for women or part time
• telecommuting
3. Marxist: Population is a political issue group:
governments lack the will to redistribute wealth or the
resources to reduce poverty
Human Migration
Human mobility reflects the political, economic, and
cultural connectedness between core and periphery
The gravity model of migration is a model in urban
geography derived from Newton's law of gravity, and
used to predict the degree of interaction between two
places.
Newton's law states that: "Any two bodies attract one
another with a force that is proportional to the product
of their masses and inversely proportional to the square
of the distance between them."
When used geographically, the words 'bodies' and
'masses' are replaced by 'locations' and 'importance'
respectively, where importance can be measured in
terms of population numbers, gross domestic product,
or another appropriate variables.
The gravity model of migration is therefore based upon
the idea that as the importance of one or both of the
location increases, there will also be an increase in
movement between them. The farther apart the two
locations are, however, the movement between them
will be less. This phenomenon is known as distance
decay.
Reilly's law of retail gravitation states that larger cities
will have larger spheres of influence than smaller ones,
meaning people travel farther to reach a larger city.
In general terms, migrants make their decisions to move
based on push and pull factors
Human movement often results from a perception that
conditions are better, safer, easier, or in some other
way superior in some distant place
This push and pull of regions determines the
Net migration: the gain or loss in the total population of
that area as a result of the migration.
Migration is either International (external) or Internal
and Forced or Voluntary
34
Environmental migration is a type of forced migration
caused by the degradation of land and natural
resources.
Example: Droughts in Africa and Floods in Asia
International Forced Migration
forced migration: migration against an individual’s will
Often cultural/political migration (slavery, ethnic
conflict, political instability or war)
Many of these migrants become Refugees: People who
are forced to migrate from their home country who are
unable or unwilling to return because of persecution on
account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a
particular social group, or political opinion.
Examples
1. Africa to the Americas during the period of slavery
2. Forced migration after WWII of Germans in Eastern
Europe to Germany
3. Palestinians (1948 and 1967)
4. Many of the refugees from Vietnam War (70s)
became known as the boat people
5. Yugoslavians (90s)
6. Central Africa
7. Sudan
8. Somalia
9. Iraq
10. Afghanistan
11. Syria
Internal Forced Migration
Now called Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)(often
lack effective protection)
Examples:
1. "Trail of Tears" refers to the forced migration of the
Cherokee Nation in the nineteenth century
2. In South Africa between 1960 and 1980, when
apartheid policies forced some 3.6 million blacks to
relocate to government-created homelands
3. Enclosure movement in England (promote more
efficient agriculture)
4. The Cultural Revolution in China in the 60’s
5. Africa Today
International Voluntary Migration (Economic)
guest workers: a person with temporary permission to
work in another country.
Positive aspects of emigration (leaving one’s country):
• relieves unemployment pressure
• money is sent home
• remittances are transfers of money by foreign
workers to their home countries.
Negative aspects of emigration
• brain drain (emigration of talented people)
• breaks up families
Positive aspects of immigration (arrival of new
individuals):
• take low status/low paying jobs
• contribute to the local economy by spending
Negative aspects of immigration:
• immigrants are seen as “taking” citizens jobs
• use government services (Education, health care,
receive welfare benefits)
• may resort to crime to make a living
Randomness
Elements of globalization of culture:
 uniform consumption preferences.
 enhanced communications.
 unequal access to cultural elements
Coyote: a person in Mexico that smuggles people across
the border
guest workers: a person with temporary permission to
work in another country.
Major modern migration flows:
1. Europe to North America
2. Southern Europe to South and Middle America
3. Britain and Ireland to Africa and Australia
4. Polynesians
5. India to Eastern Africa (all British colonies)
6. China to Southeast Asia
7. Eastern US westward
8. Russia eastward
9. Gypsies
10. Jews to Israel after 1948
Two major eras of voluntary migration to USA
1st major Era of immigration was from Europe during
the 1800s and early 1900s
2nd major Era of immigration was from Asia and Latin
America since WWII ended in 1945
Two waves of European Migration
First wave: European immigration was from North and
Western Europe. 1800s
Second wave: European immigration was from South
and Eastern Europe. Late 1800s early 1900s
U.S. Immigration Today
Family reunification accounts for approximately twothirds of legal immigration to the US every year.
35
The number of foreign nationals who became legal
permanent residents (LPRs) of the U.S. in 2009 as a
result of family reunification (66%) exceeded those who
became LPRs on the basis of employment skills (13%)
and for humanitarian reasons (17%)
The largest number of legal immigrants to the United
States comes from Mexico
Chain Migration: Migration of people to a specific
location because relatives or members of the same
nationality previously migrated there
• reduces level of uncertainty
• ties to family and friends at the destination
• made possible by the chain of communications and
support established by other immigrants from their
homeland
Europe Immigration Case Study
Sending regions: North and West Africa, Eastern and
Southern Europe, Turkey and Middle East.
Receiving regions: Northwest Europe except British Isles
and Scandinavia
The UK receives most of its immigrants from: former
colonies/British Commonwealth: South Asia, Caribbean
and Southern Africa
France receives most of its immigrants from its former
colonies of North and West Africa
Push factors:
• high rates of unemployment (labor surplus)
• faster growing populations (stage 2 and 3 of the
demographic transition)
• low paying jobs
Pull factors:
• labor shortage
• higher wages and industrial development
• a large % of the population is retired
• high dependency ratio
• stage 4 of the demographic transition model
Internal Voluntary Migration
1. Intraregional: within a region
In MDCs intraregional is often Suburbanization:
movement from urban areas to the less densely
populated surrounding the city
2. Interregional: region to region
High mobility rates in the United States, Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand are due to:
• A history of immigration
• High standard of living
• High value place on personal freedom
Mexican migration to Northern border is an example of
interregnal migration.
Many of them find work in Mexican border town in
what are called Maquiladora: A foreign owned export
assembly plant in Mexico.
Spatial distribution of maquiladoras in Mexico
• Near the U.S. border (the Mexican government
originally insisted that they be within 35 miles of
the US border)
• The labor used in such plants is overwhelmingly
female:
• Mexico is attractive to multinational corporations
for the following reasons:
• Proximity to US market keeps transportation costs
low
• Inexpensive labor costs in Mexico
• NAFTA (no tariffs)
• Weak environmental regulations
• Tax breaks
• Mexico’s stable government
• US shift to a tertiary economy
If so much more money can be made in the U.S. why
aren’t there more illegal immigrants from Mexico?
maquiladoras are an example of intervening
opportunity: The opportunity of employment at a closer
location may keep one from arriving at the original
destination.
FR Identify and discuss the four main waves of
interregional migration within the United States over
the last two centuries.
Four main waves of interregional migration within the
United States over the last two centuries:
1. Eastern seaboard to the interior of the country
(began mid 1800s): Land ownership
2. Rural-to-urban (began mid 1800s): Associated with
industrialization
3. Rural South to cities in the South, North, and West
(mostly African Americans, early 1940s to the 70s):
Escape Jim Crow (racist) laws and economic opportunity
This came after the movement of 1.75 million African
Americans out of the Southern U.S. to the North and
Midwest and West from the early 1900’s -1930.
4. Manufacturing Belt (Frostbelt/Rustbelt) to Sunbelt
(After WWII to present):
In addition to the obvious attraction of warmer
climates, migration to southern states is linked to the
regional restructuring of the economy.
Restructuring of economy is moving from Agriculture to
Manufacturing or Manufacturing to a service based
economy.
36
Rather than investing in upgrading the aged urban
industrial areas of the Northeast and Midwest, capital
was invested in Sunbelt locations: Cheaper land and
labor costs (increased profits)
A disproportionate share of cutting-edge industries such
as electronics, computers, and communications
technology have thrived in the Sunbelt.
The Sunbelt has benefited from deindustrialization.
Also hard hit were states in the Great Plains, where the
loss in agricultural jobs and failure to attract cuttingedge industries and services has led to depopulation of
many rural areas.
Less primary sector jobs.
Within the US the pattern of net migration rates shows
large population gains in the Sunbelt, with moderate
gains in northern New England, and the Pacific
northwestern states.
Florida redistributes migrants from the North to other
states in the South in much the same way that
California traditionally has redistributed migrants from
the Northeast and Midwest to other western states.
Today’s US migration patterns reflect:
• the changing geography of economic opportunity in
the nation
• the location of states relative to one another
(nearby states tend to exchange migrants)
• historical patterns of movement (i.e. longtime
linkages between Florida and New York and
between California and Texas)
• the public’s perceptions about the attractiveness of
places (including intangibles like an agreeable
climate, being near family and friends)
In LDCs migration often leads to
over-urbanization: condition in which cities grow more
rapidly than the jobs and housing they can sustain
squatter settlements: self-made structures built on
land that is neither owned nor rented by its occupants
In LDCs interregional migration is often from rural areas
to squatter settlements outside large urban areas.
There is a near total absence of formal sanitation,
electricity, or education (basic infrastructure). Even if
these resources are present, they are likely to be
disorganized, or inferior.
Shanty towns also tend to lack policing, medical
services, and firefighting.
Fires are a particular danger for shanty towns because
of the close proximity of buildings and flammability of
materials used in construction.
In LDCs migration often leads to
over-urbanization: condition in which cities grow more
rapidly than the jobs and housing they can sustain
Faced with the growth of these slums, the first response
of many governments has been to eradicate them.
Slum eradication usually results in the quick
construction of another slum in another part in the city
Why would a person choose to move to a squatter
settlement knowing there aren’t going to be any
services available and the sanitation conditions are
going to be horrible?
• lack of opportunity in rural areas
Many of these immigrants find jobs in the Informal
sector: economic activities that take place beyond
official record
not regulated or taxed by the government includes
many economic activities (yard sales on a massive scale)
Many people do not plan on staying
Return migration: the voluntary move of a group back
to their country or region of birth.
Reasons for return migration:
• the new location was not as it had been perceived
• inability to adjust to a new culture or climate
• inability to establish themselves (find employment)
• return to family
• saved sufficient money
• resolution of conflicts at home
• end of environmental crisis (drought)
Examples:
• 20% of domestic moves in the U.S. are back to the
state of birth
• about 40% of immigrants eventually leave Canada
• about 25% of immigrants eventually leave Australia
• 7 percent of African Americans in Los Angeles
County, California, moved away between 1985 and
1990, including many who went to the American
South.
Ravensteins “Laws of Migration”
1. Most is short distance.
2. Longer-distance favors big cities.
3. Most international migrants are young adults
4. Globally migration is rural to urban (The most
prominent type of intraregional migration in the world)
(not in MDCs)
Explain Wilbur Zelinky’s migration transition theory
(specifically mention the stages)? In textbook
37
Primary Activities and Agricultural Geography
FR Topics
FR Topics: Shifting Cultivation, 3 Ag. Revolutions, Green
Revolution, Biotechnology, Monoculture, Industrial Ag.,
Poultry, Agriculture and the Environment, Organic Ag. ,
Agriculture and Politics, Von Thunen, Dairy Farming
livestock for sustenance and for profit.
Agriculture: a science, an art, and a business directed at
the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for
sustenance and for profit.
3 stages of obtaining food
1. Hunting and gathering
2. Subsistence Agriculture: food produced for direct
consumption of the growers and families (periphery)
3. commercial agriculture: a system in which farmers
produce crops and animals primarily for sale has
dominated the twentieth century (core)
Subsistence Agriculture usually follow one of three
dominant forms:
1. shifting cultivation
2. intensive subsistence agriculture
3. pastoralism
Explain how shifting cultivation works, where it has
historically taken place, and discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of its use.
1. Shifting cultivation: a system in which farmers aim
to maintain soil fertility by rotating the fields within
which cultivation occurs
This creates a Swidden: land that is cleared using the
slash-and-burn process and is ready for cultivation.
Step 1: Cut vegetation
Step 2: Burn vegetation
Step 3: Nutrients in vegetation released
Step 4: Plant crops in naturally fertilized field
Step 5: Repeat planting until field yields diminishing
returns
Step 6: Abandon field
Step 7: Return to field in 20 years when regeneration
has occurred
Intertillage: the practice of mixing different seeds and
seedlings in the same swidden
Benefits of intertillage:
• Spreading out food production over the growing
season
•
Reducing disease and pest loss
•
Protection from loss of soil moisture
•
Erosion control
Shifting cultivation works best with low population
densities
Shifting cultivation is globally distributed in the tropics
and subtropics, especially in the rainforests of :
 Central and West Africa
 the Amazon in South America
 much of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Burma, Malaysia,
and Indonesia)
Too much rain will leach away the minerals below the
level roots can reach; hence, tropical forests grow on
surprisingly poor soils (lack nutrients).
These forests depend for their continuance on the
fragile but highly active biological communities that
constantly recycle nutrients and energy from decaying
life forms in the topmost layer of the soil.
Advantages of shifting cultivation:
 Feeds population (more productive than hunting
and gathering)
 Low cost
 Minimal damage to environment
 Disadvantages of shifting cultivation:
 Requires a lot of land
 Can’t feed a large population
 Soil loses fertility
 Low crop yields
 Negative impact on the environment (If too large of
a population density)
Shifting cultivation has been replaced with more
intensive forms of agriculture because of population
growth and the greater need for increased outputs per
acre
The second dominant form of subsistence activity is
2. intensive subsistence agriculture: a lot of human
labor with the help of natural fertilizer on small parcels
of land.
The crops that dominate intensive subsistence
agriculture are rice and other grains.
Can support large rural populations.
Intensive subsistence often has a Gender Division of
Labor
Men clear away vegetation, cut down trees, and burn
stumps.
Women sow seeds and harvest the crops.
What is pastoralism? Where is this practiced today?
Why in these areas?
Although not obviously a form of agricultural
production, pastoralism is a third, dominant form of
subsistence activity associated with a traditional way of
life and agricultural practice.
3. pastoralism: the breeding and herding of animals for
food (milk), shelter, and clothing.
38
Practiced in cold and dry climates where subsistence
agriculture is impracticable:
 deserts
 steppes (lightly wooded, grassy plains)
 savannas (grasslands)

Parts of North Africa and the savannas of Central
and Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Central
Asia.
pastoralism can be either sedentary (pastoralists live in
settlements and herd animals in nearby pastures)
or nomadic (they wander with their herds over long
distances, never settling in any one place for very long).
