Unit 1: Thinking Geographically

Key Concepts:

• Space is the geometric surface of the Earth

  • Objects on the Earth’s spatial surface are defined by their location and are separated by some degree of distance from other things

  • Activity space is referred to as the area wherein activity occurs on a daily basis

• Place is an area of bounded space of some human importance

  • A place-name, or more technically a toponym is assigned to a location when human importance is recognized

  • Regions are a type of place, and there are other categories of places, such as urban places, places of work, resource locations, and transportation nodes

  • Attributes of a place change over time

    • The concept of sequent occupancy is considered over a long term: in other words, the succession of groups and cultural influences throughout a place’s history

    • There are several different historical layers that contribute to a place-specific culture, society, local politics, and economy

• Scale is the relationship of an object or place to the Earth as a whole

  • Map scale describes the ratio of distance on a map to distance in the real world in absolute terms

  • Relative scale, or scale of analysis refers to the level of aggregation, or in other words, the level at which you group things together for examination.

    • Scales can range from local to city and state, from regional to national to continental, or to the international and global scales

• Regions are categorized into three groups: formal, functional, and vernacular

• Formal regions are areas of bounded space that possess some homogeneous characteristic or uniformity

• A homogeneous characteristic can be a common language

• Regional boundaries differ based on the type of region.

  • Culture regions tend to have fuzzy borders

  • Political regions boundaries are finite and well-defined

  • Environmental region boundaries are transitional and measurable

• The environmental transition zone between two bioregions is known as an ecotone

• Functional regions or nodal regions, are areas that have a central place, or node, that is a focus or point of origin that expresses some practical purpose

• Market areas are a type of functional region

• Since outlet malls are often placed far apart, there will also be a larger area of influence for the mall that will have shoppers traveling from longer distances

  • An intervening opportunity is an attraction at a shorter distance that takes precedence over an attraction that is farther away.

• Vernacular regions are based upon the perception or collective mental map of the region’s residents

  • The overall concept can vary within the region due to personal or group variations

• Location is considered in both absolute and relative terms

  • Absolute location defines a point or place on the map using coordinates such as latitude and longitude.

    • The Prime Meridian is 0° longitude and runs through Great Britain because the means to accurately calculate longitude at sea was developed by the British Royal Navy.

    • The equator is 0° latitude. The North and South Poles are 90° latitude.

• Time Zones are divided up into 15-degree-wide longitudinal zones around the world with some exceptions. This is because 360° divided by 24 hours a day equals 15°.

• Relative location, by contrast, refers to the location of a place compared to a known place or geographic feature.

• Site and Situation are locational concepts that work together

  • Site refers to the physical characteristics of a place

  • Situation refers to the place’s interrelatedness with other places

• Distance is considered in absolute and relative terms

  • Linear absolute distance is the distance between two places as measured in linear units such as miles or kilometers

  • The concept of distance decay and Tobler’s Law is used to explain relative distance.

    • Distance decay (gravity) means that the farther away different places are from a place of origin, the less likely interaction will be with the original place

    • Tobler’s law states that all places are interrelated, but closer places are more related than farther ones.

    • Friction of distance is the length of distance that becomes a factor that inhibits the interaction between two points.

• Space-Time Compression is decreased time and relative distance between places

  • Technology like modes of transportation or the Internet can reduce the relative distance between places

• Human-Environmental Transportation is the effect that humans have on their environment, and vice versa

Spatial Interactions

• Central Places are any node of human activity and are most often the centers of economic exchange.

  • Central place theory was developed in the 1930s by the German geographer Walter Christaller

    • city location and the level of urban economic exchange could be analyzed using central places within hexagonal market areas, which overlapped at different scales

• Core and Periphery relationships are displayed by different regional, cultural, economic, political, and environmental phenomena and human activities

  • CBD (central business district) is the core of the urban landscape, a country’s capital is the core of its political landscape.

  • the core does not have to be exactly in the center of the peripheral region

Pattern

• A cluster is when things are grouped together on the Earth’s surface

• Agglomeration is when clustering occurs purposefully around a central point or a economic growth pole

• A random pattern is when there is no rhyme or reason to the distribution of a spatial phenomenon

• Objects that are normally ordered but appear dispersed are scattered

• If it is a straight line, the pattern is linear

• If it is a wavy line, the pattern is sinous

• Land survey patterns have an effect on the property lines and political boundaries of states and provinces.

  • Until the 1830s, land surveys used natural landscape features to divide land on a system of metes and bounds

  • A rectilinear township and range survey system based upon lines of latitude and longitude

  • Long-lot patterns have a narrow frontage along a road or waterway with a very long lot shape behind.

Density

• Arithmetic density is most often calculated as the number of things per square unit of distance.

• Physiologic density measures the number of people per square unit of arable land, meaning land that either is actively farmed or has the potential to be

• Agricultural density refers only to the number of farmers per square unit of arable land

Diffusion Patterns

• There are a number of different ways and patterns in which human phenomena diffuse spatially, or spread across the Earth’s surface.

• A hearth is the point of origin or place of innovation

• Expansion diffusion pattern originates in a central place and then expands outward in all directions to other locations.

• Hierarchical diffusion originates in a first-order location and then moves down to second-order locations and from each of these to subordinate locations at increasingly local scales

• Contagious diffusion begins at a point of origin and then moves outward to nearby locations, especially those on adjoining transportation lines

• A stimulus diffusion pattern is a general or underlying principle that diffuses and then stimulates the creation of new products or ideas

• Relocation diffusion pattern begins at a point of origin and then crosses a significant physical barrier, such as an ocean, a mountain range, or a desert, and then relocates on the other side

Geographic Tools

• Scientific maps are the results of spatial analysis—the mathematical analysis of one or more quantitative geographic patterns

Types of Maps

• Topographic maps show the contour lines of elevation, as well as the urban and vegetation surface with road, building, river, and other natural landscape features

• Thematic maps express a particular subject and does not show land forms for other features.

  • Choropleth maps is a thematic map that expresses the geographic variability of a particular theme using color variations.

  • Isoline maps calculate data values between points across a variable surface.

  • Dot density maps use dots to express the volume and density of a particular geographic feature.

  • Flow-line maps use lines of varying thickness to show the direction and volume of a particular geographic movement pattern.

  • Cartograms use simplified geometries to represent real-world places.

• Mental map: the cognitive image of landscape in the human mind

• Map scale is the “absolute” form of the scale concept.

  • Linear map scale expresses distance on the map surface.

  • The ratio scale of the map shows the mathematical relationship between the distance on the map compared to the real distance on the Earth’s surface.

  • A large-scale map is one with a ratio that is a comparatively large real number

  • A small-scale map is one with a ratio that is a comparatively very small real number

Projections

• Each given projection creates different levels of accuracy in terms of size and shape distortion for different parts of the Earth.

  • accuracy is based upon two concepts: area preservation and shape preservation

  • Equal-area projections attempt to maintain the relative spatial science and the areas on the map.

    • distortion of the actual shape of polygons

  • Conformal projections attempt to maintain the shape of polygons on the map.

    • distortion of the relative area from one part of the map to the other

• Robinson projection and the Goode’s homolosine projection balance area and form, sacrificing a bit of both to create a more visually practical representation of the Earth’s surface.

MODELS

• A model is an abstract generalization of real-world geographies that share a common pattern

  • Spatial models attempt to show the commonalities in pattern among similar landscapes

  • Urban models try to show how different cities have similar spatial relationships and economic or social structures**.**

  • Demographic transition models are non-spatial models that use population data to construct a general model of the dynamic growth in national scale populations without reference to space.

