APHUG Simester 2 Vocab Final

Human Geography

The branch of geography that studies how human activity affects or is influenced by Earth’s surface

Cultural landscape

The built forms that cultural groups create in inhabiting Earth — farm fields, cities, houses, and so on — and the meaning, values, representations, and experiences associated with those forms

Hierarchical diffusion

Occurs when ideas leapfrog from one important person, community, or city to another, bypassing other persons, communities, or rural areas

Stimulus diffusion

Occurs when a specific trait is rejected, but the underlying idea is accepted

Contagious diffusion

The wavelike spread of ideas in the manner of a contagious disease or forest fire, moving throughout space without regard for hierarchy

Relocation diffusion

Occurs when individuals or groups with a particular idea or practice migrate from one location to another, thereby bringing the idea or practice to their new homeland

Cultural hearth

A focused geographic area where important innovations are born and from which they spread

Population density

The average number of people per unit of land area

Demographic transition model

How crude birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR) as well as the resulting rate of natural increase (RNI) change over time as countries go through industrialization and urbanization

Population pyramid

A very useful graphic device for comparing age and sex structure

Total fertility rate

The average number of children born per woman during her reproductive lifetime, considered to be from 15 to 49 years of age

Migration

The long-term or permanent relocation of individuals, families, or entire communities from one place to another

Push factor

Factors that cause people to be dissatisfied with their present locales and want to move somewhere else

Pull factor

The attributes of other places that make them appealing to potential migrants

Distance decay

Also known as the “first law of geography”; the idea that near things are more related than distant things, and interaction between two places decreases the farther apart they are

Guest worker

A person with temporary permission to work in another country

Genocide

The systematic killing of members of a racial, ethnic, or linguistic group

Pop Culture

Heterogeneous culture that is more influenced by key urban areas and quick to adopt new technologies; the opposite of a local culture

Folk Culture

A local culture that is no longer the dominant ethnic group within its traditional homeland because of migration, colonization, or political marginalization

Toponym

The names given to places

Lingua Franca

A language of communication and commerce spoken across a wide area where it is not a mother tongue

Universalizing religion

A religion that actively seeks new members and believes its message has universal importance and application

Ethnicity

A people of common ancestry and cultural tradition; characterized by a strong feeling of group identity

Cultural trait

A single aspect of a given culture or society

Placelessness

The feeling resulting from the standardization of the built environment; occurs where local distinctiveness is erased and many places end up with similar cultural landscapes

Isogloss

a geographic boundary line on a map marking the limit of a specific linguistic feature, such as a particular pronunciation, word usage, or grammatical structure

Sacred sites

Natural or human-made sites that possess religious meaning and are recognized as worthy of devotion, loyalty, fear, or esteem

Ethnic religion

A religion identified with a particular ethnic or tribal group that does not seek converts

Race

Historically defined by the physical characteristics of a group, especially skin color

Dialect

A regional variation of a language that is understood by people who speak other variations of that language

State

An independent political unit with a centralized authority that makes claim to sole legal, political, and economic jurisdiction over a region with defined boundaries

Nation-state

The ideal political geographical unit; one in which the nation’s geographic boundaries (a people and its culture) exactly match the state’s territorial boundaries (governance and authority)

Stateless nation

An ethnic group or nation that does not possess its own state and is not the majority population in any nation-state

World-systems theory

Wallerstein’s theory of economic development that regards world history as moving through a series of socioeconomic systems, culminating in the modern world system by about the year 1900

Core

States that have the most advanced industrial and military technologies, complex manufacturing systems, external political power, and the highest levels of wealth and mass consumption

Periphery

States that have relatively little industrial development, simple production systems focused mostly on agriculture and raw materials, and low levels of consumption of manufactured goods

Centripetal

A force that brings people together and unifies a neighborhood, society, or country

Centrifugal

A force that threatens the cohesion of a neighborhood, society, or country

Devolution

The movement of power from the central government to regional governments within the state

Supranational organization

International political body that nation-states establish in cooperation with their neighbors for mutual political, military, economic, or cultural gain

Primary economic activity

Industries that extract natural resources from the environment

Secondary economic activity

Industries that process the raw materials extracted by primary industries, transforming them into finished, usable forms

Tertiary economic activity

Industries that provide services to businesses and consumers, including all the different types of work necessary to transport and deliver goods and resources

Quaternary economic activity

The portion of the economy dedicated to intellectual and informational services, such as scientific research and development

Quinary economic activity

The portion of the economy where the highest-level management decisions are made in the areas of business, government, education, and science

First Agricultural Revolution

Period during which the early domestication and diffusion of plants and animals and the cultivation of seed crops led to the development of agriculture

Second Agricultural Revolution

Period that brought improved methods of cultivation, harvesting, and storage of farm produce that began in the late 1600s and continued through the 1930s

Von Thunen model

Green Revolution

The U.S.-supported development of high-yield seed varieties that increased the productivity of cereal crops and accompanying agricultural technologies for transfer to less developed countries

Commercial agriculture

Farming oriented exclusively toward the production of agricultural commodities for sale in the market

Food desert

Area with limited access to fresh, nutritious foods

GDP

A country’s GDP divided by its total population

Formal economy

The part of the economy that is officially recorded with the government

Informal economy

The part of any economy that is not officially recorded, monitored, or taxed by the government

EPZs

Industrial zone with special incentives to attract foreign investment to places where imported materials undergo processing or assembly before being re-exported

Maquiladoras

foreign-owned factories in Mexico, often located near the U.S. border, that import raw materials or components duty-free for assembly, processing, or manufacturing

NAFTA

A 1994 trade agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico; revised as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020

Agglomeration

Occur where firms cluster spatially in order to take advantage of geographic concentrations of skilled labor and industry suppliers, specialized infrastructure, and ease of face-to-face contact with industry participants

Time-Space compression

The decreasing distance between places, as measured by travel time or cost; often summarized by the phrase “the world is shrinking”

Outsourcing

The transfer of part of a firm’s internal operations to a third party

Growth pole

Geographically pinpointed center of economic activity organized around a designated industry, commonly in the high-tech sector

Technopole

a center of high-tech manufacturing and information-based quaternary industry

CBDs

A dense cluster of offices and shops located at a city’s most accessible point, usually its center

Suburbanization

The movement of people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts of a city

Megacities

A city with more than 10 million residents

Redlining

The practice of identifying high-risk neighborhoods on a city map and refusing to lend money to people who want to buy property in those neighborhoods

Blockbusting

A practice in which realtors persuade white homeowners in a neighborhood to sell their homes by convincing them that the neighborhood is declining due to black families moving in

New Urbanism

An approach to city planning that focuses on fostering European-style cities of dense settlements, attractive architecture, and housing of different types and prices within walking distance to shopping, restaurants, jobs, and public transportation

Primate City

A city that is much larger than any other city in the country and that dominates the country’s economic, political, and cultural life

Concentric Zone Model

A model of a city’s internal organization developed by E. W. Burgess that shows rings of factory production and different residential zones radiating outward from a central business district

Sector Model

A model of a city’s internal organization, developed by Homer Hoyt, that focuses on transportation and communication as the drivers of the city’s layout

Multiple Nuclei Model

A model of a city’s internal organization, developed by Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman, showing residential districts organized around several nodes (nuclei) rather than one central business district