Pastoralists generally graze cattle, sheep, goats, and
camels, although reindeer are herded in parts of
Eurasia.
Transhumance: the movement of herds according to
seasonal rhythms: warmer, lowland areas in the winter,
and cooler, highland areas in the summer
Extensive Agriculture: Large-area farms or ranches with
low inputs of labor per acre and low output per acre.
Intensive Agriculture: Small-area farms and ranches
with high inputs of labor per acre and high output per
acre.
 plantation agriculture
 mixed crop/ livestock systems
 market gardening
 horticulture
 factory farms
Agricultural practices have transformed geography and
society as the global community has moved from
predominantly subsistence to predominantly capitalintensive, market-oriented practices.
The First Agricultural Revolution (Neolithic)
 over 10,000 years ago
 farming replaced hunting and gathering
 invented seed agriculture and the use of
domesticated animals
 population increased
 settlements formed
Southwest Asia (Mesopotamia) also called The Fertile
Crescent (1st place)
 Ethiopia
 Mesoamerica



South America (Peru)
Southeast Asia
China
The Columbian Exchange has been one of the most
significant events in the history of world ecology,
agriculture, and culture.
The term is used to describe the enormous widespread
exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations,
communicable diseases, and ideas between the Eastern
and Western hemispheres that occurred after 1492.
(before 2nd ag revolution)
The Second Agricultural Revolution (or British
Agricultural Revolution): a period of development in
Britain between the 17th century and the end of the
19th century, which saw a huge increase in agricultural
productivity and net output. (diffused to North
America by European colonists)
This in turn supported unprecedented population
growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the
workforce, and thereby helped drive the Industrial
Revolution with urbanization.
The primary causes were:
 early mechanization
 selective breeding
 four field crop rotation

The enclosure movement was the process
which was used to end some traditional rights, such as
mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on land
which is owned by someone else (noble/king)
Land was fenced (enclosed) and deeded to one or more
owners. The sheep were then moved from one field to
the next
The process of enclosure has sometimes been
accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed.
20th Century Agriculture or maybe 3rd Ag. Rev.(North
America):
Continued decline in the number of people
employed in farming
Many family farms are consolidated by corporations.
A family farm is a farm owned and operated by a family,
and passed down from generation to generation. The
family farm is viewed as a lifestyle to be preserved for
tradition's sake.
3 phases of 3rd Agricultural Rev (20th century Ag)
1. Mechanization (significant amount): the replacement
of human farm labor with larger, more powerful, and
more efficient machines.
39
2. Food manufacturing: agriculture is linked to the
processing, canning, refining, packing, packaging, and so
on—occurring off the farm and before the products
reach the market
3. Chemical farming: the application of artificial
(synthetic) fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and
pesticides to crops to increase yields.
The Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium
nitrate into artificial or synthetic fertilizers represented
a major breakthrough and allowed crop yields to
overcome previous constraints.
Some have argued they have been the single most
important factor in avoiding the Malthusian
catastrophe.
This revolution diffused to other parts of the world in an
effort to improve the diets of people in Asia and Mexico
(shifting from subsistence or collective to commercial
farming)
IR8 and the Philippines
In 1960, the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines with Ford and Rockefeller Foundations
established IRRI (International Rice Research Institute).
Annual rice production in the Philippines increased from
3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades.
But the heavy pesticide use reduced the number of fish
and frog species found in rice paddies.
This diffusion is called the Green Revolution
(globalization of industrial agriculture, 1960s-80s)
based on the development of:
1. Mechanization
2. Artificial fertilizers
3. Irrigation
4. Pesticides and herbicides
5. Higher-yield varieties (HYV) of plants
Green Revolution Successes:
 Yields of some crops such as rice and wheat have
increased greatly
 Shorter growing seasons means an extra crop may
be grown each year
 HYV (High Yield Varieties) plants are often shorter,
and so can withstand strong winds and monsoon
without severe damage
 Farmers who can afford new seeds and
mechanisation have become richer
 Mechanisation improves quality of life of farmers by
reducing backbreaking tasks

Land holdings have been enlarged and ‘squared off’,
making them easier to farm
 Commercialisation of farming puts peasants in
touch with the outside world through trading
contracts and access to the media
 Transport linkages improve to cope with increased
commercial production
 Millions of people fewer than before suffer from
starvation
Conclusion: An economic success for richer farmers. Has
increased yields and reduced hunger
In Asia, rice production grew 66% between 1965 and
1985.
India became self-sufficient in wheat production by the
1980s.
regions impacted with increased crop yields.
Latin America: Mexico, Central America, S. America
South Asia:
India
S. East Asia:
Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines
East Asia:
China
Green Revolution Failures:
 HYV seeds are expensive, so only rich farmers can
afford them
 HYV seeds often need expensive fertilisers to thrive
 Farmers and consumers do not like the taste of the
new HYV seeds as much as traditional types
 Some HYV seeds cannot tolerate difficult
environmental conditions such as drought or floods
 Smaller peasant farmers who cannot afford the HYV
seeds, fertiliser or machinery have become poorer
Unemployed rural labourers who have been replaced by
machines migrate to the cities in search of work,
creating social problems
 Some farmers cannot repay the money borrowed to
buy seeds or machinery
 We may lose the genetic stock of the traditional
types of rice as they are replaced by HYV’s
 the Green Revolution’s focus on rice, corn, and
wheat had little impact on Africa.
 African agriculture is based on different kinds of
crops, and soil fertility is considerably lower so the
potential return on the investment is also lower.
Conclusion:
Has increased the gap between rich and poor farmers.
Has forced the poor off the land and into cities
4th Agriculture Revolution????? (knox)
Biotechnology:
Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods produced
from genetically modified organisms (GMO) that have
had their DNA altered through genetic engineering (GE)
40
Herbicide-tolerant GMO Crops
 allows the plants to tolerate exposure to herbicides.
 Roundup Ready seeds allow the farmer to grow a
crop that can be sprayed to control weeds without
harming the resistant crop.
With the increasing use of herbicide-tolerant crops,
comes an increase in the use of herbicide sprays.
In some areas resistant weeds have developed, causing
farmers to switch to other herbicides.
Insect-resistant GMO Crops
Have a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt), which produces a toxin specific to
insects. These crops protect plants from damage by
insects (63% of US cotton acreage)
In the case of Bt corn, the donor organism is a naturally
occurring soil bacterium, and the gene produces a
protein that kills in particular, the European corn borer.
Corn produced through biotechnology is being used in
many familiar foods, including corn meal, tortilla chips,
and corn syrup, which is used as a sweetener in many
foods such as soft drinks and baked goods.
Argument for applying biotechnology to agriculture:
 Can increase agricultural production
 Lowers the price of food
Criticism
perceived safety issues:
could produce new toxic substances (toxins) or
allergens
 ecological concerns,
 irreversibility of contamination
GM plants produce seeds and pollen that can be very
fine and travel large distances, transported by insects
and wind.
genes could possibly transfer from one species to
another
The Grocery Manufacturers of America estimate that
75% of all processed foods in the U.S. contain a GM
ingredient. In particular, Bt corn, which produces the
pesticide within the plant itself, is widely grown.
Another controversial issue is the patent protection
given to companies that develop new types of seed
using genetic engineering. Since companies have
intellectual ownership of their seeds, they have the
power to dictate terms and conditions of their patented
product.
terminator seeds are from GMO crops that make sterile
seeds. This guarantees annual purchases.
Terminator seeds are currently under strong
international opposition and face continual efforts of
global bans.
Other Agricultural Issues
Monoculture is the agricultural practice of growing the
same crop over a wide area year after year on the same
land.
Monocropping
is most frequently practiced in industrialized countries’;
maize (corn), soybeans and wheat are three common
crops often grown using monocropping techniques. It is
increasingly being done in developing countries as
genetically modified organisms (GMO) and industrial
farming are displacing native crops and local farmers.
Take home FR
While economically a very efficient system, allowing for
specialization in equipment and crop production,
monocropping is also controversial, as it often leads to
depletion of the nutrients of the soil and problems with
weeds and pesticides. These in turn lead to the
monocropping system being dependent on pesticides
and artificial fertilizers. It also leaves the crop more
susceptible to disease as genetic similarity between
plants makes them equally vulnerable. An example of
this would be the potato famine of Ireland in 1845–
1849.
Monocropping is commonly seen as the solution to one
problem, whether the problem is economic,
environmental or political, but simultaneously hosts
many other problems. For example, in order to help
reduce dependence on fossil fuels the US government is
subsidizing tons of farmers to grow corn and soybeans
in order to supply us with ethanol.
The irony is that the production of bio-fuels is incredibly
oil-intensive. Mono-cropping is incredibly chemical and
energy intensive as studies have shown that the
amount of energy used to produce one unit of bio-fuel
is larger than the amount of energy that it produces.
Also, the amount of pesticides and fertilizers needed to
supply the thousands of acres in the US and abroad are
seeping into the soil, affecting groundwater and the
environment.
Soil depletion is also a negative effect of monocropping. Because farmers are no longer rotating their
crops and replenishing the soil of essential nutrients,
the soil becomes dry and begins to erode. As the soil
becomes arid and useless, the need for more land
41
becomes an issue which just leads to the destruction of
even more land.
Another environmental impact of mono-cropping is
deforestation. In the US and abroad large plots of land
are being cleared at incredible rates to make more
room for all of the acres of corn, soybeans, cabbage,
coffee, palm trees and all the other cash crops, that
have become the staples of so many economies. Not
only does this deforestation affect the health of the soil,
but the trees release all of their stored carbon when
they’re cut down. Also this lack of trees has an effect on
water quality and flooding. The deterioration of the soil
that affects water quality in turn affects the animals
that live off of that water. Also, the lack of forests
makes flooding a bigger issue.
Another side effect of mono-cropping is the
displacement of indigenous peoples. When indigenous
groups are forced off of their land in order to make
room for a palm oil plantation, for example, the people
then have to settle in unfamiliar territory. This new
environment is usually unsuitable for their lifestyles.
Indigenous groups run the risk of overgrazing the land
by having animals in unsuitable conditions.
Also the concentration of animals can pollute
groundwater and create toxic runoff. While many
people think that mono-crops are beneficial for the
government, small villages and are the solution to our
dependence on fossil fuels, it is important to think
about all of the negative environmental side-effects.
Another side effect of mono-cropping is the
displacement of indigenous peoples. When indigenous
groups are forced off of their land in order to make
room for a palm oil plantation, for example, the people
then have to settle in unfamiliar territory. This new
environment is usually unsuitable for their lifestyles.
Indigenous groups run the risk of overgrazing the land
by having animals in unsuitable conditions.
Also the concentration of animals can pollute
groundwater and create toxic runoff. While many
people think that mono-crops are beneficial for the
government, small villages and are the solution to our
dependence on fossil fuels, it is important to think
about all of the negative environmental side-effects.
Food irradiation
A food safety technology designed to eliminate diseasecausing germs from foods. Treating food with ionizing
radiation can kill bacteria and parasites that would
otherwise cause foodborne disease.
Presently over 40 countries have approved applications
to irradiate approximately 40 different foods.
These include such items as fruits, vegetables, spices,
grains, seafood, meat and poultry. Although this
amount represents only a fraction of the food
consumed annually, it is constantly growing.
Studies by the US Center for Disease Control estimate
that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million
illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in
the United States each year.
• The FAO has estimated that about 25% of all
worldwide food production is lost after harvesting
to insects, bacteria and spoilage.
•
Economic losses due to insects and microbes have
been estimated to fall between $5 and $17 billion
yearly in the US alone.
• Food irradiation can help reduce these losses and
can also reduce our dependence on chemical
pesticides, some of which are extremely harmful to
the environment.
Criticism and concerns about food irradiation
Concerns have been expressed by public interest groups
and public health experts that irradiation, might
disguise or otherwise divert attention away from poor
working conditions, sanitation, and poor food-handling
procedures that lead to contamination in the first place
Food irradiation might
 be used to mask spoiled food
 discourage strict adherence to Good Manufacturing
Practices
 impair the flavor
 not destroy bacterial toxins already present
 cause chemical changes which are harmful to the
consumer
 and, on top of all, is unnecessary in today's food
system.
Food irradiation is a way to try to come in and clean up
problems that are created in the middle of the food
production chain. It's a disincentive to clean up the
problems at the source.
Norman Ernest Borlaug
(March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an
American agronomist and humanitarian, who has been
deemed the father of the Green Revolution.
He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico,
where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, diseaseresistant wheat varieties.
During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the
introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined
with modern agricultural production techniques to
42
Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became
a net exporter of wheat by 1963.
Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in
Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security
in those nations. These collective increases in yield have
been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often
credited with saving over a billion people worldwide
from starvation.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in
recognition of his contributions to world peace through
increasing food supply.
Later in his life, he helped apply these methods of
increasing food production to Asia and Africa.
Criticisms and his view of critics
Borlaug's work has been criticized for bringing largescale monoculture, input-intensive farming techniques
to countries that had previously relied on subsistence
farming.
These farming techniques reap large profits for U.S.
agribusiness and agrochemical corporations such as
Monsanto Company and have been criticized for
widening social inequality in the countries owing to
uneven food distribution while forcing a capitalist
agenda of U.S. corporations onto countries that had
undergone land reform.
Other concerns of his critics and critics of biotechnology
in general include:
construction of roads in populated third-world areas
could lead to the destruction of wilderness;
 the inability of crops to fulfill all nutritional
requirements;
 the decreased biodiversity from planting a small
number of varieties;
 the environmental and economic effects of
inorganic fertilizer and pesticides;
 the amount of herbicide sprayed on fields of
herbicide-resistant crops.
Large scale farming is often called Agribusiness,
corporate farming, factory farming, and/or
industrialized agriculture.
Industrialized agriculture: the role of the farm is moved
from being the centerpiece of agricultural production
into being only one part of a system of production,
storage, processing, distribution, marketing, and
retailing of foods.
Crops and livestock are standardized so that growing
time is minimized, but yields and therefore profits are
maximized.

The standard size allows for mechanization of
processing at large scale (mass production) using
assembly line concepts (reducing labor as well).