  • A gravity model is a mathematical model that is used in a number of different types of spatial analysis

    • used to calculate transportation flow between two points, determine the area of influence of a city’s businesses, and estimate the flow of migrants to a particular place

    • Location1 Population x Location2

Why Are Models Used?

• Models are a way to picture geographical patterns that are not normally visible to the human eye and answer theoretical questions

• The concentric zone model can be modified to create a graph showing the cost-to-distance relationship in urban real estate prices.

Geographic Technology

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) became practical with the onset of the desktop computer in the 1970s.

  • incorporate one or more data layers in a computer program capable of spatial analysis and mapping.

• The Global Positioning System (GPS) utilizes a worldwide network of satellites, which emit a measurable radio signal

• Aerial photography and satellite-based remote sensing make up a large amount of the geographic and GIS data used today

  • Aerial photographs are images of the Earth from an aircraft, printed on film, but digital camera usage is on the increase

  • Remote-sensing satellites use a computerized scanner to record data from the Earth’s surface

Unit 2: Population and Migration Patterns & Processes

Key Concepts:

Basic Population Statistics

• Population growth involves two main concepts: rate of natural increase (RNI) and the demographic equation.

  • The demographic equation uses uses birth rates, death rates, immigration, and emigration statistics to show population growth

• Birth rate, also known as natality, is the crude birth rate (CBR) and an annual statistic

  • High birth rates: rural agricultural Third-World countries

  • Low birth rates:  urbanized industrial and service-based economies

  • Ex: total number of infants born living is counted for one calendar year and then calculated

    • CBR: Number of Live Births/Total Population x 1,000

• Death rate, also known as the mortality rate, is the crude death rate (CDR) and an annual statistic calculated in the same way as the birth rate.

  • High death rates: a country that is experiencing war, disease, or famine, such as poor Third-World countries experiencing poverty, poor nutrition, epidemic disease, and a lack of medical care.

  • Green Revolution: (increased food and nutrition) and access to sanitation, education, and health care

    • CDR: Number of Deaths/Total Population x 1,000

• The rate of natural increase (RNI), or the natural increase rate (NIR) is the annual percentage of population growth of that country for that one-year period.

  • RNI: Birth Rate - Death Rate/10%

• Negative RNI means the population has shrunk

  • Happens in in highly urbanized First-World countries and where the traditional roles of women in the country of mother and housewife have deteriorated significantly

• Reduced fecundity: when the majority of women are heavily engaged in business, they are far less likely to have children

  • Double-income no-kid (DINK) households and single-parent–single-child homes are far more common; higher rates of divorce

• Natural increase does not account for immigration or emigration

  • Ex: a country with a high rate of natural increase can have an unexpectedly low long-term population prediction if there is a large amount of emigration

• Doubling Time: how long it would take for a country to double in size

  • Formula: 70Rate of Natural Increase

• To estimate the RNI for each year in the future by examining a country’s position: (Pop. × RNI1) + (Pop. × RNI2) + (Pop. × RNI3) + (Pop. × RNIn) = Future Population

• Net Migration Rate (NMR): the number of immigrants minus the number of emigrants for every thousand members of the population; can be negative

  • Formula: Number of Immigrants - Number of Emigrants/Population /1,000

• Population Growth Percentage Rate = (Birth Rate - Death Rate) + Net Migration Rate/10%

• Total fertility rate (TFR) is the estimated average number of children born to each female of birthing age (15 to 45)

  • Formula: Number of Children Born/Women Aged 15 to 45

• Replacement rate is a TFR of 2.1

  • A large population must have 2.1 children per female of birthing age.

• Dependency ratio provides the number of people too young or too old to work compared to the number of people in the work force

MODELS

• The demographic transition model (DTM) is a theory of how population changes over time and provides insights into issues of migration, fertility, economic development, industrialization, urbanization, labor, politics, and the role of women.

  • Newly industrialized countries (NICs) can also be placed on the model, but you have to change the dates as to when they reach the significant turning points in their history

• The epidemiological transition model (ETM) specifically accounts for development due to the increasing population growth rates caused by medical advances

  • The phase of development is directly followed by a stabilization of population growth as the procreation rates decline

  • Can predict how its population will change over time and speculate as to how much it can grow in size

    • Ex: we can estimate a population projection that the planet’s population has reached only about two-thirds of its potential

• The S-Curve of Population

  • Ex: an animal population that receives a vast amount of food or removes predators from their habitat will result rapid population growth followed by a plateau or decline due to a population reaching or exceeding the area’s carrying capacity

Stage-By-Stage

• Stage One:

  • Historically characterized by pre-agricultural societies engaged in subsistence farming and transhumance

  • Birth rates and death rates fluctuate due to climate, warfare, disease, and ecological factors, but overall, both rates are high

  • Child mortality and infant mortality were very high

  • Result: little population growth until the later part of stage one when death rates begin to decline; RNI is generally low or negative

  • Present-day Third-World countries engaged in long periods of warfare have late stage one characteristics

• Stage Two:

  • Typically agriculturally based economies

  • Birth rates remain high and life expectancy rises while death rates decline over time; RNI increases

  • Infant and child mortality is still an issue due to a lack of medical care and

  • Poor nutrition for expectant mothers and infants

  • The vast majority of populations in stage two countries live in rural regions as a result of agriculture’s economic prominence

• Stage Two 1/2:

  • NIC countries are characterized by economies that focus on manufacturing as the primary form of economic production and employment

  • Birth and death rates decline

  • Rapid population growth; high RNIs; rapidly increasing rate of urbanization

    • Migrants responding to the pull factor of employment opportunity rapidly fill the cities

• Stage Three:

  • Historically where most “industrialized” or manufacturing-based countries were found in the transition

  • Shifted their economies to a more service-based focus

  • Birth and death rates decline due to urbanization

  • The diffusion of fertility control due to access to health care and the availability of contraceptives as well as reducing the diffusion of disease due to medical advances

• Stage Four and Five

  • Birth and death rates converge to result in limited population growth and population decline

  • Service industries like finance, insurance, real estate, health care, and communications that drive the economy; manufacturing is dying

  • Ex: in the United States, services are 80 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and manufacturing is only 20 percent

  • Both the final stages of the DTM and ETM occur when birth rates bottom out into the lower teens

  • Zero population growth (ZPG) (RNI of 0.0 percent): birth rates reach the same level as death rates

  • Elderly population means fewer people investing their money:

    • Causing less money to circulate through the society, which results in stagnation

    • Lower tax base to support the rest of the nation

    • Shortage of labor supply

• Countries that are near or below zero population growth levels offer incentives to citizens to have more children.

  • With so few children being born, fewer people enter the workforce over time

  • Become dependent upon foreign guest workers

• Many former Communist countries of Eastern Europe have stage four demographic characteristics

  • Economic restructuring has brought economic, political, and social hardship to many communities

• Malthusian Theory states that the global population would one day expand to the point where it could not produce enough food to feed everyone.

  • Malthus saw was that food production did grow over time but in a slow arithmetic manner, while human population grows exponentially

  • As new food products and methods were adopted, another large volume of food would be added to global production and supply

  • This meant that food production has continued to stay ahead of population growth.

• The science of genetics did not make any impact on global food production until the 1950s

• Neo-Malthusians warn that a Malthusian catastrophe could still occur.

1. Sustainability. If too many of the world’s current growing areas are damaged, can food production keep up with the increased demand?

