GG102

World system

a socioeconomic system, under systems theory that encompasses part or all of the globe detailling the strctrual result of the sum of the interactions between polities

Urbanism

The urban way of life; associated with a declining sense of community and increasingly complex social and economic organization as a result of increasing size, density, and heterogeneity.

In an urban system within the area cities are interrelated components. The relationship btw cities can be looked at through

Function: goods and services they provide

Relationship btw their distribution & population (rank-size & primacy)

Central place theory

Seeks to explain the spatial distribution of urban centres with respect to their size and function

Central Place

An urban center that provides goods and services for the surrounding population such as form of hamlet, village, town, city or megacity

UN Habitat

indicates that urban growth is irreversible because of the shift to technological, industrial & service based economies. 2020 report states that urbanization should not be at the expense of rural development and that both should be symbolic and mutually enhancing.

Economoic restructuring

Common in postindustrial cities, shift from manufacturing sector to service sector, may cause problems b/c service sector is part time/low pay and jobs are located in suburbs

Filtering

Through time a housing unit is occupied sequentially by people from steadily changing income groups (usually downward filters with housing getting worn down as it ages)

Charter population

the dominant or majority cultural group in an urban area; the host community

Social Segregation

Looks at the distribution of minority groups & compares them to the charter population

Informal Recyclers

Cominant narrative/framing of poverty in the city as a disorder

Friction of distance (declining bc of globalization, leading to homegenization since the 1980's)

Measure of the restraining effect of distance on human interaction & movement. Greater time & cost are incurred with increasing distance.

Homgenization

The process by which different places increasingly resemble those found in other areas

Some argue that we are becoming a global village

A single global culture strongly associated with American charcteristics

Relevant varriables related to trade

Most important: Distance

- Specific resource base of a given area (needed materials are imported and surplus materials exported)

- Size and quality of the labour force (country with small labour force but plentiful resources is likely to produce and export raw materials)

- Amount of capital in a country (higher capital prompts export of high-quality, high-value goods)

Transnational Corporations

Able to command & control production and sales at global scale

Headquarters are Located in MDW (core countries) and manufacturing factories in LDW (periphery)

High wage, high skill employment opportunity in service sector located in MDW, Low wage low skill in manufacturing & processing sector located in LDW

Transmitting Information

Most significant space-shrinking & time-compressing technologies for economic globalization are ones that facilitate almost instant transmittion of info no matter the distance ICTs (info & communication technologies)

Globalization is highly congested & the process debated with two different thought trajectories

1. Understand what globalization is / is not & how is it it / is not transforming the world

2. How it can be measured

Skeptic view (globalization view)

Argues that globalization is a neo conservative ideology, does not see globalization as a historic process of innovational and technological change, regional differences, growing inequalities because of success and failures of globalizing. Globalization has failed to make world better place.

Canada & the long form census debate

In 2010 the Federal Conservative Government cancelled the mandatory long-form census

Argued it was to address financial & privacy cocnerns

Composition of a population

Common to understand the composition of a population thru age & sex structure using population pyramids: a diagrammatic representation of the age & sex composition of a population. Measure of biological sex at birth, not gender identity nord does it account for intersex individuals

3 General patterns in population pyramids

- Expanding: have higher percentage in the pre reporductive age group

- Diminishing: populations have low percentge in the pre reproductive age group

Stable

- current significant growth of aging population, life expectancy longer, improved tech, nutrition, healthcase

Disease and famine provide natrual corretions to overpopulation

Positive checks: any event or cicusmtance that shorterns the human lifespace

Negative checks: birth control, absisnence, postponing marriage. This world reduce fertility rates & birth rates and prevent the potentially disatrous impacts of positive checks

Demographic Transition (more realistic model than Malthusian theory)

-Fertility & mortality rates are directly tied to economic development of a country region or place with the demographic transition demostrating the historical shift of birth and death rates from high to low levels in a populaton

-Mortality declines before fertility, resulting in substatial population increase during the transition phase

Demographic transition Stage 1

Stage 1: most of human history unpredicatable food supply, with war and disease. High crude birth & death rate, with births and deaths equal. Death rate fluctuates with war and diseases, lots of lack of clean drinking war and sewage. All contrubuted to limited population growth. No country is at this stage anymore

Demographic Transition Stage 3

Large decline in crude birth rate following decline in death, advancements in birth ccontrol, declining infant mortality, great empowerement of women

ecocentric

a worldview that places equal value on all living organisms and the ecosystems in which they live