The methods include
 innovation in machinery and farming methods
 genetic technology
 patent protection to genetic information
 global trade
 economies of scale
Economies of scale: The decrease in unit cost of a
product or service resulting from large-scale operations,
as in mass production.
Industrialized agriculture is widespread in developed
nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of
the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available
in supermarkets are produced using these methods of
industrial agriculture.
A feedlot is a type of animal feeding operation which is
used in factory farming for finishing livestock,
notably beef cattle, prior to slaughter. Large beef
feedlots are called concentrated animal feeding
operations (CAFOs) in the United States. They may
contain thousands of animals in an array of pens.
Most feedlots require some type of governmental
permit and must have plans in place to deal with the
large amount of waste that is generated.
Prior to entering a feedlot, cattle spend most of their
life grazing on rangeland.
Once cattle obtain an entry-level weight, about 650
pounds, they are transferred to a feedlot to be fed a
specialized diet which consists of corn byproducts
(derived from ethanol production).
The animal may gain an additional 400 pounds during
its 3–4 months in the feedlot. Once cattle are fattened
up to their finished weight, the fed cattle are
transported to a slaughterhouse.
Antibiotics are used to promote growth and treat sick
cattle, yet the cattle would not get sick if they were not
fed a corn-based diet that subjects them to diseases
caused by the malfunctioning of their rumen
The problem with giving livestock antibiotics is bacteria
may become resistant, creating Superbugs. (antibiotic
resistant organisms)
In the core economies the transnational corporation is
the dominant player in the food production process.
Positive aspect of agribusiness:_____________
Negative aspect of agribusiness:____________
43
Case Study: Poultry
Many people believe that the chicken production
process is really manufacturing
The one-story broiler houses are essentially factories
that use birds as machines to convert raw materials of
corn and soybeans into a finished product of meat for
human consumption.
Characteristic of the present economic organization of
poultry production in the U.S.
Large scale operations (as seen in the number of birds
per farm)
Specialized farms (they raise poultry only)
Features of the present geographic distribution of
poultry production in the U.S.
 U.S. production is clustered in the American South
 Proximity to markets (East Coast)
 Proximity to transportation corridors
 Regional concentration in low wage areas
 Attracts immigrants
 Factors that have increased the demand for poultry.
 Population increase
 Health benefits
 Falling prices with increases in supply
Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture: farming methods that
preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize
pollution of the soil, groundwater, and streams that
drain the land.
For example: Minimal tillage is a sustainable agriculture
practice. A new crop is knifed into the soil over the
stubble of the previous season. The stubble prevents
wind erosion during the fallow season
Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on
crop rotation, manure, compost, biological pest control,
and mechanical, excluding or strictly limiting the use of
synthetic fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, and
genetically modified organisms.
Organic agriculture has become a 28 billion-dollar
industry in the U.S.
Organic livestock are fed 100 percent organic feed and
cannot be given antibiotics or growth hormones.
Factors contributing to the increase in the number of
organic farms.
Health issues
Consumers wary of digesting insecticides, herbicides,
fertilizers, (chemicals)
Consumers wary of eating genetically modified
organisms (GMOs)
antibiotics used on livestock
Environmental issues

Chemicals (insecticides, herbicides) are bad for the
environment
 GMOs may contaminate other fields
 fertilizers can create dead zones in bodies of water
 Economic issues
 Small farms competing with large-scale farms
(agribusiness/ The economies of scale) are forced to
shift to specialty food for niche markets that bring
higher prices and greater profitability, e.g.,
producing higher-priced, higher-quality organic
products
 Population of the U.S. is increasing in wealth and is
better able to afford (and willing to pay} higher
prices for organic products.
 Households have declined in size and have more
disposable income to spend on higher-quality
(organic) food rather than lower-quality
(nonorganic) food.
Negative Aspect of Organic
farming_______________________________
One study from the Danish Environmental Protection
Agency found that, area-for-area, organic farms of
potatoes, sugar beet and seed grass produce as little as
half the output of conventional farming.
Arguments against organic food
A number of critics contest the notion that organic
agricultural systems are more friendly to the
environment and more sustainable than high-yielding
farming systems. Among these critics are Norman
Borlaug, father of the "green revolution," Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, who asserts that organic farming
practices can at most feed 4 billion people, after
expanding cropland dramatically and destroying
ecosystems in the process.
Agriculture and Politics
A subsidy is a form of financial assistance paid to a
business. Most subsidies are made by the government
to producers in an industry to prevent the decline of
that industry (e.g., as a result of continuous
unprofitable operations) or an increase in the prices of
its products .
The U.S. Agricultural Department is required by law
(various U.S. farm bills which are passed every few
years) to subsidize over two dozen commodities for an
average of $20 billion/year.
The beneficiaries of the subsidies have changed as
agriculture in the United States has changed.
44
In the 1930s, about 25% of the country's population
resided on the nation's 6,000,000 small farms. By 1997,
157,000 large farms accounted for 72% of farm sales,
with only 2% of the U.S. population residing on farms.
The subsidy programs give farmers extra money for
their crops, as well as guarantees a price floor. For
instance for every bushel of wheat sold farmers are paid
an extra 52 cents and guaranteed a price of $3.86. If the
price of wheat was $3.80 farmers would get an extra 58
cents per bushel (52 cents plus the $0.06 price
difference).
Government policy
Federal tax laws also provide incentives for biofuels.
Under current law, blenders can receive tax credits
equal to 51 cents per gallon of ethanol blended with
gasoline.
This makes ethanol more economical to produce, as
part of that credit is, in effect, passed back from
blenders to ethanol producers.
Anticipated impact of growth in ethanol production
The explosive growth of U.S. ethanol production is
being felt by nearly every aspect of the field crops
sector—domestic demand, exports, prices, and the
allocation of acreage among crops —as well as the
livestock sector, farm income, government payments,
and food prices.
Positive aspects of government involvement
1. food prices are kept affordable
2. farming remains profitable
3. the country does not become dependent on
imported food
Negative aspects of agricultural subsidies:
1. distorts the market value of the agricultural products
(the real cost of food may be quite high )
2. higher taxes
3. overproduction
4. dumping (donating or selling at a below market value
price) of surplus food on foreign countries which may:
Lower the local price driving farmers out of business.
5. Subsidies can be regarded as a form of protectionism
or trade barrier by making domestic goods and services
artificially competitive against imports.
Discuss negative impact of agriculture on the
environment.
In the past century, agriculture has been characterized
by enhanced productivity, the replacement of human
labor by synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, selective
breeding, and mechanization.
The recent history of agriculture has been closely tied
with a range of political issues including water pollution,
biofuels, genetically modified organisms, tariffs, and
farm subsidies. In recent years, there has been a
backlash against the external environmental effects of
mechanized agriculture, and increasing support for the
organic movement and sustainable agriculture.
The Impact of Agriculture on the Environment
 soil erosion
 desertification
 deforestation
 elimination of some plant and animal species
 soil and water pollution (herbicides, pesticides, and
fertilizers)
Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals:
environmental stewardship, farm profitability, and
prosperous farming communities.
Practices that can cause long-term damage to soil
include excessive tillage (leading to erosion) and
irrigation without adequate drainage (leading to
salinization).
Von Thunen’s Agricultural Model
A land use model
used to explain the importance of proximity to the
market in the choice of crops on commercial farms
(this created a concentric pattern: circles sharing the
same centers)
Von Thunen believed farmers compare two costs in
deciding what to grow: transportation costs versus rent
He defined rent as the difference between revenues
received and costs paid — in other words, the profit
earned from the land.
Because farmers must pay to transport their produce to
the market, and these costs are directly proportional to
distance, the profit for each product declines as a
straight line with increasing distance from the market
The decline in profit with increasing distance from the
market is an example of distance decay.
Von Thunen's model made several simplifying
assumptions.
all the farmers in a certain area would send their
produce to one market town
an evenly flat plain surrounded the market town
the fertility of the soil and the climate were the same
everywhere on that plain
the cost of transport was the same in every direction
from the market town, and directly proportional to
distance.
Ring one
45

Intensive farming (fruits, vegetables, and dairying
closest to the city)
What is intensive agriculture?
high inputs (labor, fertilizer, pesticides, machinery)
makes a high cost so only a higher priced goods can turn
a profit (strawberries for example)
Why is intensive farming used in the inner ring?
 Perishable products (needs to get to the market
quickly)
 Higher land value so a higher value commodity
must be produced
 High transportation costs could prevent a profit
2nd Ring
timber and firewood
 Fuel and building materials for industrialization
 Wood is heavy and expensive to transport if farther
away from the market
3rd Ring
 Extensive field crops
 Grains
 Less profit per acre
 However:
 Cheaper to transport
 Can locate further from the city (less perishable) on
less expensive land
th
4 ring
 Ranching
 Animal raising
 Can be self transported
For example:
On California’s poultry farms site factors are not as
important as on other farms because chickens can be
raised indoors on cheap land with poor soils.
The most ideal bioclimatic zone for wheat would be the
Ohio River Valley and the great prairies of Iowa, Illinois,
and Indiana, however, wheat is grown on the high
plains farther west in the arid region. Wheat is grown
there not because it is the best place to grow it, but
because it is the crop that will yield a profit there while
other crops will not.
Discuss two factors that explain why agriculture landuse patterns today differ from those developed by Von
Thunen’s model of 1826.
What is this question asking?
The rings often do not apply to the modern world
Can grow crops further is zero points. The rings are
bigger is still von Thunen
Better technology is too vague zero points.
Examples of how the rings are not relevant today:
Forest no longer is near the city
Refrigeration, preservation, canning and much faster
transportation allows perishable products to be shipped
from beyond the inner ring
trucks and airplanes allows perishable food to get to the
market faster so it doesn’t have to grow near city
anymore which allows it to be produced in an outer
ring.
With Pasteurization milk is often transported from
beyond the inner ring
Can import vegetables and dairy products from other
countries
 Flowers grown in South American
 European cheese sold in grocery stores
 Berries flown in from Central America
 Grapes from Chile
Political influences make certain areas artificially
profitable through subsidies.
cows in S. California (tax breaks on ag land)
Rice in CA (subsidized water)
Milk sheds: The compact dairy farms that surround
cities.
Factors contributing to the steady decline in the
number of dairy farms.
Factor: Increased production of milk
Explanations
 Cows produce higher yields, meaning fewer cows
are needed to meet the demand for milk;
 Mechanization/technological changes in the milking
process have enabled farmers to increase the size of
their dairy herds (so there are less).
 Development of agribusiness, factory farms,
industrialization of agriculture.
Factor: Displacement by urbanization
Explanation
Dairy farmers close to cities where dairy farms
traditionally have been located (milk shed) have been
displaced by urbanization, leading to a decline in the
number of dairy farms overall.
Agriculture and the California Economy
California leads the nation in value of agricultural
products, yield of products produced ($44 billion),
multiplier effect: an increase in some economic activity
starts a chain reaction that generates more activity than
the original increase.
Agricultural economists have worked out quite different
multipliers for crop agriculture and livestock agriculture;
the two average out to about 2.7.
46
If this ratio is applied to the $32 billion agricultural
production, it could then be said that the monetary
impact of California agriculture is $86.4 billion.
Two concerns with Agriculture
1. loss of prime agricultural land to urban populations
More than 12% of original cropland has been converted
to urban uses in California’s Central Valley.
2. mechanization displacing labor workers (brings
social, economic and educational impacts)
On one side are growers and agricultural researchers
whose aim is to increase production while lowering
costs.
What is probably the most important factor that
determines what type of agriculture a regions is
involved in?
Economic Geography: Manufacturing
What Geographers do besides teach:
Work for the Government:
• Urban Planning. Planners conduct studies of local
economic, social, and physical patterns to help plan
(manage growth) the community’s future
Work in the private sector to find the best locations for
• new shopping centers
• supermarket chains, department stores, and other
retailers to determine the potential market for new
stores.
• Distributors to find ways to minimize transportation
costs
• Manufacturers to identify new sources of raw
materials and markets.
The chapter deals with the secondary sector:
Manufacturing (construction) activities that transform
raw materials into more usable forms. They add value
by making wheat into flour, copper ore into wire, and
silicon into computer chips, and by assembling
sophisticated components into computers, airplanes,
and cars.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the distribution of
industry was dispersed.
The world pattern of manufacturing is quite different to
the pattern of agriculture.
Manufacturing is concentrated in the northern
hemisphere.
Industrial Location
Cost minimization: industrial location strategy which
seeks to minimize all input and distribution costs
Factors in locating an industry are generally divided
into two categories:
situations and site.
1. site: the physical attributes of a location: its terrain,
its soil, vegetation, and water sources, for example.
site factors relate to the cost of doing business at a
particular place because of the characteristics of the
place.
In economics they are called the factors of production:
The land, labor, and capital – that are needed to
produce goods and services.
In geography we call them site factors:
Land (Rent)
• land costs
• energy costs
• amenities
Labor
• skilled (higher paid) vs. low-cost labor
Capital resources that can be used to make more, like
money or tools
key features of capital are the availability of money for
lending, the level of infrastructure, the availability and
use of tools, machines, and technologies
The textile industry is most dependent on low-cost
labor (site factor). Clothes are light and not fragile so
transportation costs are cheap.
Therefore textile production is most likely to be located
in LDCs.
The location of a maquiladora plant is a good example
of the importance of site factors. (the distance to US
market is short so transportation costs are not
significant but the cheap labor is the deciding factor of
its location)
2. situation: the location of a place relative to other
places and human activities.
Situation costs are critical to a firm which wishes to
minimize transport costs to the plant and products from
the plant.
the integration of shipping, railroad, and highway
systems through containerization has drastically
decreased the cost of transportation
Often called intermodal containerization.
When transportation costs are significant companies
have to decide to produce:
 Near Inputs
 Near markets
 or in between
47
1. Location near inputs - minimize transport costs of
raw materials to the plant
bulk-reducing industries- copper, steel historically
A copper concentration mill tends to locate near a
copper mine because it is a bulk-reducing industry.
Copper concentration is a bulk-reducing industry,
because the final product has a much higher value per
weight.