2. Increasing Per Capita Demand. Can the planet provide enough food when all 10 billion of us eat like the First World does today?

3. Natural Resource Depletion**.** Can a world with 10 billion people have enough material to house everyone, enough fuel to heat all the houses, and enough food to feed everyone?

Population Pyramids

• Graphical way to visualize the population structure of a country or place as well as the gender and age distribution of the population

General Principles:

• Males are always on the left of the pyramid and females are on the right

• Each bar is an age cohort, generally made up of five-year sets

• The origin (0-value) of each bar graph is the center and increases in value as you move left or right outward from the center

• A gap in data for both males and females is likely a sign of past war inside that country, epidemic disease, or famine.

• The general shape of the pyramid is reveals the character of the country, state, province, or city that is being diagrammed.

• increased mortality from disease and old age causes significant declines in the elder population, causing the top to shrink

• Population density is calculated in two main ways.

  • Arithmetic density is the number of people per square unit of land

  • Physiologic density is the number of people per square unit of farmland

    • Important in understanding the geography of countries where the amount of arable land is limited

• The population center of a country is found by averaging the spatial weight of population across the country.

• Overpopulation is a major concern both in resource-poor regions and across the globe.

  • Nonrenewable energy sources will be depleted if conservation efforts and population control methods are not mandated by governments

    • Alleviating concerns over decreasing amounts of personal space

Migration

• Migrants are generally those who voluntarily move from location to location.

• Many countries experience internal migrations that significantly change the countries’ population distributions.

  • Interregional, or internal, migrants: those who move from one region of the country to another

  • Transnational migration: occurs when migrants move from one country to another.

  • Forced migration: people may be taken or coerced from their homes for forced labor through human trafficking or enslavement

  • Undocumented immigrants: people who come seeking refuge or employment opportunities but do not have government authorization

  • Amnesty programs: allow undocumented immigrants the opportunity to apply for official status or citizenship without facing arrest or deportation

  • Step migration: occurs when people move up in a hierarchy of locations, with each move to a more advantageous or economically prosperous place

  • Chain migration: occurs when a pioneering individual or group settles in a new place, establishing a new migrant foothold.

  • Life-course changes: when people move because of major changes in the course of their lives.

Push and Pull Factors

• Push factors are specific things about the rural agricultural landscape and livelihood that force people off the farm

  • (ex: armed conflict, environmental pollution, increased land costs)

• Pull factors are specific things about cities that draw people to the urban landscape

  • (ex: job opportunities, medical care, education, service access, entertainment)

Unit 3: Cultural Patterns & Processes

Key Concepts:

• Culture: the shared experience, traits, and activities of a group of people who have a common heritage

Components of Culture:

• Art

• Architecture

• Language

• Music

• Film and Television

• Food

• Clothing

• Social Interaction

• Religion

• Folklore

• Land Use

• Each component of culture is expressed in a multitude of ways that signify and symbolize cultural influences

• Cultural synthesis (syncretism): the blending together of two or more cultural influences

  • EX: Country music is often thought of as a product of American culture and is strongly tied to folk music traditions. However, the mixture of musical sounds, vocabulary, rhythms, and instruments from the Scots-Irish, the German, African immigrants, and enslaved people in the American South and Appalachia came together to form a new style of music.

• Combined, the many components come together to identify and define a single culture group, or nation

• Art is important as an identifier of groups and a source of local pride

Architecture

• Architectural forms that are the product of cultural influence are found within the built environment of the human landscape

• Modern and contemporary architecture: when new buildings are constructed using innovative designs

  • Modern means architecture developed during the 20th century that expresses geometric, ordered forms

    • (EX: the rectangular steel and glass skyscrapers built in the 1970s-1980s)

  • Contemporary architecture of the present is more organic, with the use of curvature

    • Incorporates green energy technologies, recycled materials, or nontraditional materials (EX: metal sheeting on the exterior)

  • Postmodern: a category within contemporary that means that the design abandons the use of blocky rectilinear shapes in favor of wavy, crystalline, or bending shapes in the form of the home or building

• Traditional architecture can express one of two patterns in building type:

1. New commercial buildings incorporate the efficiency and simplicity of modern architecture into a standard building design with squared walls and utilize traditional materials like stone, brick, steel, and glass

2. Housing based on folk house designs from different regions of the country

Housing Types:

• New England: small one-story pitched-roof Cape Cod style or the irregular roof Saltbox with one long pitched roof in front and a sort of low-angle roof in back

• Federalist or Georgian: refers to the housing styles of the late 1700s and early 1800s in Anglo-America.

  • Often two- or three-story urban townhomes connected to one another

  • Windows and rooflines featured classical Greek and Roman designs and stone carvings.

  • Symmetrical homes with central doorways and equal numbers of windows on each side of the house

• The I-house: a loose form of Federalist and Georgian influence on the average family home in the United States and Canada

  • Simple rectangular I-houses have a central door with one window on each side of the home’s front and three symmetrical windows on the second floor

  • Later I-houses moved the door to the side and added onto the back or side of the house

  • Fireplaces on each end of the house and an even- pitched roof

Religious Buildings and Places:

• Christian: traditional houses of worship tend to have a central steeple or two high bell towers in the front of the building

  • The steeple is typical of smaller churches, and bell towers are found in larger churches and cathedrals.

  • Symbolically, older churches, cathedrals, and basilicas feature a cross-shaped floor plan.

• Hindu: temples and shrines tend to have a rectangular-shaped main body and feature one or more short towers of carved stone

  • The towers often feature stepped sides and display carvings of the heads and faces of deities

• Buddhist: temples and shrines vary depending on which Buddhist tradition is followed in the region

  • In Nepal and Tibet, a temple can be a stupa, with a dome or tower featuring a pair of eyes

  • In East Asia, the tower-style pagoda has several levels, each of which features winged roofs extending outward

  • Temples and shrines in China and Japan feature one- or two-story buildings with large, curved, winged roof

  • Temples are often guarded by large lion statues

  • Temples in Southeast Asia tend to have several towers with thin pointed spires that point outward at an angle

• Islamic: mosques can take a variety of forms, though many have central domes

  • A mosque is one or more minarets, narrow towers that are pointed on top

  • Almost all mosques are built on an angle that places the main prayer area toward Mecca

• Judaic: there is not a common architectural design style to synagogues.

  • The most holy place in Judaism is the Wailing Wall, which have old foundation walls that feature large rectangular stone blocks where Jews pray and place written prayers in the cracks between the blocks

Language

• the United States federal government has not designated an official language

• Monolingual: knowing one language only

• other states accept that they have a large multilingual immigrant population and have made provisions to provide services

• Canada is bilingual because there are two official languages: English and French.