Catastrophist

An adherent to the perspective that the current appearance of the earth can be best explained as having resulted from a series of natural catastrophes- for example, floods and volcanoes

Urban structure

Influenced by the regional geography of a location, including the history, culture, & role of the city within the world-system

Urban area (challanges defining)

spatail extent of the built-up area surrounding & including an incorporated municipality such as a city; typically assessed by some combination of population density

Urban ecology (changing patterns)

the social and demographic composition of city districts & neighbourhoods

Cities

Function as an economic, political, cultural & environmental system - a set of interrelated components or objects linked to form a unified whole

Hinterland

The market area surrounding a central place; the spatial area from which the providers of goods and services in a central place draw their customers

Size of a hinterland is determine by

Threshold: minimum population needed for specific goods & services

Range: avg distance ppl are willing to travel for the good or service (ppl will go further for expensive or higher quality service/item)

Small Centers

Provide low-order goods & services that cater to the local population & for which ppl do not have to travel far

Neighborhoods

a part of the city tat displays some internal homogenity regarding a type of housing may be charactized by similar income level & enthnic identity, usually reflecting certain shared social values

Four ovearching social trends that may affect the social geography of a city (ECIR)

-Economic restructuring

-Changing demographic & household info

-Increased internationalization

- Retrenchment of the welfare state

Changing demographic & household formation

Demographics are getting older due to longer life expectancy & lower fertility rates.

Household size is decreasing bc less babies being born

More diversified family structures bc now grandparents live with their family

Increased internationalization

Deepening class differences within the same immigrant communities (in the past only upper class Indians would come to Canada / only railroad workers would come from China, but now ppl of all different classes come from the same country

Retrenchment of the welfare state

Reduction in subsidized housing, challanges of affordable housing, decline in social assistance, welfare payments

In developed places there are 2 idological ways to think about housing

1. A commodity, consumer good (capitalist pov)

2. An entitlement, universal right despite the ability to pay (socialist pov)

Redlining

A spatially discriminatory practice favoured by financial institutions that identified parts of the city regarded as high risk in terms of loans for property purchase and home improvement

Residential mobility

Decision to move residences within a city can be viewed thru the push & pull factors that reflect spatial inequalities

Push & pull factors

Wanting a bigger/nicer house

Availability of schools, parks, rec facilities, criminal activity relating to that neighborhood

Renting to ownership

Gentrification

A process of inner city urban neighborhood social change resulting from the in-movement of higher income groups (identity of area changes over time)

Segregation

The spatial seperation of subgroups within the wider urban population, creates clearly distinguishable residential areas (based on income, class, ethnicitym religion, other cultural varriable)

Minority populations (groups)

a population subgroup that is seen, or that views itself as somehow different from the general (charter) population, this difference is normally express by ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, sexual oritentation, lifetyle or income

2 Forms of Social Segregation

Congregation: the residential clustering of specific populations (minority groups) usually as a result of discrimination (voluntary & comes with social advantages + political power)

Involuntary segregation: The residential clustering of specific populations (minority groups) usually as a result of discrimination (thru discrimination in the housing or labour market)

index of dissimilarity

A measure of segregation that indicates how isolated two groups are from each other in a particular area or city.

Isolation Index

focusses on daily interactions of minority groups btw each other and comparing those to other minority groups.

Segregation can form

Encalves

Ghettos

Colonies

Encalve

spatial concentrations of minority groups, use them to protect themselves (economic, cultural, social practices)

Ex. Jewish districts in North Eastern parts of USA and Europe

Ghetto

created from long-lasting discrimination, where charter population sets out to limit minority populations and treat them as if they're inferior (due to race, religion)

Colony

combination of both (discrimination or voluntary), do not last as long as previous 2. form when there are relatively small differences btw charter population and minority groups. Temporary and short-lived process. It is a state of a group before they assimilate into the charter (majority) population

Informal sector

- Income-earning activites unregulated by the state in contexts where similar activities are so regulated

- Has grown due to globalization and leaves ppl vulnerable more than work in formal employment

Geographies of survival

Connect with urban inequality and are made worse by neoliberal trends in governance (retrenchment of the welfare state)

Globalization

Combination of economic, political & cultural changes that have accelarted since 1980 bringing about a seemingly ever-increasing interconnectedness of people * places

Human geography is a discipline in distance

Our location decisions are made to minimize the effort required to overcome the friction of distance

Locations converge thru time-space convergence

A decrease in the friction of distance btw locations as a result of improvements in transportation & communication technologies