2. Location near markets - minimize transport costs of
products from the plant to consumers including:
 bulk-gaining industries (soda and beer bottling)
 single market products (auto parts)
 perishable goods (bread, milk, newspaper)
Since 1980, new U.S. automobile assembly plants have
been built in the Midwest to minimize national
distribution costs.
Producers of automobiles select locations primarily
because of access to markets.
3. Location near break-of-bulk points (in between inputs
and market): port location (steel today, oil refineries).
A company which uses more than one mode of
transport will often locate near break-of-bulk points.
Heavy, light, and footloose industries
• Heavy industry, which are those manufacturing
industries handling heavy materials such as iron and
steel, and which traditionally employ very few
females.
• light industries is much more dispersed around the
world. Light industries are manufacturing industries
where the materials handled are light in weight,
such as books, computers, toothpaste and
television sets.
• A footloose industry is able to locate almost
anywhere because markets, raw materials and
transport influence only a small proportion of its
total cost.
When deciding where to locate a factory:
• If the decision is mostly based on the transportation
cost (should it be located near the raw materials or
the market) then it is a situation factor.
• If the decision is mostly a based on the cost of
producing the product (labor costs) it is a site
factor.
• Alfred Weber
The German economic geographer Alfred Weber
(1868—1958) did for the secondary industries what von
Thünen had done for agriculture: he developed a model
for the location of manufacturing establishments.
Weber made five controlling assumptions:
(1) An area is completely uniform physically, politically,
culturally, and technologically. This is known as the
uniform, or isotropic, plain assumption.
(2) Manufacturing involves a single product to be
shipped to a single market whose location is known.
(3) Inputs involve raw materials from more than one
known source location.
(4) Labor is infinitely available but immobile in location.
(5) Transportation routes are not fixed but connect
origin and destination by the shortest path; and
transport costs directly reflect the weight of items
shipped and the distance they are moved.
Weber's model attempts to explain industrial location.
Weber used locational triangles to illustrate the impact
of transport costs on industrial location.
A. Transporting raw materials cost the same as the
finished product
B. Transporting raw materials costs less than finished
product
(maybe finished product delicate/more packaging)
C. Transporting raw materials costs more than finished
product (loss in bulk)
D. More of raw material from R2 needed than R1
Ethanol and Corn: Classic Weberian location pattern
Criticism of Weber:
• transport is not directly proportional to distance,
but generally becomes cheaper per kilometre over
longer distances
• Does not take account of political considerations
such as subsidies, tax holidays and export incentive
zones.
• Changes in transport and communications in recent
years are making traditional models of industrial
location increasingly irrelevant.
• as more business is conducted electronically on the
internet, the traditional pressures for industries to
cluster together in agglomerations are
disappearing.
Weber’s least cost theory accounted for the location of
a manufacturing plant in terms of the owner’s desire to
minimize three categories of costs:
1. Transportation (most important to Weber) the
location chosen must entail the lowest possible cost of
moving raw materials to the factory and finished
products to the market.
48
2. Labor
Higher labor costs reduce the margin of profit so a
factory might do better farther from raw materials and
markets if cheap labor made up for the added transport
costs.
3. agglomeration is used to describe the benefits that
firms obtain when locating near each other.
Cost advantages:
• attracts more customers than a single firm could
alone.
• costs of providing infrastructure can be shared,
more extensive and sophisticated
• can support a variety of suppliers and maintenance
firms
• share a specialized pool of labor (engineers and
lawyers)
Thus agglomeration makes a big-city location more
attractive
agglomeration is central to the explanation of how cities
increase in size and population.
This concentration of economic activity in cities is the
reason for their existence and they can persist and grow
throughout time, only if their advantages outweigh the
disadvantages.
Excessive agglomeration leads to diseconomies:
• crowding
• Traffic/circulation problems (resulting in increased
transport costs and loss of efficiency)
• high rents
• rising wages
• inflation (perhaps driven by strong demand for
scarce housing)
• a general decay of infrastructure because of intense
use
• Etc.
It is this tension between agglomeration and
diseconomies that allows cities to grow, but keeps them
from becoming too large.
Deglomeration occurs when companies and services
leave because of increased costs of excessive
concentration. (diseconomies)
Urban prairie is a term coined to characterize large
swaths of vacant city lots, typically covered with grass
or untended weeds and litter. Urban prairie results from
widespread building demolition, common in areas
subject to extensive urban decay. These areas are not
the same as a true, natural prairie.
Cities with exceptionally large amounts of urban prairie
include Detroit, Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, Newark,
New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York. Urban prairies have
also developed in older areas of "sprawl" cities such as
Phoenix, Arizona, Jacksonville, Florida and Houston,
Texas.
Urban prairies can result from several factors. The value
of the properties may fall too low to provide financial
incentives for their owners to maintain their buildings.
Frequently this is due to high unemployment,
depopulation, deindustrialization, or crime rates.
Abandoned properties are frequently acquired by local
government as response to unpaid property taxes and
they are often used for criminal activity, which tends to
prompt demolition.
backwash effects: the negative impacts on a region (or
regions) of the economic growth of some other region.
(Mexico vs. China)
Fordisom and post-fordims
Fordist production: a single firm controls most aspects
of production from raw materials to the finished
product
This creates mass production of the same item with a
large inventory
Production is now disaggregated: divide into parts
Manufacturing often has a complex commodity/supply
chain.
A commodity chain is a sequential process used by
firms to gather resources, transform them into goods or
commodities and, finally, distribute them to consumers.
• In short, it is the connected path from which a
good travels from producers to consumers.
• Commodity chains can be unique depending on
the product types or the types of markets.
Post-Fordism
Firms are flexible and quickly respond to the whims of
the market. Companies are smaller, can take advantage
of niche markets, and subcontract many tasks.
They also incorporate
just-in-time production: parts are delivered to the
assembly plant shortly before (JIT) use
less space needed, which creates less rent.
Other characterization of post-fordism:
• Teams: workers are placed in teams to figure out
for themselves how to perform a variety of tasks.
• Problem solving: a problem is addressed through
consensus after consulting with all affected parties
rather than through filing a complaint.
• Leveling: management do not get special
treatment.
Flexibility to work rules
49
Outsourcing:
the contracting out of a business function - commonly
one previously performed in-house - to another place
Of recent concern is the ability of businesses to
outsource to suppliers outside the nation, sometimes
referred to as offshore outsourcing (which are odd
terms because doing business with another country
does not mean you have to go offshore)
There is now an international division of labor:
the specialization of different people, regions, and
countries in certain kinds of economic activities:
Also known as the:
global assembly line:
a network of labor and production processes linking:
• the production and supply of raw materials
• the processing of raw materials
• the production of components
• the assembly of finished products
• the distribution of finished products
Advantages to manufacturers of a global assembly
line:
1. economies of scale (cost advantages to
manufacturers from high-volume production, since the
average cost of production falls with increasing output)
Why are economies of scale important?
A large business can pass on lower costs to customers
through lower prices and increase its share of a market.
This poses a threat to smaller businesses that can be
“undercut” by the competition
Secondly, a business could choose to maintain its
current price for its product and accept higher profit
margins.
For example, a furniture-maker which could produce
1,000 cabinets at $250 each ($250,000) might expand
and be able to produce 2,000 cabinets at $200 each
($400,000).
The total production cost will have risen to $400,000
from $250,000, but the cost per unit has fallen from
$250 to $200.
Assuming the business sells the cabinets for $350 each,
the profit margin per cabinet rises from $100 to $150.
2. production and assembly can take advantage of the
geographical variations in costs (inexpensive labor)
3. multiple sources for components (lack of dependence
upon a single supplier)
reducing its vulnerability to work stoppages arising
from local labor disputes and other disturbances
The new international division of labor reflects the
growing importance for industrial location of site
factors.
The major players in the global assembly line are
transnational corporations:
companies that participate not only in international
trade but also in manufacturing, and/or sales
operations in several countries. 90 percent of which
were headquartered in the core states. Account for
over $6 trillion in worldwide sales
Flows of goods, capital, and information that take place
within and between transnational corporations are
becoming more important than imports and exports
between countries.
These companies provide foreign direct investment: the
total of overseas business investments made by private
companies
Capital is becoming increasingly concentrated as giant
transnationals merge with one another.
conglomerate corporations: companies that have
diversified into various economic activities
The General Electric Company, or GE (NYSE: GE), is
a multinational American
technology and services conglomerate incorporated in
the State of New York. In 2009, Forbes ranked GE as the
world's largest company. The company has 323,000
employees around the world.
The Future of Agriculture and Manufacturing
In the past two decades, there has been a locational
shift in manufacturing from MEDCs to a number of
LEDCs where labor costs are lower.
Some LEDCs have been so successful in attracting
manufacturing that their economies have grown rapidly
and consistently through the 1980s and 1990s.
These countries are known as Newly Industrializing
Countries (NICs) or tiger economies
Notable tiger economies include Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Mexico and
Brazil.
Export Processing Zones (EPZ or SEZ): In many cases, the
NICs have established manufacturing industries for
export markets, often in special economic zones (SEZ)
where governments offer incentives to attract investors
(such as transnational corporations) tax-free holidays,
special labor regulations and preferential treatment.
For LEDCs, the advantages of industrialization include:
• Generation of an increase in material wealth
50
•
Replacement of a subsistence economy with a
commercial economy
• Widening the range of personal choices
Increasing employment opportunities
• Provision of goods to substitute for imported goods,
thus reducing the flow of funds overseas.
Disadvantages of industrialization include:
• Increased environmental pollution
• Depletion of natural resources
• Disappearance of traditional ways of life
• Building of unattractive landscapes
Before industrialization can occur in a country, the
agricultural sector must have developed to the point
where a surplus is being produced to feed the industrial
workers.
For this reason, a balanced development strategy in an
LEDC wishing to industrialize would usually emphasize
the development of agriculture before manufacturing.
The emergence of hi-tech manufacturing in the 1980s
and 1990s has shifted the traditional focus areas of
manufacturing
Significant factors of location for hi-tech industries
include:
•
Proximity to universities, research institutes and
large pools of highly educated skilled labor with
well-developed ability in problem-solving;
• Avoidance of areas where labor is strongly
unionized;
• Locally available entrepreneurial 'daring', creativity,
and high-risk investment funds;
Situations on the outskirts of major areas of population
with reputations for high quality of life and
environmental quality
Support from excellent communications and transport
services.
Many geographers now believe that the future of
agriculture and manufacturing is linked to the concept
of sustainable development.
In the case of manufacturing, this means
• developing and implementing a set of policies that
ensures efficient use of scarce resources
• shifting the emphasis from non-renewable to
renewable resources
• controlling pollution
• employing appropriate technology that is consistent
with the country's endowment of resources
• protects the welfare of those employed in the
industry.
Economic Geography: Services
Services: Tasks that you pay others to do for you.
A shift toward a “postindustrial” economic order
Deindustrialization: A relative decline in industrial
employment in the core
basic industries: economic activities that provide
income from sales to customers beyond city limits.
nonbasic functions: economic activities that serve a
city’s own population.
regional multiplier: The multiplier is the total number of
jobs created in the basic and nonbasic sectors for each
new basic job in a region.
backward linkages: firms that supply with components
and services
forward linkages: firms using output.
ancillary activities: activities such as maintenance,
repair, security, and haulage services variety of
industries.
The factors of production (L,L,C) are less important for
service industries than for manufacturing.
Market accessibility is more relevant
However, some types of services, can operate almost
anywhere
tertiary activities: takes the goods that are produced
and manufactured by the primary and secondary
sectors and either sells them to consumers or uses
them to perform services for consumers.
In recent years, geographers have begun to identify a
fourth type of activities –
quaternary activities.
These are mainly found in nations with more complex
economic structures, and they embrace services that
are highly skilled and professional in nature.
Examples include research and development work,
information processing and management.
quaternary industries(white collar jobs): financial,
insurance, real estate (FIRE), health services,
entertainment, education, and management
(pneumonic device: make quarter the amount of money
as quinary)
And maybe a 5th sector
quinary industries (gold collar jobs): high-level
management, administration and executive decision
makers. There are fewer of these jobs, but they are
some of the highest-paying.
51
Economic Structure
5 sectors of the economy:
• Primary: Agriculture, gathering/extracting
• Secondary: Manufacturing, processing,
construction, power production
• Tertiary: Retail/wholesale trade, personal and
professional services
• Quaternary: Information, research, management
• Quinary: Executive decision makers
The balance between these activities will vary from
place to place.
FR Discuss the historical economic structure changes in
the US and how it affected migration.
• The US shifted from an agricultural economy to
an industrial economy (primary to secondary)
• This promoted immigration from Europe with
an increase in factory jobs.
The US then shifted from secondary to tertiary.
(economic restructuring)
• demand for educated experts (some from
abroad)
• Many citizens have taken higher paying service
jobs instead of manufacturing
•
Immigrants have been able to take many lowwage/low statues jobs that citizens are not
interested in (ag and manufacturing)
• Thus restructuring has pulled some immigrants
in.
Why have Europeans, Latin Americans, and Asian
moved away from their countries:
• Lack of jobs
• Poverty
• poor economic opportunity
Migration has a lot to do with Demographic Transition
3 Types of Services:
1. Consumer Services: Businesses that provide services
to individual consumers who desire them and can
afford to pay for them.
a. Retail services - provide goods for sale to consumers.
b. Personal services — provide services for the wellbeing and personal improvement of individual
consumers.
2. Business Services
a. Producer services — services to help people conduct
other business.
b. Transportation and similar services —businesses that
diffuse and distribute services.
Producer Services cluster in the center because of
accessibility.
3. Public Services
provide security and protection for citizens and
businesses.
government
FR Define range (higher and lower order) and
threshold and give examples of both.
range: the maximum distance that consumers will
normally travel to obtain it.
High-order goods and services are those that are
relatively costly, specialized and/or infrequently
required. A 60 mile range is not unusual.
Examples?
Low-order goods and services are those that are
relatively inexpensive and required at frequent intervals
Examples:
threshold: Minimum # of people needed to support the
service\
market area is the area surrounding a business from
which the bulk of its customers are drawn
services are clustered in and have their origins in
settlements.
FR Define and describe the major principles of Walter
Christaller’s central place theory.
central place: a settlement in which certain types of
goods and services are available to consumers.
Walter Christaller formulated the
Central place theory: A theory that explains the
distribution of services, based on the fact that
settlements serve as centers of market areas for
services.