• Depending upon where you are in a larger linguistic region, the dialect of a common language is different

  • (EX: the English spoken by English people and Australian people sounds similar, there is a distinct “strain” of English spoken in Australia)

  • A variety of different word sounds and vocabulary

• Received pronunciation: King’s English or “posh” English

• Cockney English: the language of the working-class areas of the East London docklands and surrounding neighborhoods, which sounds distinctly not posh

• Cockney rhyming slang: an odd but humorous use of code phrases to describe everyday situations

• Pidgin languages are simplified forms of the language that use key vocabulary words and limited grammar

• French Creole is spoken, which incorporates continental French with African dialectal sounds and vocabulary

• French itself has long been a language used to bridge the linguistic gap between people of different national heritage

  • The term lingua franca was coined to describe its utility as a bridge language

• English is accepted as the global lingua franca as different forms of popular culture media, the Internet, and the business world are dominated by the English language

Major Language Families:

• There are a small number of major language families represented by the early or prehistoric language roots

  • Can be broken into language groups or even language subfamilies

• The Indo-European concept is derived from linguistic analysis and genetic evidence of prehistoric migrations from the Indian subcontinent into Europe

Largest members of language families:

• Indo-European (2.9 billion people)

• Sino-Tibetan (1.3 billion people)

• Niger-Congo (435 million people)

• Afro-Asiatic (375 million people)

• Austronesian (346 million people, from Southeastern

• Asia, Oceania, and Hawaii)

• Dravidian (230 million people, from on and around the

• Indian subcontinent)

• Altaic (165 million people, from Eastern Europe through

• Central and Eastern Asia)

• Japanese (123 million people)

• Tai-Kadai (81 million people)

• Two competing theories regarding the origins of European language:

  • Anatolian theory: a group of migrants from the Indian subcontinent, and their language, were for some time concentrated in the peninsula that makes up most of present-day Turkey. Then, a large migration crossed the Hellespont into continental Europe and spread outward into a relatively unpopulated region.

  • Kurgan theory: the same group of migrants from the Indian subcontinent instead made their way into Central Asia, and then migrated across the Eurasian stepped into Central and Western Europe, taking their language with them.

    • Genetic research shows that almost all Europeans are derived genetically from populations that inhabited the Indian subcontinent in prehistoric times

Music

• Music is a form of nonmaterial culture that has geographic roots and regional variation

• Folk music: music that is original to a specific culture

  • Often incorporate instruments unique to that region or have orchestrations that are specific to that culture

  • Folk song lyrics often incorporate cultural stories and religious tradition, which can be described as folklore

• Popular culture generates a global flow of pop music that often has the effect of drowning out local folk music traditions from radio and other media

  • The most popular folk music type in the region is bluegrass, which originated in Kentucky

    • Heavily influenced contemporary country music, and recently, rock and roll

• Recordings sold today as World Music are actually products of folk musicians from other culture groups

  • (EX: the band, Gypsy Kings, are from France, but their families had left Spain decades earlier due to persecution by the Franco-led fascist government of Romani in Europe)

Film and Television

• Different forms of film and television are important signs of a cultural imprint on the land

• Media forms are major conduits for cultural globalization

Food

• A material form of culture that varies regionally and is rooted in a number of geographic ways

• Continental cuisine: the formal food traditions that emerged from mainland Europe in the 1800s

  • Embodied in haute cuisine, where traditionally a main meat course is served with a flour-, cream-, or wine-based sauce and side dishes of vegetables and potatoes

• Nouvelle cuisine: the contemporary form of the continental styles mainly from France, Spain, and Italy

• Fusion cuisine: when more than one global tradition is incorporated in dishes

• All of these forms are based on original forms of folk food dishes

  • (EX: Sushi is a simple but artistic form of folk food from Japan)

Clothing

• Different clothing styles are other signs of a cultural imprint on the landscape

• The way people dress is an important sign of their ethnicity

Social Interaction

• Culturally constructed: traditions devised by a specific culture group

• Physical greetings are a basic example of culturally different social interaction:

  • A handshake is a common physical greeting in the West

  • The bow still holds as the primary formal greeting in Japan

  • Formal, non-touching cheek kissing is a greeting in many countries

• personal space also varies from country to country

  • (EX: it is considered rude not to sit in empty seat in Peru)

Religion

• Specific religions are drawn from a number of larger global groups and can be characterized by their expanse

• Universalizing religions: accept followers from all ethnicities worldwide

• Ethnic religions: confined to members of a specific culture group

• All organized religions have one or more books of scripture, said to be written of divine origin

• Formal doctrines: govern religious practice, worship, and ethical behavior in society.

• Compromising religions: have the ability to reform or integrate other beliefs into their doctrinal practices

• Fundamentalists: have little interest in compromising their beliefs or doctrines and strictly adhere to scriptural dictates

• Syncretic religions: synthesize the core beliefs from two or more other religions

  • (EX: Sikhs incorporate principles from both Islam and Hinduism)

• Three Major Traditions of Belief Systems:

• Animist Tradition: Various ethnic, tribal, and other forms of nature worship

  • These groups have common themes, worship practices, and morality tales, which define a right and ethical way to live

  • Share the common belief that items in nature can have spiritual being, including landforms, animals, and trees

• Hindu-Buddhist Tradition: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism

  • The oldest universalizing religions began with Hinduism 5,000 years ago

  • Polytheistic: believing in more than one spiritual god

  • Many levels of existence, the highest being nirvana, where someone achieves total consciousness or enlightenment

  • One’s soul is reincarnated over and over into different forms

  • Karma: the balance between good and evil deeds in life, determines the outcome of reincarnation

• Abrahamic Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

  • Similar scriptural descriptions of the Earth’s genesis and the story of Abraham as a morality tale of respect for the will of God or Allah

  • Monotheistic belief system with a singular supreme being

  • Sub-deities such as saints, angels, and archangels

  • Significance is placed upon prophecy that predicts the coming or return of a messianic figure that defeats the forces of a satanic evil for souls of followers

Caste System in India

• Hindu scriptures describe a cosmology (a belief in the structure of the universe) in which there are several levels of existence, from the lowest animal forms to human forms and then higher animal forms

• Sacred animals include elephants, horses, and cows, which are seen as aspects of Mother Goddess Earth and symbols of selflessness

• All souls undergo reincarnation multiple times, learning new things each time.

• Whether a person is elevated in each new life depends upon his or her karma, which is the balance between the good and bad deeds that he or she has committed in his or her previous life.

• Once a person is born into a caste, he or she remains there for the rest of his or her life, no matter the changes to his or her fortune.

• India’s government has initiated a number of efforts to eliminate the caste structure in Indian society; however, is still recognizable in rural areas

The Five Castes (from highest to lowest):

1. Brahmans

• Priestly caste

• Responsible for temples and leading religious worship

• Can be selected as high government officials

• May eschew all material possessions to live as monks, meditating hermits, or as ascetics who sit on sidewalks and perform prayers for those who provide their food donations

  2. Kshatriyas

• Aristocratic and warrior caste

• Hereditary princes and kings still bow to the Brahmans

• Many were landowners, government leaders, and wealthy businesspeople

  3. Vaishyas

• Merchant and professional caste

• Many were doctors, lawyers, accountants, and government bureaucrats

  4. Shudras

• Caste of farmers, laborers, and artisans

• Many were potters, jewelers, and glassworkers

• No leisure time and near-total illiteracy

• Forbidden from studying the Vedas

  5. Dalits

• “Untouchables,” a name derived from their low position in the system and considered unholy by higher castes

• Segregated from other Hindu housing areas and social networks

• Dalit sub-castes were divided among trades and duties in the community such as leather work (cattleare sacred, and only the lowest-caste humans could handle their flesh) and cleaning of train stations and sewers

Islamic States: Theocracy, Sharia, and Secular Governance

• Theocracies: religious leaders hold the senior positions of governance

  • (EX: Iran has a supreme religious council that serves as the head of state and can overrule the elected parliament and president)

• Not all Middle-Eastern states are republics or monarchies that abide by Sharia, or Islamic law, based on the Koran and Hadith

• Other states in the region are

  • Secular: not directly governed in a religious manner and, instead, often utilize French or British legal tradition and government structure