3 Processes of the evolution of transport systems (to navigate the world we have worked to better facilitated movement across space (IDA)

Intensification: filling up of space

Diffusion: spread acrosss space

Articulation: development of more efficient spatial structure

Modes of transportation that are significant in discusssing distance and globalization

-Water: cheapest and easy but is slow and routes aren't always direct, not all locations are accesible

-Railroad: second cheapest, good for moving bulk cargo, matain railways is expensive

-Air: most expensive, important for tourism, funded by governments, transporting luxury goods, light weight goods

-Road

-Contanerization: made ports more efficenet, cost effective and less labour intensive, important in globalization

Movement of goods from one location to another

Reflects spatial variations in resources, technology and culture.

Influential trade varriables are linked to the level of economic development with a clear spatial inequality that can be explained thru:

Dependency Theory: The idea that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor & underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former

World Systems Theory: Multidisciplinary approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system as the primary unit of social analysis

Commodity flows can be explained thru 3 variables

• Complementary: recognizes that different places have different resources.

• Intervening opportunity: Attempts to describe the likelihood of migration. Concludes that the likelihood is influenced most by the opportunities to settle in the destination rather than distance or population pressure at the starting point -

• Transferability: ease with which a commodity can be moved

Hyperglobalist (globalization view)

comes from the idea that the world is flat and there is an end to geography because of improved communications and the free movement of capital - strength of trade, friction, of distance has decrease. Global economy is seen as a place of equal opportunity because of the free market. Globalization more intense over time, is the new age.

Transformalist (globalization view)

In between skeptic and hyperglobalist, believe globalization is exaggerared but geography still matters

How to measure globalization

- The KOF index of globalization

- DHL global connectedness index

To understand the relationship btw population & our human world we draw upon demography:

the study of human populations with a particular focus on the spatial dimensions

To understand the spatial distribution of the population (where ppl are located & how many) we must focus on (CDDP)

-Concentration: the extent to which a small # of regions account for a large porprotion of a certain economic phenomenon (ex. unemployment)

-Dispersion: physical dispersion of group members across geographically distant locations, thus neccessitating use of tech support for group task

-Density: # of things - which could be ppl, animals, plants or objects - in a certain area

- Pattern: a spatial observation that one place/situation proves to be part of a larger system containing the same observation

Age & sex structure in Canada

1861: high immigration & fertility = more young ppl expanding the shape

1921: narrowing base effects of immigration still visible

1981: extremely low birth & death rates, bulge from 15-35 yrs old (baby boomers)

2017: population getting older, bulge moves up

2050: predicted to age even more, with higher bulge

Effects of aging population

Decrease in labour force & higher demand in healthcare

Kerela: Ghost town

Parts of India where fertility has falled below replacement levels and migration has left behind ghost towns inhabited by the elderly

Malthusian theory

- Dr. Thomas Reverend Malthus

- First to theorize relationship btw population & resources stating that the capacity of the population to grow is greater than the power of the earth ton provide resources

- Human population is the greatest impact on the earth and its resources

- The passion for sex is greater than power of the earth to produce resources

Population growth explained thru Malthusian theory

Population increase geometric: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32

Food production increase arithmetic: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

Critiques of Malthusian Theory

-Population growth could stimulate economic growth

-Increasing population leads to agricultural innovation

-Uneven development is political

-Patriarchal

- More ppl gives you more power

Demographic Transition Stage 2

Crude death rate falls substantially because of the onset of urbanization and industrialization, relation to santitization, health advancements, technological improvement

Demographic Transition Stage 4

Equilirbrium is met, birth & death is similar, population growth will continue because of large base. However birth rates are below replacement, we have aging population

Anthropocene

the modern geological era during which humans have dramatically affected the environment

Cornucopian

A worldview that we will find ways to make Earth's natural resources meet all of our needs indefinitely and that human ingenuity will see us through any difficulty.

Our human world has a long history of impacts on the natrual environment including 5 fundemental driving forces

1. We have small usually insignficant environmental changes that over time lead to more serious impacts bc of repition

2. Tech developments espeically those related to energy demands

3. Changing lifesyles connect to tech advancement

4. Growing human populations, and as they relate to use of tech & living standards

5. Growing global interconnectedness

Environmental determinism

A view that cultures and human behaviours are directly shaped by physical environmental circumstances in contrast with possibilism

Possibilism

The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives.

Political Ecology

Stresses that human-environmental relations can be adequately understood only be relating patterns of resource use to political and economic forces