• larger settlements are fewer and farther apart
than smaller settlements
• larger settlements provide services for a larger
number of people who are willing to travel
farther.
• towns and cities (central places) tend to be
arranged in clear, orderly hierarchies
• For each large central place many smaller
central places are located within the larger
place’s hinterland.
Very small towns have general practitioners and few to
no specialists--larger towns have more specialized
doctors, and the largest towns have even more
52
specialized practitioners. This is a function of threshold
in particular, as a neurosurgeon would not encounter
enough cases if she established her practice in a town of
1,000 people-perhaps one would require surgery in a
year! It's also a function of range, though, as people are
increasingly willing to travel longer and longer distances
for more specialized services. You wouldn't fly halfway
across the country for a sinus infection, but you
probably would for a bone marrow transplant!
Under ideal circumstances (on flat plains, with good
transportation in every direction),with hexagonalshaped market areas of different sizes arranged around
different-sized places
rank-size rule: a statistical regularity in city-size
distributions of cities and regions.
The relationship is such that the nth largest city in a
country or region is 1/n the size of the largest city in
that country or region.
The absence of the rank-size distribution in a less
developed country indicates that there is not enough
wealth in the society to pay for a full variety of services.
Primate city: population of the largest city in an urban
system is disproportionately large
Examples?
Primacy is not simply a matter of sheer size.
Some of the largest metropolitan areas in the world are
not primate.
For example:
Found in both the core and the periphery
Primacy in peripheral countries is usually a consequence
of early roles as gateway cities.
In core countries it is usually a consequence of roles as
imperial capitals
A forward capital is a city or location chosen because it
has one or more of the following characteristics:
(1) it is centrally located, either geographically or
culturally
(2) it is located on some sort of settlement frontier or
designed to attract people to an area or region
(3) it is located away from centers of colonial, cultural,
or economic power
(4) it is oriented away from one culture, group, or idea
and toward another
Some examples:
Abuja/ Nigeria, Brasília/Brazil, Canberra/Australia,
Helsinki/ Finland, Islamabad/Pakistan, New Delhi/India,
Ottawa/Canada, Washington/United States
FR Define and explain what makes a city a world city?
world cities possess several functional characteristics:
• business services international in scope
• corporate headquarters
• internationally influential media organizations
• centers of culture
• a vacation destination
• Targets of Terrorism
A city like New York, for example, attracts transnational
corporations because it is a center of culture and
communications. It attracts specialized business
services because it is a center of corporate
headquarters and of global markets; and so on.
Why do services cluster downtown?
Central business district (CBD): the central nucleus of
commercial land uses in a city.
Distinctive characteristics of the central city follow from
the high land cost.
1. land is used more intensively in the center than
elsewhere in the city
2. some activities are excluded from the center because
of the high cost of space
Recently, services, especially retail, have moved from
the CBD to suburban locations
• land costs are lower
• most of their customers live there
Urban residents are now more likely to shop in
suburban malls a short drive from their home.
Factories have moved to suburban locations in part
because of access to main highways.
Shopping Malls
Anchors: large department stores in malls.
The shopping mall, surrounded by suburbs, is one of the
most distinctive landscapes of post-World War II life in
North America.
Elsewhereness: artificial landscapes created to
temporarily escape the ordinary or Disneyification
Other Examples:
Malls: Landscapes of consumption, landscape of leisure,
or both??
The mall (Vegas, etc.) is a “pseudoplace” meant to
encourage one sort of activity—shopping/gambling—by
projecting the illusion that something else besides
spending money is actually going on.
Mega malls are not merely for shopping but Malls have
become social centers
However, unlike the open-air marketplaces of the past
shopping malls are private spaces, not public spaces.
Militarized Space: the increasing use of space to set up
defenses against elements considered undesirable
• surveillance cameras
53
•
•
•
•
fortress architecture
gated and guarded residential communities
'bum proof' benches (or lack of street furniture)
sprinkler systems
Tourism: A Service Industry Giant:
Tourism is the world's largest industry on the basis of its
contribution to global gross domestic product (GDP).
It generates about 5% of total world GDP (gross
domestic product) and employs over 10% of the global
workforce, and it's still growing.
International tourism generates over USD 2 billion a
day
List the top 5 countries for international tourist.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Growth from several factors.
• rising incomes in many countries
• increased leisure time (longer paid vacations)
• earlier retirement, and longer lives
Most U.S. tourist dollars are spent in safe and
predictable settings where English's spoken-in national
parks, specialized resorts, theme parks, rural idylls,
health spas, and renovated historic towns and districts.
One of the fastest-growing segments of the tourist
industry is cruising.
Tourist movements:
1. interior -to-coastal
2. lowlands-to-highlands
3. Urban-to-rural
4. places of cultural and historical importance
Culture has become an important economic activity
Sense of place has become a valuable commodity
Tourism and Economic Development
What are some of the positive and negative features of
tourism as an economic development strategy?
Positive features:
• tourism can provide jobs
• inject new money into a local economy
• it is a relatively “clean” or non-polluting industry
• can help sustain folk cultures (regional cultures,
arts, and crafts)
• provide incentives for wildlife preservation
(environmental protection)
• conservation of historic areas (buildings and sites.)
Negative features:
•
can lead to dependency with a high degree of
economic vulnerability
• many tourism jobs are low pay and seasonal
• typically, only 40 percent is captured by the tourist
region itself.
• can alter folk cultures
• tourists can disrupt the social and cultural values of
communities
• bring unsightly development, pollution, and
environmental degradation.
Ecotourism: responsible travel that conserves natural
environments and sustains the well-being of local
people.
Place Marketing: the deliberate manipulation of a
place to enhance its appeal
tries to bring money and spending to an area
Historic districts have been imitated, simulated, and
even reinvented according to commercial
considerations rather than principles of preservation or
conservation.
Many cities/places have sponsored/subsidized
extensive makeovers of themselves, including:
1. Investment in public spaces
a. Festival Settings: the creation and refurbishment
distinctive settings (waterfronts)
b. These complexes integrate retailing (trendy shops),
and entertainment activities, restaurants,
bars/nightclubs, and hotels.
Examples in Southern California:
Festival Settings often do not often provide social and
economic benefits to neighboring portions of the inner
cityand are NOT designed to blend well architecturally
with surrounding communities
2. The designation and conservation of historic districts
and landmarks
Examples in California:
3. Sponsoring festivals and sports events.
Examples:
Economic Development
Economic development is the development of
economic wealth of countries or regions for the wellbeing of their inhabitants.
Can be defined as efforts that seek to improve the
economic well-being and quality of life for a community
by creating and retaining jobs and increasing the tax
base.
54
Why give to the poorest people in the
world?________________________________________
_____________________
Why shouldn’t we give to the
poor?_________________________________________
____________________________
What could be the consequences of not helping poor
countries?
_____________________________________________
A failed (failing) state common characteristics:
 a central government so weak or ineffective that it
has little practical control over much of its territory
 an inability to provide reasonable public services
 widespread corruption and criminality
 refugees and involuntary movement of populations
 sharp economic decline
 the inability to interact with other states as a full
member of the international community.
The term 'failed state' is a term of imprecise
quantitative definition which is often used by political
commentators and journalists
Development geography is the study of the Earth's
geography with reference to the standard of living and
quality of life of its human inhabitants.
Geographically, the single most important feature of
economic development is that it is uneven.
Inequality in economic development often has a
regional dimension
For example China has huge disparities of wealth
between the rich coastal provinces and the poor
interior.
The Brandt Line is a visual depiction of the North-South
divide, proposed by German Chancellor Willy Brandt in
the 1970s. It approximately encircles the world at a
latitude of 30° N, but dipping south so as to include
Australia and New Zealand in the "Rich North".
The North-South Divide is the socio-economic and
political division that exists between the wealthy,
known collectively as "the North", and the poorer
countries or "the South.“
Although most nations comprising the "North" are in
fact located in the Northern Hemisphere, the divide is
not primarily defined by geography.
Economic Structure
The three-sector hypothesis is an economic theory
which divides economies into three sectors of activity:
primary sector: economic activities that are concerned
directly with natural resources of any kind (agriculture,
mining, fishing, and forestry)
secondary sector: Manufacturing (construction)
activities that transform raw materials into more usable
forms. They add value by making wheat into flour,
copper ore into wire, and silicon into computer chips,
and by assembling sophisticated components into
computers, airplanes, and cars.
tertiary sector: economic activities involving the sale
and exchange of goods and services.
(Post Industrial Society) retail, banking, law, education,
government, insurance, health care, tourism,
accounting, advertising, and entertainment
3 Phases of development
First phase: Traditional civilizations (or pre-industrial)
Workforce quotas:
Primary sector: 70%
Secondary sector: 20%
Tertiary sector: 10%
This phase represents a society which is scientifically
not yet very developed, with a negligible use of
machinery. The state of development corresponds to
that of European countries in the early Middle Ages, or
that of a modern-day developing country.
Second phase: Industrialization
Workforce quotas:
Primary sector: 20%
Secondary sector: 50%
Tertiary sector: 30%
More machinery is deployed in the primary sector,
which reduces the number of workers needed.
Third phase: Post-Industrial
Workforce quotas:
Primary sector: 10%
Secondary sector: 20%
Tertiary sector: 70%
The primary and secondary sectors are increasingly
dominated by automation, and the demand for
workforce numbers falls in these sectors.
The economic structure of the economy is the
percentage of each sector.
The United States economic structure is something
close to the following
primary sector less than 4% of the labor force
secondary sector about 22%
tertiary sector just over 74%
Structure of China’s economy(2008):
agriculture (39.5%)
industry (27.2%)
services (33.2%)
Quantitative (numerical) indicators of development:
social, demographic, and economic
55
Social Indicators: Development indicators based on a
country’s success in meeting the basic needs of its
citizens.
This includes: Education often measured by literacy (%
of people who can read and write) and number of
school years attended.
Health: nutrition (calories per day, calories from
protein, percentage of population with malnutrition),
population per doctor etc
Welfare: government assistance to the unemployed,
veterans, elderly, poor, disabled orphaned, access to
clean water and sanitation etc.
Demographic indicators (characteristics of a human
population) include life expectancy, number of
children, population growth,
And infant mortality rate: the annual number of deaths
of infants less than one year of age per 1,000 live births
may be the best single index
Reveals: nutrition, education, sanitation, health
Demographic data is used to distinguish MDCs and
LDCs.
Economic Indicators:
Development indicators based on a country’s
economic production (how much), what it produces,
and how it produces. 5 indicators especially useful in
distinguishing between MDCs and LDCs are GDP per
capita, economic structure (% in primary, secondary or
tertiary), worker productivity, access to raw materials,
and availability of consumer good (all explained in
textbook)
GDP (gross domestic product) is, the total market value
of goods and services produced within the borders of a
country, regardless of the nationality of those who
produce them.
GNP (gross national product) is the total market value
of goods and services produced by the residents of a
country, even if they’re living abroad.
So if a U.S. resident earns money from an investment
overseas, that value would be included in GNP (but not
GDP). And the value of goods produced by foreignowned businesses on U.S. land would be part of GDP
(Toyota).
In geography the difference between the two is not
important. Both are used to compare countries.
The overall GDP or GNP of a country is not very useful
because countries have such different populations.
Therefore we divide the overall GDP/GNP by the
population and get a per person number which is called
per capita. This makes it much easier to compare how
well people are doing in different parts of the world.
However, using GDP/GNP per capita also has many
problems.
It does not take into account the distribution of the
money which can often be extremely unequal as in the
Brunei where oil money has been collected by the
monarchy and has not flowed to the people of the
country.
GNP does not measure whether the money produced is
actually improving people's lives
The figure rarely takes into account the unofficial
economy, which includes subsistence agriculture and
cash-in-hand or unpaid work (Informal sector), which is
often substantial in LEDCs.
In LEDCs it is often too expensive to accurately collect
this data and some governments intentionally or
unintentionally release inaccurate figures.
The figure is usually given in US dollars which due to
changing currency exchange rates can distort the
money's true street value
Therefore, GDP/GNP is often converted using
purchasing power parity (PPP) in which the actual
comparative purchasing power of the money in the
country is calculated.
This purchasing power exchange rate equalizes the
purchasing power of different currencies in their home
countries for a given basket of goods. Using a PPP basis
is arguably more useful when comparing differences in
living standards on the whole between countries
because PPP takes into account the relative cost of
living, rather than just a GDP/GNP comparison.
Correlating economic, demographic and social
indicators show that different indicators of
development are associated with each other
A major health care problem for people in Africa and
Asia low literacy rates.
Composite or qualitative indicators combine several
quantitative indicators into one figure and generally
provide a more balanced view of a country. Usually they
include one economic, one social and one demographic
indicator.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index
combining measures of:
 life expectancy
 literacy
 educational attainment
 GDP per capita
The basic use of HDI is to rank countries (0-1)
A HDI between
1 and 0.8 is considered high (good)
0.8 and 0.6 is considered medium
56
0.6 to 0.4 is considered low.
Gender Empowerment Index
1. women’s incomes
2. participation in the labor force as administrators,
managers, and professional and technical positions
3. % of parliamentary seats held by women.
Boardrooms in emerging markets are increasingly
populated by women.
In China, women account for 32 percent of senior
managers, compared with 23 percent in the U.S. and 19
percent in Britain.
In India, 11 percent of CEOs are women, compared with
3 percent of Fortune 500 bosses in the US.
Women in the US Congress
36 women have been or are currently serving as the
governor of a U.S. state. 7 are currently
Forces affecting the rate of economic development
The factors affecting the rate of economic development
may be political, social, physical or historical.
Another way to look at the forces affecting economic
development is to consider external forces, which are
forces affecting the country from elsewhere, and
internal forces, which are factors operating from within
the country.
External forces affecting the rate of economic
development:
culture contact played a significant role in economic
development. For countries that were colonized by
European powers, colonization brought mixed blessings.
On one hand, many resources were exported at very
low prices with few direct benefits for the colony. On
the other hand, transport and other infrastructure were
often built. Of course, the infrastructure was designed
to help the colonial power rather than the local
population, and so railways (to take one example) were
often built to the sites of mines or other resources
rather than to centers of population. Notwithstanding
these problems, culture contact inevitably brings new
ideas to a country, some of which may be beneficial in
speeding economic development.