• Theocracy: Iran, formerly Afghanistan under the Taliban

• Sharia States: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen Secular States: Jordan, Turkey

Five Pillars of Islam

• The Koran emphasizes five pillars that guide followers with a moral system

  1. Five Daily Prayers

• The call to prayer is heard on loudspeakers in cities throughout the Muslim world at designated hours

• All work stops and prayer mats are unrolled

• Prayer is done facing Mecca

• Islamic astronomers and geographers have worked for centuries to determine the azimuth, the angle of direction, from Mecca to other parts of the Earth

  2. Islamic Creed

• The creed is a statement of monotheism

• Prior to Muhammad’s religious conversion of the Arabian peninsula, many of the peoples in the region believed in polytheistic Animist or tribal religions

• Believe in a number of prophets shared with the Judeo-Christian traditions, such as Moses, Isaac, Ishmael, and Jesus, but Muhammad is the supreme prophet

  3. Alms to the Poor

• Duty of all Muslims to care for and donate to the poor and sick within their communities

• Large charitable foundations in the Islamic world help alleviate poverty, extend health care, and educate children

  • Have come under increased scrutiny by the U.S. government following 9/11, due to accusations that charities were being used to funnel money to terrorist groups

  4. Observance of Ramadan

• Ramadan is a period of spiritual cleansing and repentance for past sins

• There is fasting during daylight hours, with plain evening meals of sparing quantity

• Set on a lunar calendar and can fall during a wide range of months in our Gregorian calendar

  5. The Hajj

• Must make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca during his lifetime

• “Haji” is an honorific name for those who make the journey

• The most popular time for the Hajj is during Ramadan

Folklore

• Folklore: collected stories, spoken-word histories and writings that are specific to a culture and tell the societal histories and morality tales that define a culture’s ethical foundations

  • (EX: Aesop’s fables are an example of folklore from the classical Greeks. Each fable had a moral to the story, a lesson to be learned regarding proper behavior.)

• The intersection of a culture’s history and its folklore can often lead to distortions of reality in the lives of historical figures

  • (EX: In many parts of the Americas, a folklore has been built around the life and travels of Christopher Columbus. The myths and facts are intertwined and the folklore varies from country to country.)

Land Use

• How property is utilized, shared, or divided can say something about culture through its imprint on the landscape

• Farming can culturally specific and is heavily influenced by technology

• Range from swidden, or a “slash and burn” style of agriculture seen in forest regions, to the highly technological large-scale farming seen in the First World

Residential Patterns:

• The distribution of living space is also an important indicator of culture, especially in rural and tribal areas

• Cultural traditions impose rules on living space that depend on:

  • Singular clan relations

  • Extended family units with more than one clan

  • Whole tribal communities with multiple clans living in one shared residential area

Land Ownership:

• Landholdings became subdivided via partial land sales or by nationwide land reform efforts

• Land reform often divided properties into smaller polygons

• Long-lot patterns: a narrow frontage along a road or waterway with a very long lot shape behind

Nation and Ethnicity

• Nation: a population represented by a singular culture or a culture group

  • Not all nations have a representative state

• Ethnicity: a complex mix of genetic heritage and political allegiance

  • Ethnic groups often claim a single identifiable lineage or heritage, which all members tend to identify with as a common social bond

  • Can be modified in the process of migration

    • Can be evidence of acculturation by immigrants to their new home country

• State: a population represented by a single government

• Cultural identity: how people are identified and how they identify themselves

Race

• Race: the physical characteristics of a common genetic heritage.

  • Developed by physical anthropologists in the 1800s

  • Categorized racial groups based on a number of variables including skin color, bone structure, and the shape of the hair shafts

    • Crudely as the basis for racism within society and have led to oppression, suffering, and war throughout the world.

Three distinct racial groups emerged:

• Mongoloid or Asiatic: with a tan or yellowish skin tone, small body structure, and straight hair shaft

• Caucasoid or Indo-European: with light to dark skin tone, medium body type, and wavy hair shaft

• Negroid or African: with a dark skin tone, medium body shape, and a curly hair shaft

Four populations of physical anthropological groups were identified within the Pacific Islands:

• Melanesians: found in New Guinea, New Caledonia, and Fiji, named because of their dark skin coloration, have comparatively thin bodies and angular facial features, with a curly hair shaft

• Polynesians: living in Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii, have a lighter brown skin color, heavyset body shape, and curly hair shafts

• Micronesians:  coming from the small island atolls of the Marshalls and Caroline Islands, have a light brown skin color, medium body shape, and curly hair shafts

• Aboriginals: in Australia, have light brown skin, a medium body type, and wavy hair shafts

Mixed Race Cultures

• Identities can be based on a single race or be defined by multiple mixed races

  • (EX: Mestizos are people who have cultural and genetic heritage from European and Native American backgrounds)

• Indigenous population: the people who originally settled in an area

Racism

• Environmental determinism: the former scientific ideology that states that a culture’s traits are defined by the physical geography of its native hearth or culture region

  • It was being used to reinforce the racist ideologies of the 1800s and early 1900s

• Possibilism: the revised concept proposed by Sauer and other like-minded geographers that stated cultures were to a partial degree shaped by their environment and the material resources available to them

  • Culture groups have the ability to adjust and modify the environment

• Lebensraum: the living space for each distinct nation was based upon the optimal physical geography of the culture group

  • The concepts of Nazism proposed by Hitler were in part based on Ratzel’s concept

• Neo-Nazism: based on violent racism against non-whites and immigrants or violet expression of xenophobia

• Ethnocentrism: the belief in the superiority of one’s nation or ethnic group, and in the inferiority of other nations or ethnic groups

  • Typically grows fiercest in the earliest and most dominant settlement group, whose characteristics strongly influence the initial social and cultural geography of an area

• Cultural relativism: the idea that an individual’s beliefs and activities can only be understood in the context of that person’s culture

Internal vs External Identity

• Internal identity: used by individuals to express their cultural heritage, ethnicity, or place of origin to people who share their heritage or place of origin

• External identity: used by individuals to express their cultural heritage, ethnicity, or place of origin to people who do not share a common cultural or geographic background

  • Use to compensate for the lack of cultural knowledge from one group to another

• Culture regions: an area of bounded space with a homogeneous characteristic that can be one or more components of culture

• Fuzzy borders: cultural regions tend to have this because it’s hard to tell where one cultural region ends and another begins

  • Cultural regions overlap in an irregular manner

  • (EX: where Dixie ends and the American Northeast or Midwest begins)

• Border states: where one part of the state is decidedly Southern and another part seems more Northeastern

Cultural Hearths

• Culture hearth: the idea that every culture has a localized area where it originated or has its main population center

• Contemporary culture hearths exist in today’s world

• (EX: the Mormon culture region of the American West shares the homogeneous characteristic that is the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) religion and is a region with a distinct core and a wider periphery; is both a formal and functional region)

• Ancient culture hearths: developed ideas and technologies that still exist today

  • (EX: the domestication of staple food crops)

Cultural Change

• Sequent occupancy: for a single place or region, different dominant cultures replace each other over time

  • (EX: European architecture found in former colonial cities of Africa like Lagos, Nigeria)

  • The ethnic neighborhood shows how these groups make their way into the layers of sequent occupance at a much smaller scale

• Acculturation: the process of adapting to a new culture while still keeping some of one’s original culture

  • Both the original and the incoming culture group swapping cultural traits

• Assimilation: a complete change in the identity of a minority culture group as it becomes part of the majority culture group

  • (EX: the U.S. government forced the Native Americans to move to reservations and adopt the dress, manners, language, and ways of the dominant American culture)

Cultural Survival and Globalization

• Cultural survival: used to describe the efforts to research, understand, and promote the protection of indigenous cultures

• Indigenous culture: the original culture of that same region

  • The loss of indigenous culture has become a significant concern among citizens and a major policy issue among governments

• Cultures are in danger of extinction if something is not done to help protect and promote the preservation of cultural heritage

Depopulation of Native Americans

• William Denevan established that the pre-Columbian population of Native Americans in North and South America combined was approximately 54 million people

• The total native population had declined to around 5 million people by 1635

• Diseases of European origin were the main reason behind the decline,

• Cultural globalization: a number of influences such as literature, music, motion pictures, the Internet, and satellite and cable television, mainly from English-language sources, combined to diminish and potentially eliminate the media and culture of other linguistic groups

  • People who lose their connection to their heritage are also losing part of their personal connection to nature

  • By protecting national cultures from the negative effects of globalization, a nation can promote its own cultural economy and products from creative arts and media–draw for tourism

• Proselytic religions that actively seek converts also threaten many unique cultures around the world

• National governments around the world have instituted laws and regulations that lessen the impact of foreign influence on their home cultures

Cases of Cultural Diffusion

• Culture is transmitted through a number of different methods:

• Trade: interconnectedness increases along popular trade routes

• Colonialism: though the Mormon church that began in Utah, it spread itself around the world via mandatory missions conducted by its young members

• Conflict: or war, often sees soldiers and armies invading or even occupying foreign cultures

• Migration: immigrants carry their own culture to their new country and blend

• them with preexisting bits of culture

EX: Yugoslavia

• Ethnic cleansing: where people of one ethnic group are eliminated by another, often under threat of violence or death

  • Several political and military leaders have been charged with crimes against humanity for their war crimes

  • (EX: The former Yugoslavia was created as a state during the post–World War I Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

  • After the death of leader Joseph Tito, people and politicians began to revitalize their centuries-long ethnic and religious arguments.

  • In 1989, localized fighting broke out in northern Yugoslavia between Croats and Serbians)

• Genocide: a large-scale systematic killing of people of one ethnic group

  • (EX: the Holocaust of Jews at the hands of the Nazis in World War II when six million were killed)

Unit 4: Political Patterns & Processes

Key Concepts:

UNITS OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

• Country: an identifiable land area

• Nation: a population with a single culture

  • Same as a culture group

• State: a population under a single government

  • Implies there is a sovereign territory

• Nation-state: a single culture under a single government

  • Sometimes, one culture group is represented by a singular government

  • None are truly made up of only one cultural group

  • Also applied to multinational states where the state has come to represent a singular and contemporary culture, as opposed to the ancient cultures from which the population originates

• Sovereignty: means that a state is fully independent from outside control, holds territory, and that it has international recognition from other states or the United Nations.

• Multi-national states: made up of a number of different nations represented by the multitude of culture groups who have migrated and intermixed around the world

  • Sometimes called multiethnic states, are most common in the Americas, where there are no nation-states

  • Also applied to multinational states where the state has come to represent a singular and contemporary culture, as opposed to the ancient cultures from which the population originates

• Nationalism: can derive from an existing culture group that desires political representation or independence, or from a political state that bonds and unifies culture groups

  • Used by politicians as motivation to support the state and oppose foreign or other political influences

• Stateless nations: where a culture group is not included or allowed a share in the state political process

  • (EX: full independence of Kurdistan is limited geopolitically due to Turkish government resistance to their sovereignty, based upon Kurdish Marxist rebels, the PKK, who have been fighting in Turkey for several decades)

ORGANIZATIONS OF STATES

• Federal states & confederations: provides military protection, administers foreign diplomacy, and regulates trade as well as a number of internal administrative (executive branch), legislative, and judicial services across the country

  • Common approach to government

  • Have their own governments, legislatures, regulations, and services with divisions of responsibilities

  • (EX: federal government regulates interstate trade, whereas states can make rules about the sale of goods within each state)

• Unitary system: a single centralized government

  • Ultimate authority lies with the central government

  • (EX: People’s Republic of China)

• Microstates: sovereign states that despite their very small size still hold the same position as much larger states

  • Island states, ports, or city-states, or they sit landlocked with no access to the sea

  • (EX: Andorra is landlocked)

• Autonomous regions: certain parts of certain nations have been granted freedom from central authority, usually for historical, geographical, religious, or linguistic reasons

  • (EX: the Basque region of northeastern Spain has its own language, Euskara, which is thousands of years old and is unrelated to any of the Romance languages that surround it)

• Semi-autonomous regions: have the same freedom as autonomous regions, but to a lesser degree

Multi-State Organizations

• Supranationalism: the concept of two or more sovereign states aligned together for a common purpose

• Supranational organizations: organizations formed for the purposes of trade alliances, military cooperation, and diplomacy

  • EX: European Union (28 members)

• The EU serves 5 main purposes:

• Free-trade union: No taxes or tariffs are charged on goods and services that cross the internal borders of the EU.

• Open-border policy: Between EU member states, there are no longer any border-control stations for immigration or customs inspections.

• Monetary union: In 2000, the first EU members began converting to the Euro and phasing out their old forms of money. This eliminated the costs of currency exchange fees.

• Judicial union: The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg provides a legal venue for cases between litigants in separate EU member states. A European Court of Human Rights has been established to preserve civil rights regardless of their member states’ local laws.

• Legislative and regulatory bodies: The 751-seat EU Parliament was established to propose and approve laws within the union.

• EU governance has been successful in creating a singular economy through free trade, open borders, free movement of labor, free exchange of currency, and a level playing field for business and labor in terms of laws and regulations.

Issues:

• The cost of EU governance has significantly increased the cost of many items in Europe

• European courts have threatened the sovereignty of national and local courts and laws

• Open borders have made it difficult to control crime and terrorism

• Fortress Europe: describes the concept of sealing EU borders

• A European Union Constitution was proposed for ratification in 2004, but was poorly understood by the citizens and members of parliament who had to vote on the constitution. It was ultimately rejected.

SPATIAL CONCEPTS OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

• Territoriality: the expression of political control over space

  • Implies that the government controls land and the people who live there

• Citizenship: the legal identity of a person based on the state where he or she was born or where he or she was naturalized as an immigrant

  • When citizens go outside their state’s political borders, they retain their citizen status and thus become an extension of their state

Political Borders

• Political boundaries: as expressions of political control, must be definable and clear

• Finite lines: the borders between political states and political sub-unit areas (counties, parishes, parliamentary districts, and city limits)

• Physical geography, such as rivers or other water bodies, defines boundaries, and sometimes borderlines are measured surveys based on treaties or other agreements between states.

• Non-physical boundaries often reflect cultural divisions

  • Can be the result of aristocratic land holdings from Feudalistic eras

  • Can be the front lines at the cessation of armed conflict between states

• Expatriate populations: citizens living outside of their borders

• Countries have to provide consular services in large foreign cities

• It’s the government’s diplomats and military duty to get citizens who trapped in war zones or disasters in foreign countries them out

Enclave and Exclave

• Enclave: a minority culture group concentrated inside a country that is dominated by a different, larger culture group

  • (EX: enclaves were formally established within Bosnia to separate warring Serb, Croat, and Muslim communities)

• Exclave: a fragmented piece of sovereign territory separated by land from the main part of the state’s territory

  • Neighboring states occasionally attempt to claim exclaves in the name of cultural nationalism

  • (EX: Alaska is an exclave whose controlling state is the United States and is separated by Canada.)