Trade between countries allows countries to exchange
resources and products it has in abundance for other
goods that it lacks. In this way, trade helps most
countries to advance, presuming the terms of trade are
negotiated fairly for all parties.
Japan lacks most natural resources, but through trade it
has overcome these shortcomings and has developed
economically to a very high level.
Financial flows into a country can help economic
development by providing funds for investment that the
country itself lacks. These funds allow factories to be
built and resources to be developed, providing
employment and taxation revenue for the government
that can be used to provide services and build
infrastructure elsewhere in the country. Of course,
unless the financial flow is a gift in the form of aid,
overseas investors always demand a profit on their
investments, so the other side of financial flows is the
outflow of profits and interest payments. By the early
2000s, the need to repay debt on borrowings and the
profits on investments meant that the net flow of
money in the world was from LEDCs to MEDCs.
When foreign investment occurs in a country, it is often
accompanied by an inflow of new technology, leading to
technological change, new techniques and ways of
doing things. Provided that the technology is
appropriate for the country, this usually helps to
encourage economic development.
technology which is suitable for an MEDC, such as a
labor saving machine, will not be appropriate for an
LEDC, which would have to find scarce money to buy a
machine to replace labor, which is abundant.
Appropriate technology for an LEDC will therefore be
cheap, and will allow production processes to remain
fairly labor intensive.
Transnational corporations can play an important role
in LEDCs these days. Like colonization, they can be a
mixed blessing for LEDCs, and indeed some people
believe that transnational corporations are a new form
of colonialism in which corporations rather than
countries oppress less powerful groups of people, but
do so economically rather than politically. Benefits that
transnational corporations can bring to LEDCs include
the investment funds and the new technology.
Bilateral (between two countries) and multilateral
(between several countries) trade agreements can
assist the economic development of countries within
the agreement, but may slow the economic
development for countries outside the agreement.
One of the most successful multilateral agreements for
promoting economic development has been the
formation of the European Union. The European Union
has resulted from a series of multilateral agreements
over a period of more than half a century.
Other significant multilateral agreements include NAFTA
(the North American Free Trade Association) and ASEAN
(the Association of South East Asian Nations).
Internal forces affecting the rate of economic
development:
57
Infrastructure refers to the services and facilities
needed to support productive activities, and as well as
transport, examples include telecommunications,
electricity, water, port facilities and other public
services. It is a general principle that countries with a
high level of infrastructure will develop more rapidly
than countries that do not have these facilities,
everything else (such as political systems, levels of
corruption etc) being equal.
The political systems and planning mechanisms in a
country also influence the rate of economic
development. As a generalization, economies with open
policies towards trade and investment (such as Hong
Kong, South Korea, the United States and Australia)
have faster and more stable economic growth than
economies with closed or less transparent political
systems (such as North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia).
Rapid population growth is considered by some people
to slow down economic development, although
opinions differ on this point. Malthusians (believe there
are too many people) argue that each extra person is a
consumer, taking a share from a fixed pool of resources.
On the other hand, some argue that each extra person
is a productive resource that produces more than it
consumes.
There is no clear correlation between the rate of
population growth and the rate of economic
development.
At first sight, we would expect that availability of
natural resources would significantly affect the rate of
economic development. We would expect that the
more natural resources a country possesses, the faster
would be its rate of economic growth. In fact, there are
examples of wealthy countries with very few natural
resources (such as Japan, Hong Kong and the
Netherlands) as well as wealthy countries with
abundant resources (such as USA, Germany, Canada
and Australia).
Similarly, there are poor countries with abundant
natural resources, such as Papua New Guinea,
Myanmar, Venezuela and Nigeria — such countries
either do not have the finance to develop the resources
or corruption is so great that the rate of economic
development is impeded.
Internal capital formation means the ability of a country
to find its own funds to invest in development projects.
People in LEDCs typically earn low incomes, forcing
them to spend a large proportion of their income on
basic necessities such as food, clothing and shelter. This
leaves very little surplus for savings, and therefore
banks have very little funds available for investment.
This creates a cycle of impoverishment, known as the
Vicious Cycle of Poverty. In summary, low incomes lead
to low investment, which lead to low levels of savings,
which lead to low levels of productivity, which
perpetuate low incomes. Unless some way can be found
to break the vicious cycle of poverty, it becomes selfperpetuating.
In cases where the vicious cycle of poverty is broken
successfully, the foundation of sustainable economic
development is usually agriculture.
In LEDCs, a large proportion of the population are
farmers. Therefore, if development is to have an impact
on most of the population, it must have an impact on
the agricultural sector of the economy.
A sound farming sector is needed:
to provide a food surplus to feed city dwellers
to provide surplus labor for growing manufacturing and
service sectors of the economy
to enlarge exports
What are LEDCs like?
Every Less Economically Developed Country is unique.
Nonetheless, LEDCs do share some common
characteristics, which may include some or all of the
points listed below.
A very high proportion of the population is involved in
agriculture, usually about 70% to 90%.
People are often underemployed and/ or involved in
the informal sector.
There is little income per person, and so many people
exist near the subsistence level. The major proportion
of people's expenditure, therefore, is on food and
necessities. Savings are low, which means that
investment in new equipment and infrastructure is also
low. In severe cases, malnutrition may result at a
personal level.
Most exports comprise a narrow range of primary
products (agriculture and mining products, obtained
directly from the ground), such as foodstuffs and
minerals. Examples include sugar, cocoa, timber, rubber
and tin. This causes long-term problems as the prices of
primary products have tended to fall when measured
against imports of secondary (manufactured) and
tertiary (services) products. Over-dependence on one or
two primary product exports makes LEDCs vulnerable to
shifts in the global economy.
Housing and other services, such as education,
sanitation and transport are inadequate
Levels of technology are low, tools and equipment are
limited, simple and expensive (unless hand made using
traditional technology and local materials). There is an
58
emphasis on animate energy — animals and people —
rather than inanimate energy, based on energy sources
such as oil or electricity.
Many farms are very small in area and dispersed, as
holdings are continually sub-divided as population
increases. This makes the use of machinery almost
impossible.
Depending on the stage of the demographic transition
model reached, birth rates tend to be high, and if death
rates have fallen with medical advances, population
growth rates may be high also.
There is overcrowding in many rural areas.
There is high illiteracy and use of child labor
Governments are often unstable, coups are relatively
common, especially in South America and to some
extent Africa, and quite a number of LEDCs are
controlled by military governments.
People are very dependent on their natural
environment. People tend to live within the confines of
their environment as they have limited means to
change their surroundings.
Write a full page discussing the external and internal
forces affecting the rate of economic development:
What are LEDCs like?
4 Models of development
1. The Modernization Model 1940s to 60s:
 Rostow
 stages of economic development
 build the economy
2. Dependency Model (1970s).
Immanuel Wallerstein, a leading advocate of the
approach characterizes the world system as a set of
mechanisms which redistributes resources from the
periphery to the core.
3. Neoliberal or Counterrevolution Model: (1980s)
Foreign Direct Investment with Multinational
Corporations
4. Sustainable Development Model (1990s):
Development providing for the needs of the present
without diminishing future generations.
1. The Modernization Model
1940s to 60s
Modernization it was believed was made possible by
building:
(a) the physical infrastructure (transportation, energy
and water systems)
(b) the social institutions needed for capitalism, such as:
 taxes
 banks
 insurance
 currency
 a legal system.
 private property
Modernization Real World Strategies :
 Stages of economic growth
 Emphasis on economic production
 Technology transfer (from MDCs)
 Large-scale industrialization projects (government
and foreign investment)
 Trickle Down Economics (money works it way down
to the masses)
The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and other agencies were created to facilitate
investment and technology transfer from rich to poor
countries.
All countries would pass through a set of stages of
economic development if given enough time. The
pathway to development was seen as the route
followed by Western Europe and North America during
the Industrial Revolution.
Following a model proposed by the US economist
Walter Rostow, it was argued that countries would
progress through five stages
Progressive stages of economic growth.
1. Traditional Societies
During the first stage, the country’s economy is
dominated by primary activities-productivity,
technological innovation, and per capita incomes
remain low.
2. Preconditions to take-off
In the second stage, preconditions for economic
development arise, including the commercialization of
agriculture and increased exploitation of raw materials
3. Take-off
In the third stage, foreign investment pours in,
jumpstarting an economy that was already prepped for
growth. An important aspect of the third stage is that a
large proportion of foreign investment goes to
infrastructure improvements, such as building roads
and canals
In discussing the take-off, Rostow's is a noted early
adopter of the term “transition”, which is to describe
the passage of a traditional to a modern economy.
4. Drive to Maturity
The drive to maturity refers to the need for the
economy itself to diversify. The sectors of the economy
which lead initially begin to level off, while other sectors
begin to take off. This diversity leads to greatly reduced
rates of poverty and rising standards of living, as the
59
society no longer needs to sacrifice its comfort in order
to strengthen certain sectors.
5. Age of High Mass Consumption
High per capita incomes and high levels of mass
consumption.
Strength of the Modernization model:
Over the long term, all countries are capable of
development.
It has proved to works for some countries: Singapore,
Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan (Asian Dragons) the
American South, Czech Republic, Ireland
Weaknesses in the Modernization model
(Rostow’s Assumptions):
Rostow’s model has also been criticized for assuming
that economies will naturally pass through each of the
four stages consecutively.
Rostow’s model did not explicitly account for factors
such as: global politics, colonialism, physical geography,
war, culture, and ethnic conflict, which may cause
countries to follow quite different economic
trajectories.
Environmentalists and others have criticized Rostow’s
description of the relationship between development
and consumption, claiming that development does not
necessarily equal high consumption.
For some of these critics, development may mean other
things like increased social welfare or ecological
sustainability.
Finally, the Rostow’s stages of development model does
not account for deindustrialization.
Many of the first development projects were huge
FAILURES!
Examples
 oil-fired power plants create pollution
 automated factories cause a loss of jobs
 combine harvesters need fuel
 chain saws creates deforestation and erosion
 infant formula replacement for breast milk harmed
children (using unsafe water)
 Emphasis on economic production over human
welfare can lead to:
 environmental degradation
 unlivable cities
 traffic
 a poorly educated work force.
 the creation of a permanent underclass
 crime
 many other social problems.

These problems affect everyone in the society and
can undermine the economic strength of the
country.
2. Dependency Theory/ Model (1970s). Sees low
development levels as being a result of the LDCs
economic dependency on the MDCs.
Developed by Immanuel Wallerstein
The world is connected by a "world-economy" or “world
system” with a core-and a periphery.
The core is the developed, industrialized, democratic
part of the world:
 Wealthy
 Powerful
 U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia
 and the periphery is the underdeveloped raw
materials-exporting, poor part of the world.
Dependent upon Core countries for:
 Military Equipment
 Technology
 Investment
 News and Entertainment
 Education
Resources are extracted from the periphery and flow
towards the states at the center in order to sustain their
economic growth and wealth.
A central concept is that the poverty of the countries in
the periphery is the result of the manner of their
integration of the "world system", a view to be
contrasted with that of free market economists, who
argue that such states are progressing on a path to full
integration.
This theory is based on the Marxist analysis of
inequalities within the world system,
dependency argues that underdevelopment of the
Global South is a direct result of the development in the
Global North.
It is claimed that this situation of dependence began
when many of the LEDCs were colonized, and continues
today because the MEDCs (through transnational
corporations) force them to produce unprofitable
primary products.
Single product primary exports:
Cuba (74% of whose exports are sugar), Zambia (85%
copper) , Iraq (98% oil), bananas in Central America,
coffee in Brazil, and Kenya, copper in Chile, cocoa in
Ghana and the Ivory Coast, palm oil in West Africa,
rubber in Malaysia and Sumatra; sugar in the Caribbean
islands, tea in Sri Lanka
60
The Dependency theory believes this system has
created
Neocolonialism: When a previously colonized country
has become politically independent but remains
economically dependent on exporting the same
commodities (raw materials and foodstuffs)
According to Dependency theorist one of the biggest
culprits to the current system is the
Multinational corporation (MNC) or transnational
corporation (TNC): a corporation or enterprise that
manages production or delivers services in more than
one country.
Criticisms of multinational corporations:
 their goal is profit not development
 eliminate domestic firms
 undermine the world’s environment
 perpetuate world poverty through low wages
 export jobs from MDCs
Dependency real world strategies.
 invest and improve human welfare (education,
health, food, water, and shelter needs).
 redistribute capital in more even manner (socialism)
 a bottom-up strategy
 import substitution: an LDC tries to develop its own
industries instead of importing manufactured goods
from the MDCs
 nationalization: To convert from private to
governmental ownership and control (natural
resources)
 high import tariffs (to protect infant home-grown
industries)
 self-sufficiency (economic independence)
Strength of the Dependency theory
 does not assume that socioeconomic change will
occur in the same way in all places.
 acknowledges change in the less developed world is
linked to the economic activities of the developed
world.
 shows that the world functions as a single entity.
Weaknesses of the Dependency Theory
 Has very little hope for economic prosperity in
regions and countries that have traditionally been
dominated by external powers.
 The long-term ramifications of investing heavily in
human welfare at the expense of economic
production are an inability to pay for the human
welfare benefits the country desires to provide.
 Without a strong economic engine, the country
could fall behind in infrastructure development.

The country will lag in technology (health and
manufacturing).
 Remaining a highly agricultural society increases the
likelihood of higher population growth.
3. Neoliberal or Counterrevolution Model: (1980s)
Economic Liberalism is Capitalism
The counterrevolution is against socialism
Critics of free trade and multinational corporations
often conveniently ignore the negative consequences of
an economy that relies heavily on governmental
regulations and state-operated monopolistic
enterprises (socialism).
Socialist economies have:
 incurred extreme rates of poverty
 repressed human rights
 caused environmental damage
 Multinational corporations have at times:
 improved human rights
 reduced poverty rates (providing jobs)
 Trained local workers in new skills.