Water Borders at Sea

• United Nations Conference on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS): proposal of standard oceanic boundaries for all UN member states that was fully ratified in 1994

  • Makes provisions for a UN arbitration board to settle disputes regarding boundaries at sea

  • Difficulty occurs when uninhabited small islets, exposed reefs, and sandbars above water are claimed by more than one country

    • (EX: The Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands, are claimed by China, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. They are areas of potential future armed conflict if arbitration fails.)

• UNCLOS border system is in two parts:

• Territorial sea: Sovereign territory that includes the area of sea from shore out to the 12-nautical-mile limit. Within 12 nautical miles, all the laws of a country apply.

• Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): Exclusive economic rights from shore out to the 200-nautical-mile limit. Within 200 nautical miles of its shores, a state controls all aspects of natural resource exploration and extraction. This includes fisheries, oil and gas production, salvage operations, and permits for such activity.

• Territorial seas and EEZs create circular boundaries, especially around islands, which extends a country’s EEZ out another 200 nautical miles

• High seas are technically outside of the 12-mile limit

  • Past that line, cruise ships can open their casinos and ship captains gain the authority to marry couples or arrest thieves onboard their ships

• Admiralty law: a part of international law that dictates legal procedures on the high seas

• The 1986 International Whaling Commission: a moratorium on commercial whale hunts that banned whaling after centuries of hunting dangerously depleted populations

Boundary Origins

• Antecedent: Boundary lines that exist from prehistoric times

  • (EX: French-Spanish border along the Pyrenees Relic: Scotland-England border after The Act of Union in 1652)

• Relic: Former state boundaries that still have political or cultural meaning

• Subsequent: Lines resulting from conflict or cultural changes, such as war and migration

  • (EX: German-Polish border after 1945; Kaliningrad to the USSR in 1946)

• Superimposed: Lines laid down for political reasons over existing cultural boundaries

  • (EX: Sub-Saharan Africa after the Berlin Conference of 1884; Yugoslavia and Iraq after the 1919 Treaty of Versailles)

Boundary Process

• When borders are claimed, negotiated, or captured

• Delimitation process: when borders are put on the map

• Demarcation process: when markers are placed on the ground to show where borders lie

Boundary Types

• Physical border: natural boundaries such as rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, or deserts

• Cultural border: estimated boundaries between nations, ethnic groups, or tribes

• Geometric border: boundaries surveyed mostly along lines of latitude and longitude

Border Disputes

• Definitional dispute: when border treaties are interpreted two different ways by states

  • (EX: Russian-Japanese Kuril Islands under Soviet control in 1945)

• Locational dispute: when the border moves, like a river changing course or a lake drying up

  • (EX: India-Bangladesh territory along the Ganges-Brahmaputra River Delta)

• Operational dispute: when borders are agreed on, but passage across the border is a problem

  • (EX: New passport requirements for entry into the United States after September 11, 2001)

• Allocational dispute: when a resource lies on two sides of a border

  • (EX: Mexico-United States river allocations for irrigation and drinking water on the Colorado River and Rio Grande)

• Frontier: open and undefined territory

  • The only remaining large land frontier is Antarctica, that has been set aside for scientific research and prohibits any military action and commercial mineral or energy extraction

Tyranny of the Map

• The Conference of Berlin (1884) was a diplomatic meeting between the European colonial powers to set the internal political boundaries in Africa.

• The main problem with the European-set boundaries in Africa is that they do not match the cultural boundaries.

• This superimposed boundary situation is what Africans refer to as the Tyranny of the Map.

Territorial Morphology

• State morphology: the shape of a country that also impacts its society and external relations with other countries

Territorial Change

• State territory can change shape through decolonization by reducing the area and number of territorial and colonial holdings

• Annexation: the addition of territory as a result of a land purchase or when a territorial claim is extended through incorporation

  • (EX: The United States originally purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 for $7,000,000 in gold and it became a full state in 1948.)

Capitals

• States have a capital city as a seat of government where political power is centered

• Politicians need a place to have organized exchanges of power

• Federal states can have several scales of capitals

  • (EX: Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States at a national and federal level.)

• Some countries have more than one national capital to share power across different regions of the country

• Countries occasionally change the location of their capital due to a shift in political power or congestion in the old capital

• Planned capital cities: cities located in places where cities did not previously exist

  • (EX: Sydney was the old capital of Australia. It’s new capital is Canberra.)

Electoral Politics and Internal Boundaries

• Suffrage in terms of age, race, and gender has varied historically from state to state.

  • In most countries, women gained voting rights in the 1900s.

  • In South Africa, racial segregation existed in almost all aspects of life and residents were denied the voting rights of non-white citizens.

• All democracies have some form of parliamentary system in which at least one lawmaking body or house has popular representation

• Each country has its own system regarding the number of seats and the size of voting districts

  • EX: In the U.S., presidential elections are decided through voting by the Electoral College.

  • Every ten years following the census, the United States reapportions the 435 seats of the House of Representatives.

• Gerrymandering: the irregularly shaped districts that are highly elongated and prorupt

  • In 1990 and 2000, a number of gerrymanders were attempted that tried to stack votes guaranteeing congressional support for one particular party.

POLITICAL ECONOMY

Feudalism

• Aristocracy: a peerage of lords, earls, marquis, barons, dukes, princes, kings, and queens

  • controlled vast majority of land and wealth in feudal political economies

• The majority of the population were peasants, commoners, serfs, or slaves who worked the land controlled by aristocrats

• Debt peonage: peasants paid rent and had their harvests taxed for the right to live on and work the land, keeping them in a cycle of debt

• Absolute monarchy: where the supreme aristocrat, a king, prince, or duke, was both

• Head of state and head of government, and therefore did not share power with anyone

• Revolutions and wars from the late 1700s to the 1900s forced many feudal states to accept some form of democracy

  • (EX: the French Revolution of 1789 inspired many monarchs to accept power-sharing with commoners to avoid losing control)

• Constitutional monarchy: where the supreme aristocrat remains head of state, but the leader of the elected parliament is the head of government, with integrated legislative and executive powers

  • The monarch retains the power to: dismiss parliament; appoints judges, ambassadors, and other officials; is commander and chief of the military; and retains significant land holdings and estates

  • Mostly diminished to a symbolic role

• Prime minister (premier): one who appoints senior members of parliament to be ministers or secretaries of executive-branch departments

  • EX: The current form of constitutional monarchy in Great Britain has been in place since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

    • Feudal rents to local aristocrats are still paid in a number of rural areas of the United Kingdom, (symbolic and small fees)

    • House of Lords: the upper house of parliament, which also serves as the supreme court

    • Since the late 1600s, the power of the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, has steadily increased

    • The PM is the political leader of the party with the most MPs

    • Other senior MPs from this ruling party serve as ministers of the executive branch of government

• Commonwealth of Nations: independent former parts of the British Empire that retain the British monarch as their head of state

  • Have their own parliaments and prime ministers as head of government

  • Have a royally appointed governor-general as the crown representative in the country

  • Considered independent sovereign states

  • Have parliamentary governments, which integrate executive, legislative, and judicial powers

  • Provides special trade, education services, government funding, and preferred immigration status between member governments and citizens

    • India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Kenya are commonwealth members that do not claim the British monarch as head of state.