 Transferred Technology
Countries with the biggest problems have almost no
multinational corporations: sub-Saharan Africa, South
Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Neo-liberal real world strategies
 Free trade (Tariffs and trade restrictions must be
reduced)
 International trade
 Foreign companies must be allowed to invest
(Foreign direct investment)
 Cut government spending
 Privatization (Government run monopolies must be
eliminated)
Structural adjustment loan/program is a type of loan to
developing countries supported by the World Bank.
They often carry neoliberal policy conditions.
In other words if a country wants a loan they must open
up their economy which is believed to help them in the
long run.
4. Sustainable Development School/Model(1990s):
Development providing for the needs of the present
without diminishing the environment of future
generations.
Progress should not come at the expense of:
 reducing biodiversity
 depleting forests
 increasing pollution
61
 reducing the resource base
Sustainability proponents argue that development and
environmental protection are not necessarily conflicting
goals (make long-term economic sense)
Sustainable Development real world strategies
 Renewable resources
 Clean technology provides jobs
 conservation (ecotourism, recycling)
 Market mechanisms for environmental regulation
(emission trading also known as caps and trade)
 Women’s and children’s rights (Oriental carpet
industry in Asia is not considered sustainable,
because children have their educations cut short. )
 Loans to women and very poor (microcredit or
microloans)
The Grameen (or “Village”) Bank in Bangladesh is one of
the most successful and widely imitated programs to
integrate women into the development process.
Associated with Sustainable Development is antiglobalization
First of all…What is Globalization?:
The spread of economic, social, and cultural ideas
across the world
Consequences of Globalization
 Trade agreements link peoples in distant places
 investments and decisions made on one continent
affects the economic prospects of people thousands
of miles away
 Multinational corporations have gained a
tremendous amount of clout through globalization
An organization that supports globalization is the World
Trade Organization (WTO)
WTO Pro:
 Promotes free trade
 will increase overall levels of economic well-being
WTO con:
 ignores environment issues
 ignores the labor rights record of developing
countries (wages will decline in MDCs)
 has a bias toward rich countries and multinational
corporations (for example subsidies for agricultural
products in the rich countries remain high)
 the vast majority of developing countries have very
little say in the WTO system
 the decision making is non-inclusive and nontransparent
The Anti-globalization movement opposes the:

unregulated power of large, multi-national
corporations
 and the powers exercised through trade
agreements
Generally speaking, protesters believe that the global
financial institutions (IMF, WTO and the World Bank)
undermine local decision-making methods.
Corporations extract natural resources and move on
after doing permanent damage to the environment.
Activists goals are to end privatization measures of the
World Bank, IMF, and the WTO.
The activists are especially opposed to "globalization
abuse" and the international institutions that promote
neoliberalism without regard to ethical standards.
Urban Geography
Cities in the periphery, Latin America, and Europe
Compared to the private automobile, public
transportation offers more energy efficiency.
Public transit is more extensive in Western European
cities than in the United States primarily because
European governments subsidize public transit.
The U.S. government has encouraged the use of cars in
part by building interstate highways.
Urbanization: The process whereby an increasing
percentage of people live in an urban area
The Industrial Revolution promoted urbanization.
Of the ten largest urban areas in the world, how many
are in More Developed Countries today? 2
The important element of urbanization is an increase in
the
• number of people living in urban settlements.
• percentage of people living in urban settlements.
• land area occupied by urban settlements.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines an urban area as a city
with a population over 2,500. TQ
The city plus its contiguous built-up suburbs is the
urbanized area.
World's largest cities
The question of determining the world's largest
cities does not allow a single, simple answer.
It depends on which definitions of "city" and "size" are
used, and how those definitions are applied.
The "size" of a city can refer to either its land area or,
more typically, its population.
The borders of a city can be defined several ways:
Administrative
62
"City" as strictly defined by a given government (city
proper). Typically based on a municipality or equivalent
entity, or sometimes a group of municipalities under
a regional government.
Morphological
"City" defined as a physically contiguous urban area,
without regard to territorial or other boundaries. The
delineation is usually done using some type of urban
density, such as population density or density
of buildings. Satellite and/or aerial maps may be used.
For statistical convenience, such areas are sometimes
adjusted to appropriate administrative boundaries,
yielding an agglomeration.
Functional
"City" as defined by the habits of
its demographic population, as by metropolitan
area, labor market area, or similar. Such definitions are
usually based on commuting between home and work.
Commuter flow thresholds into the core urban area are
established by the national census authority,
determining which areas are included.
Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)
1. A central city with a population of at least 50,000
2. its county (within which the city is located)
3. Adjacent counties in which at least 15 percent of the
residents work in the central city’s county
The United States Census Bureau has designated the
five county region as the Los Angeles-Long BeachRiverside combined statistical area, with a July 1, 2006
population estimate of 17,776,000.
The United States Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) has defined 125 Combined Statistical
Areas (CSAs) for the United States of America. The OMB
defines a Combined Statistical Area as an aggregate of
adjacent MSAs that are linked by commuting ties. The
Combined Statistical Area is the most expansive of
the metropolitan area concepts.
The Greater Los Angeles Area, or the Southland, is the
agglomeration of urbanized area around the county of
Los Angeles. Greater Los Angeles includes the Los
Angeles metropolitan area, the Inland Empire, and
the Oxnard–Thousand Oaks–Ventura area.
• San Diego and Imperial counties, while a part of
Southern California, are not included in this
agglomeration.
Megalopolis: large metropolitan areas so close together
that they form one continuous urban complex
In 2007 over 50% of the world’s population became
urban
The Urbanization Process
Urbanization was stimulated by advances in farm
productivity that:
(1) provided the extra food to support the increased
numbers of townspeople, and
(2) made many farmers and farm laborers redundant,
prompting them to migrate to cities.
shock city: fast, unplanned and irregular growth, often
with disturbing changes in economic, social, and
cultural life.
• In the first half of the 20th century, the fastest urban
growth took place in the western cities (New York,
London, etc.).
• They were magnets for immigration and job
opportunities.
• However, later on, more and more undeveloped
counties and cities started to double or triple in
population as well, despite having less resources
and technology to sustain their people.
Cities of the Periphery are often Unintended
Metropolises
With great amounts of dualism (extremely rich and poor
people)
megacity: a city with over 10 million people
A global city, also known as a world city, is a prominent
centre of trade, banking, finance, innovation,
and markets. Whereas "megacity" refers to any city of
enormous size, a global city is one of enormous power
or influence. Global cities, have more in common with
each other than with other cities in their host nations.
The problems of the cities of the periphery stem from
the way in which their demographic growth has
outstripped their economic growth.
Peripheral cities problems :
•
Lack of Infrastructure (schools, roads, electricity)
• corruption
• shortages of housing
• poor health care
• transportation problems
• Environmental problems (pollution)
• lack of clean water
• poor sanitation
• fiscal problems
• unemployment and underemployment
• informal economic activities
• cycle of poverty
• crime
Does Global Urbanization Lead Primarily to
Undesirable Consequences?
Latin American Cities
1. CBD Was the original colonial city
63
Spine: high quality expansion of the CBD catering to the
wealthy.
2. An elite residential sector next to the spine
3. Zone of Maturity
(middle class housing) Gradually improved, upgraded,
self-built housing
4. In situ (in place) accretion (growth): Transition
between slum and zone of maturity. Improvements in
progress.
5. Shanty or squatter neighborhoods
On the edge of cities
On the least desirable land (steep, swampy etc)
Compare and contrast the causes and size of urban
migration in the MDCs versus LDCs.
Contrast Size of migration:
• larger in LDCs or less in MDCs
Compare Cause:
• jobs
• Opportunities, wide range of services,
Contrast
• Causes of migration (Why):
• Natural increase is high in LDCs
• rural migrants are pushed into cities out of
desperation
• In the core people move to cities because of
lifestyle
European Cities:
1. Complex street patterns
orthogonal. Relating to or composed of right angles
2. Plaza and squares
3. High population density
4. Low skylines
5. Lively downtowns
6. Pedestrian areas
7. Neighborhood stability (people don’t move very
often)
8. Public housing: Housing owned by the government
rented to low-income households.
•
In the larger cities of Britain, France, and
Germany roughly 20-40% of all housing is public
housing (on final)
Public housing in the United States
• has been administered by federal, state and local
agencies to provide subsidized assistance for lowincome and poor people. Increasingly provided in a
variety of settings, public housing used to be one or
more blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise housing
operated by a government agency. They are often
referred to as "the projects"
•
•
•
in the U.S., citizens typically pay 30 percent of their
income if they are living in public housing
section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937 often simply
known as Section 8, authorizes the payment of
rental housing assistance to private landlords on
behalf of approximately 3.1 million low-income
households. It operates through several programs,
the largest of which, the Housing Choice Voucher
program, pays a large portion of the rents and
utilities of about 2.1 million households. The U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development
manages the Section 8 programs.
in LA about 95,000 people live in subsidized houses
or apartments
FR Similarities between Europe and Latin America
cities?
• Plazas and squares
• Lively downtowns (shops, restaurants, cafes, and
cultural facilities)
• Wealthy people still live in the inner rings of the
high-class sector
• High population density
Differences?
• Latin American cities have Shanty towns/squatter
settlements
• Public Housing in Europe
• Complex street patterns in Europe
Parts of an Urban Area
• central business district CBD
• zone of transition
• suburbs
Central business district (CBD): the central nucleus of
commercial land uses in a city.
Activities and structures typically found in a city’s
Central Business District (CBD):
CBD
Activities:
• business services
• shops (retail)
• city government (court house)
• structures:
• the tallest buildings
• city hall
• major hotels
• museums
Why are these activities and structures located in the
CBD?
• Accessibility (can support services with a large
threshold and range)
64
•
•
•
•
•
•
Zone in transition: area of mixed commercial and
residential land uses surrounding the CBD.
Warehouses
Apartment buildings
Public housing
Older residential neighborhoods
Gentrified buildings
Suburbs are residential areas surrounding a large urban
area.
• People are attracted to suburbs in part because
suburbs are characterized by
private land surrounding the house.
• The largest percentage of the U.S. population lives
in the suburbs
Edge cities: nodal concentrations of shopping and office
space that are situated on the outer fringes of
metropolitan areas, typically near major highway
intersections.
What kinds of activities and structures are typically
found in Edge Cities?
How do CBDs and Edge Cities differ?
Edge cities: suburban downtowns
activities:
• shopping
• office space/jobs
• Entertainment
• structures:
• malls
• office parks
• movie theaters
• suburban housing
• major highway intersections.
A business/office park is an area of land in which
many office buildings are grouped together. These are
popular in many suburban locations, where it is cheaper
to develop land because of the lower land costs and the
lower building costs for building wider, not necessarily
higher.
They are also often located near highways or main
roads.
Edge cities In Southern California: _________
Three urban land (structure) use models of North
American cities.
Burgess Concentric (has a common center/circles) Zone
Model, 1925
Burgess: Bulls eye
Chicago is a good location in which to develop urban
models because it is located on a flat prairie.
Zone 1
• The central business district (CBD)
2 Zone of transition
• Rooming houses, small apartments, and tenements
attract the lowest income segment
• Immigrants to the city first live in this zone in small
dwelling units.
Example In Southern California: _________
3 Zone of independent workers’ homes
• Located close to factories of zones 1 and 2
• Often characterized by ethnic neighborhoods —
blocks of immigrants who broke free from the
ghettos
• Spreading outward because of pressure from
transition zone and because blue-collar workers
demanded better housing
Example In Southern California: ______________
4 Zone of better residence
• The fourth zone has newer and more spacious
houses for middle-class families.
• Established city dwellers, many of whom moved
outward with the first streetcar network
• Commute to work in the CBD
Example In Southern California: ______________
5 Commuter’s zone
• Beyond the continuous built-up area of the city.
• Some people who work in the center nonetheless
choose to live in smaller suburbs.
• Located either on the farthest extension of the
trolley or commuter railroad lines
• Spacious lots and large houses
Example In Southern
California:_________________________
Invasion and succession: a process of neighborhood
change whereby one social (economic) or ethnic group
succeeds another in a residential area.
Eventually, people and economic activities in the center
are pushed out into farther rings. Invasion and
succession is essentially a series of migration waves,
with one group moving in and establishing itself.
Because of this constant invasion and succession
pattern, often a ring known as the zone in transition
forms just outside the CBD. This ring never becomes
developed because investors know it will constantly be
caught in the shifting urban pattern.
Theory represented the American city in a new stage of
development
Before the 1870s, cities such as New York had mixed
neighborhoods where merchants’ stores and sweatshop
factories were intermingled with mansions and hovels
65
Rich and poor, immigrant and native-born, rubbed
shoulders in the same neighborhoods
In Chicago, Burgess’s home town, the great fire of 1871
leveled the core
The result of rebuilding was a more explicit social
patterning
Chicago became a segregated city with a concentric
pattern
This was the city Burgess used for his model
Critics of the model
Pointed out even though portions of each zone did
exist, rarely were they linked to totally surround the city
Burgess countered there were distinct barriers, such as
old industrial centers, preventing the completion of the
arc
Others felt Burgess, as a sociologist, overemphasized
residential patterns and did not give proper credit to
other land uses
•
Hoyt Sector Model 1939
• Cities that have not been dominated by successive
waves of migrant or immigrant ethnic groups tend
to be organized around the linear development of
two main features that grow outward from the
CBD:
• Industrial districts
• High-class residential districts.
• Example In Southern California: _______________
DINK is sometimes used in reference to gay and
lesbian couples who are childless. This may also be
a more appropriate term for heterosexual couples
who prefer not to have children and consider
themselves childfree
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously
functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair.
It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation,
abandoned buildings, high local unemployment,
fragmented families, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable
city landscape.
Urban decay has no single cause; it results from
combinations of inter-related socio-economic
conditions including the city’s urban planning decisions,
the poverty of the local populace, the construction
of freeway roads and rail road lines that bypass the
area, depopulation by suburbanization of peripheral
lands, real estate
neighborhood redlining, xenophobic immigration
restrictions, and racial discrimination. In cities such
as New York and Boston, gentrification has eased urban
decay in some areas of the cities, although most U.S.
cities have highly blighted areas
Another characteristic of urban decay is blight—the
visual, psychological, and physical effects of living
among empty lots, buildings and condemned houses.
Harris-Ulman
Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman
Multiple Nuclei Model: a city is a complex structure that
includes more than one center around which activities
revolve.
• Social groups are arranged around a collection of
nodes of activities.
• Outlying Business Districts, and/or heavy
manufacturing are the other nuclei besides the CBD
• The multiple nuclei theory best explains why
different neighborhoods of a city attract people of
different
ethnic origin.
FR Assess/evaluate the three models of urban
structure of North American cities.
• If the models are combined they are useful.
• Most people live near others that have similar
characteristics.
• Negative aspect of models (Feminist Critiques)
They ignore dual-income families (Not all
households have a single bread winner who
commutes everyday)
• They ignore households headed by single women.
• Most women seek employment locations closer to
their homes than do men, and this applies to almost
all women, not just those with small children.
• Not all people have kids
• Some like to live in urban setting and see suburban
life as boring
These people are often called
• Yuppies (short for "young urban professional" or
"young upwardly-mobile professional") is a term
that first came into use in the late 1980s which
refers to a financially secure, upper-middle-class
young person in their twenties or early thirties.
• DINKS: Dual (or double) income, no kids. Or DINKY
Dual (or double) income, no kids yet.
Such desolate properties are socially dangerous to the
community because they attract criminals and street
gangs, contributing to the volume of crime.
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Since the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay has been
associated with Western cities, especially in North
America and parts of Europe.
Problems with cities in the core/North America:
political fragmentation
• congestion (from over agglomeration)
• air and water pollution
• from heavy reliance on automobile transportation
• high land prices
• affordable housing shortages
• deteriorating neighborhoods in the inner core
deteriorating infrastructure (Roads, Transit Systems,
Communications Systems, Power Grids, Gas Suppliers,
Water Mains, Sewers, and Drains)
• a poor and disenfranchised population in contrast
to the affluent suburbs (dualism)
This population is often called the Underclass: a class of
individuals who experience a form of poverty from
which it is very difficult to escape because of their
isolation from mainstream values and the formal labor
market.
Cycle of poverty: the transmission of poverty from one
generation to another through a combination of
domestic circumstances and local, neighborhood
conditions.
• fiscal problems: the increasing difficulty of raising
sufficient tax revenues to pay for the upkeep of
urban infrastructure and city services.
Cities then have two Choices
1. raise tax revenues.
2. cut back on services
Decentralization or Urban Flight:
middle class people move out of urban areas with their
money.
Results of Decentralization
• poorer, disadvantaged, often minority residents are
left behind
• housing often becomes run-down
• loss of good jobs to suburbs
• vacant storefronts
• empty offices, and
• deserted factories
What similar urban problems exist in core and
peripheral cities?
• Crime
• Poor health care
• Traffic
• Environmental problems (pollution)
• Affordable housing shortages
• Cycle of poverty
• Fiscal problems
• Urban problems unique to LDCs?
• Poor sanitation
• Lack of clean water
• Lack of infrastructure (schools)
• Shortages of housing
• Corruption
Urban renewal or revitalization:
Cities identify blighted inner-city neighborhoods,
acquire the properties from private owners, relocate
the residents and businesses, clear the site, and build
new roads and utilities.
Urban renewal may improve Brownfield sites:
abandoned or underused industrial and commercial
facilities available for reuse. Expansion
or redevelopment of such a facility may be complicated
by real or perceived environmental contaminations.
Case Study: Inner City redevelopment (Revitalization)
London’s Docklands are now recognized as the largest
urban redevelopment scheme in the world, with
millions of square feet of office and retail space, and
substantial amounts of new housing.
Once the commercial heart of Britain’s empire,
employing over 30,000 dockyard laborers, London’s
extensive Docklands fell into a sharp decline in the late
1960s because of competition from specialized ports
using new container technologies.
In 1981 the London Docklands Development
Corporation was created by the central government and
given extensive powers to redevelop the derelict dock
areas.
Between 1981-1998 many changes occurred within the
Docklands.
• Employment opportunities
• Low rents attracted a number of hi-tech and
financial firms.
• Improved Housing (Many of the former warehouses
have been transformed into luxury flats)
Although the redevelopment of London's Docklands
brought many benefits to the area there are some
groups who oppose the changes. This includes some of
the original inhabitants of the area who are now unable
to afford to live there.
The majority of the jobs in the new hi-tech industries
are unsuitable to unemployed dock workers. They do
not have the skills needed for jobs in these industries.
Close knit communities have been broken up. Many
believe there are insufficient services for people living in
the area e.g. care for the elderly.
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These massive displays of wealth and consumption
often stand in direct contrast to neighboring areas of
the inner city that have received little, if any, monetary
or other social benefit from these government
subsidized projects.
gentrification:
the invasion of older, centrally located working-class
neighborhoods by higher-income households seeking
the character &convenience of less-expensive & welllocated residences.
Gentrification often displaces poorer minority residents.
Zoning ordinances: Planning regulations that define
permissible land-uses for parcels of the city:
residential, commercial, and/or industrial
A legal form of segregation in U.S. cities is achieved
through zoning.
Zoning causes residential suburban segregation:
1. from commercial and manufacturing activities
2. housing is usually built for a single social class
Six Socio-Spatial Formations
• Citadels – Protected Enclaves of the Rich
• Gentrified Areas
• Middle-Class Suburbs
• Working-Class Neighborhoods
• Ethnic Enclaves
• Excluded Ghettos
Suburbs and Smart Growth
Unincorporated Areas: not part of a city
Almost one in every five Californians lives in an
unincorporated area. Counted by themselves, these 6.4
million people constitute the largest community in
California, far eclipsing the largest city in the state, Los
Angeles, with its 3.7 million residents.
It's not often appreciated that counties, like cities, serve
residents with local police (sheriff), streets and roads
and other public works, planning, parks and recreation,
public libraries, water supply, waste disposal, and fire
protection.
Why do some people prefer living in unincorporated
areas?
The process of legally adding land area to a city in the
United States is annexation.
Master-Planned Communities: architecturally
compatible housing units often with recreational
facilities.
Walnut Examples: ___________
homeowners association: an organization comprised of
all owners of units in the development. They collect
fees, fines, and assessments from homeowners,
maintain the common areas, and enforce the governing
documents.
These may include detailed rules regarding construction
and maintenance of individual homes.
Convents, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC and Rs)
Homeowners associations are increasingly common in
the United States exercising control over 19% of
American homes, 20 million homes.
Association regulations examples:
Despite the occasional horror stories told about
infamous homeowners' associations, residents who
have chosen this lifestyle usually enjoy the convenience
they receive in exchange for their membership in this
mini-government.
If properly managed, homeowners' associations can be
an excellent insurance policy for the value of your
property and that of your neighbors.
Difference between a condominium and a Townhome
A buyer of a townhome purchases his or her individual
unit, as well as the ground underneath that unit. Each
townhome has its own roof, in contrast to
condominiums.
The terms of condominium ownership sometimes are
cloudier, simply because owners share more common
areas (for example, stairs and hallways) than do
townhome owners.
The rules enforced by high-rise condo associations are
sometimes stiffer, perhaps because residents are living
in closer quarters, with many more residents per square
foot. Condo owners are responsible for the space inside
their own walls, which means they can paint them
however they wish. They don't enjoy that same
privilege on the outside of their homes, however.
"Common areas" are generally defined to include
shared hallways, parking lots, any exterior walls and the
land on which the condominium development sits, as
well as any amenities on premises for the enjoyment of
residents.
What is the difference between suburbanization,
counterurbanization and exubanization?
Suburbanization is movement to residential areas
surrounding a large urban area (flat area).
Who: Younger, wealthier, and better-educated
upwardly mobile residents
Suburbs in the U.S.:
• detached single-family homes
• lower population density than inner city
neighborhoods.
• grew in the 20th century as a result of improved
roads
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• have increased commuting distance and numbers.
Discuss the causes of suburbanization in the U.S./Why
do most Americans want to live in the Suburbs?
• inner city push factors
• high housing density
• crime levels
• pollution
Pull Factors
1. Home ownership
2. Better schools
3. Space/yard
4. A wish to improve quality of life.
5. Housing prices
6. Peaceful retirement
Exurbanization is the movement from cities to rural
areas
Why?
Counterurbanisation is movement from large cities to
smaller and medium sized towns.
Who
• Retirees
• Tourist
• People with second homes
• Long distance/part time commuters
Changes in the towns
Tourist and elderly services not agriculture
Sprawl: The Good, Bad, and Ugly.
Sprawl: low density housing built on the edge of cities,
consuming a lot of land, auto-dependent
Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and
is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs
throughout the country.
And not contiguous to the existing built-up area.
Leapfrog Development: Urban development well
beyond the urban fringe, separated from the urban
fringe by rural land.
Negative aspects of sprawl:
1. Wastes Land
2. Wastes Tax money
3. Increases Traffic
4. Pollutes Air
5. Wastes Energy
6. Kills street life
7. Isolates people (elderly and housewives)
8. Paves over farmland
More than 12 percent of original cropland has already
been converted to urban uses in the Central Valley.
We now spend more time than ever in stressful traffic,
and nearly 30% our income on car payments, gas,
maintenance, and insurance. A great majority of our tax
dollars go towards the endless building of roads and
highways, with little left for valuable things like
education, public spaces, or train systems.
Gridlock is strangling our national and regional
economies as more and more time is wasted stuck in
traffic. This greatly reduces our nation's productivity
while raising the cost of doing business.
Two Ways To Grow
The traditional neighborhood and suburban sprawl.
They are polar opposites in appearance, function, and
character: they look different, they act differently, and
they affect us in different ways.
The traditional neighborhood was the fundamental
form of European settlement on this continent through
the Second World War. It continues to be the
dominant pattern of habitation outside the United
States, as it has been throughout recorded history.
The traditional neighborhood —represented by mixeduse, pedestrian-friendly communities of varied
population, either standing free as villages or grouped
into towns and cities— has proved to be a sustainable
form of growth. It allowed us to settle the continent
without bankrupting the country or destroying the
countryside in the process.
Suburban sprawl, now the standard North American
pattern of growth, ignores historical precedent and
human experience. It is an invention, conceived by
architects, engineers, and planners, and promoted by
developers that occurred after the Second World War.
Unlike the traditional neighborhood model, which
evolved organically as a response to human needs,
suburban sprawl is an idealized artificial system.
Unfortunately, this system is already showing itself to
be unsustainable.
Unlike the traditional neighborhood, sprawl is not
healthy growth; it is essentially self-destructive. Even at
relatively low population densities, sprawl consumes
land at an alarming rate, while producing
insurmountable traffic problems and exacerbating
social inequity and isolation. These particular outcomes
were not predicted.
Neither was the toll that sprawl exacts from America's
cities. As the ring of suburbia grows around most of our
cities, so grows the void at the center. Even while the
struggle to revitalize deteriorated downtown
neighborhoods and business districts continues, the
inner ring of suburbs is already at risk, losing residents
and businesses to fresher locations on a new suburban
edge.
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The Five homogeneous Components of Sprawl
They can be arranged in almost any way but the
dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each
component is strictly segregated from the others.
1. Housing subdivisions.
These places consist only of residences. They are
sometimes called villages, towns, and neighborhoods by
their developers, which is misleading, since those terms
denote places which are not exclusively residential and
which provide an experiential richness not available in a
housing tract. Subdivisions can be identified as such by
their contrived names, which tend toward the romantic
—Pheasant Mill Crossing (Snow Creek)—and often pay
tribute to the natural or historic resource they have
displaced.
2. Shopping centers,
also called strip centers, shopping malls, and big-box
retail. These are places exclusively for shopping. They
come in every size, from the 7-11 on the corner to the
Mall of America, but they are all places to which one is
unlikely to walk. The conventional shopping center can
be easily distinguished from its traditional main-street
counterpart by its lack of housing or offices, its singlestory height, and its parking lot between the building
and the roadway.
3. Office parks
and business parks. These are places only for work.
Derived from the modernist architectural vision of the
building standing free in the park, the contemporary
office park is usually made of boxes in parking lots more
likely to be surrounded by highways than by
countryside.
4. Civic institutions.
Public buildings: the town halls, churches, schools, and
other places where people gather for communication
and culture. In traditional neighborhoods, these
buildings often serve as neighborhood focal points, but
in suburbia they take an altered form: large and
infrequent, generally unadorned owing to limited
funding, surrounded by parking, and located nowhere in
particular.
For example the dispersion of surrounding homes often
makes schools in new suburbs difficult to walk to and
are designed based on the assumption of massive
automotive transportation.
5. Roadways.
The fifth component of sprawl consists of the miles of
pavement that are necessary to connect the other four
disassociated components. Since each piece of suburbia
serves only one type of activity, and since daily life
involves a wide variety of activities, the residents of
suburbia spend an unprecedented amount of time and
money moving from one place to the next. Since most
of this motion takes place in singly occupied
automobiles, even a sparsely populated area can
generate the traffic of a much larger traditional town.
Low-density land-use patterns require greater lengths
of pipe and conduit to distribute municipal services.
This explains why suburban municipalities are finding
that new growth fails to pay for itself at acceptable
levels of taxation.
SPRAWL IS NOT INEVITABLE.
It is not an unavoidable symptom of modern growth.
Sprawl is the direct result of specific government
transportation choices and policies, combined with
archaic zoning laws.
Smart growth includes:
1. Establishing urban growth boundaries
2. Establish greenbelts (open space around a city)
3. Preserving farmland
4. Investing in public transportation (cheaper, less
polluting, and more energy-efficient than the
automobile
5. New Urbanism: Dense, residential neighborhoods
within walking distance of schools, green-space, and a
downtown plaza (offices, shops and restaurants.)
1. Mixed-Use Development: development designed to
include multiple land uses, such as residential, retail,
educational, recreational, industrial, or offices, in order
to minimize the need for travel outside of the
development.
2. Take advantage of compact building design
3. Create housing opportunities for a range of
household types, family size and incomes
4. Create walkable neighborhoods
5. Reinvest in and strengthen existing communities
6. In-filling: developing the existing urban area, where
services are already available and can be provided at
lower costs.
Because of new urbanism the density gradient has
reduced the differences in densities found within an
urban area.
Arguments against New Urbanism:
1. Traffic congestion and air pollution is greater
2. Agricultural production not threatened
3. Increases housing prices
4. Automobile use will not decline
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