• Free-market democracies: countries with elected-representative parliamentary systems commonwealth countries, and other constitutional monarchies or republics

  • Relies upon balancing the relationship between the elected-representative government, its citizens, and business interests

  • There is a variable system of regulation and taxation by the state

• Government regulatory influence of the private lives of its citizens and practices of businesses is usually limited to areas concerning public safety and economic protections

• Republics: governments free of aristocracy or monarchical control and are fully under the control of the “common” people, as opposed to hereditary monarchy

  • Some are centrally governed from a single capital

  • Others are confederations that apportion some government power of legislation and administration to their component states or provinces

• Separation of powers: where the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government are held by separate groups of people that keep each other in check

  • Reduces the potential for corruption of the whole government

  • The other branches can act to correct problems or replace leadership if necessary

  • Written constitutions of these governments need to be flexible enough to allow governments to deal with political and other crises when they occur

  • Wealthy businesspeople and corporations have replaced the aristocracy in terms of the control of money, land, and resources

    • Their personal and corporate political influence overshadows that of many thousands of private citizens

    • Created uneven power relations in free-market democracies

  • A type of separation that is sometimes employed to blunt the power of the executive branch is to have separate presidents and prime ministers

  • Executive separation can be when the president is head of government and the prime minister is head of state, or vice versa

Marxist-Socialism

• Communism: Karl Marx’s political-economic theories attempted to right the wrongs of feudalism and inequalities of capitalism in free-market democracies

• Marxism: the goal to create a class-free society where there were no inequalities in terms of wealth or power

  • The state would own all land and industry, the government would direct economic productivity, and everyone would earn the same amount of money regardless of labor position

• Planned economy: an economy that does not rely on supply and demand like capitalism

  • The central government would calculate the economic needs of the state, its industries, and people

  • Set quotas for each individual operational unit of agricultural or manufacturing production to meet these needs

  • The productivity of the economy would result in a collective wealth that would be shared equally across the population

  • Communism in practice failed to reproduce Marx’s utopia

Example: The Soviet Union

• The first Communist country, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union), was established in 1917 with the fall of the czar’s absolute monarchy in Russia

  • A number of unintended consequences to the Russian revolution, including a protracted and bloody civil war, human rights violations, murders on the part of the Communist government, and forced resettlement of over a million citizens result from Soviet Communism

• Five-Year Plans: comprehensive long-term economic plans that dictated all production in minute detail that were developed by the USSR

The Devolution of the Soviet System:

• Three classes of Soviet citizens emerged early in the Soviet Union who were mostly workers that Marx envisioned to be his proletariat

• Communist Party members made up about 6 percent of the USSR population and enjoyed many perks

• A military officer class emerged that had a similarly high quality of life in comparison to the regular working class

• Secret police and laws that made public protest punishable by hard labor in prison camps

• Creativity and economic productivity stagnated because of a lack of incentive in the system that would motivate people to have better lives

  • Resulted in a lack of surplus, leaving many stores with few items on the shelves and lines of people waiting to receive rations for food and clothing

Positives:

• Socialism meant that everyone had a right to health care, and hospitals, clinics, and rural travelling doctor programs were established.

• Infrastructure programs for public schools, free universities, drinking water, care for the elderly, and public transit were established to improve the efficiency and quality of life in communist society.

  • Have since been incorporated in Western free-market democracies

GEOPOLITICS

• Geopolitics: the global-scale relationships between sovereign states

• Centripetal forces: factors that hold together the social and political fabric of the state

  • Overabundance of centripetal force may lead to nationalistic movements and xenophobia

• Centrifugal forces: factors that tear apart the social and political fabric of the state

  • The survival of the state is at risk when the balance shifts to far and indicates the likelihood of armed conflict—in the form of an internal civil war, or the possibility of conflict spilling over into external cross-border war

• Number of forces at work that both reinforce and destabilize the state

• EX: Josip Tito became a centripetal force representing the two largest ethnic groups in the country. A strong nationalist belief in Communism among Yugoslavians helped Tito build an economically strong and socially harmonious multiethnic society.

  • The lack of an effective multiethnic leader to replace him created a political power vacuum that opened the way for different nationalist leaders representing different ethnicities to attempt to seize power for themselves and their constituents.

  • Ripped apart the Yugoslav social and political fabric and, in combination with the fall of Communism in Europe, doomed the country to ethnic violence and dissolution

• Balkanization: a situation in which the political landscape goes from a larger state to several smaller states

• Europe has geopolitically gone from being dominated by large empire states to being dominated by several small nation-states

• Early cases of balkanization after World War I were due to a realignment of German borders and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into six sovereign states

• Irredentism has two definitions:

  • When a minority ethnic group desires to break away from a multiethnic state and form its own nation-state

  • Or when break away and align itself with a culturally similar state.

• EX: Chechnya was granted limited local self-governance by the Russian Federation. After the fall of Communism, Chechens began to declare independence from Russia. A regional conflict ensued between Chencens and the Russian government due to fear of losing oil resources and other autonomous republics pushing for secession.

• Some nations or culture groups were torn apart as a result of war, but they reunified

• Neocolonialism: a contemporary form of colonialism based not on political control, but on economic pressure

  • (EX: While the United States possesses very few political territories, it has long waged economic control over nearly every nation in the Western Hemisphere, by granting favored-nation trade status to those neighbors who play by its rules.)

MODELS

• Heartland-Rimland model: designed to define the global geopolitical landscape and determine areas of potential future conflict

  • British geographer, Mackinder identified agricultural land as the primary commodity that states were interested in.

• Eastern European steppe: a very productive area of grain cultivation that was mostly controlled by the Russian Empire; Mackinder identified this as Heartland

  • States bordering Rimland, such as the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Romania might invade this area

• Primary commodity of conflict: the thing that countries are willing to fight over

• American geographer Saul Cohen proposed the Shatterbelt theory in 1950

  • He modified Mackinder’s Heartland into the Pivot Area, Rimland into the Inner Crescent and the rest of the world became the Outer Crescent

  • Land-based concept was that Cold War conflicts would likely occur within the Inner Crescent

• Buffer states: lands that would protect hostile countries by creating a surrounding buffer of sympathetic countries

• U.S. diplomat George Kennan proposed the strategic policy of containment to the American government in 1947

  • The proposal stated that the United States and its allies would attempt to build a containment wall around the core communist states

  • The U.S. and allied states had to contain these Soviet-supported satellite states to prevent Communism from spreading like a domino effect

  • Communism was limited to a large degree to the Pivot Area and a number of buffer states

  • The containment effort had a devastating effect on the economy of the Soviet Union

  • The United States arming Afghan Mujahideen rebels with arms was a centrifugal force that reverberated throughout the USSR, leading to its government failing

• Terrorism: planned violent attacks on people and places to provoke fear and cause a change in government policy

• State terrorism: when governments use violence and intimidation to control their own people

Unit 5: Agricultural and Rural Land Use Patterns and Processes

Key Concepts:

• Primary economy: timber, fisheries, and mineral and energy resources

• Agricultural activity can be classified by how concentrated the labor and area of activity is for a particular type of farming:

  • Intensive agriculture: requires lots of labor input, or is focused on a small plot of land, or both

  • Extensive agriculture: requires limited labor input, or is spread across large areas of land, or both

• Hunting and gathering societies are the earliest forms of agriculture

• Transhumance: where groups move seasonally not only to avoid harsh climates, climates, but also to follow animal herds and walk to areas where native plants were in fruit

• Animal hunting eventually led to the live capture and eventual domestication of cattle, horses, pigs, donkeys, sheep, goats, reindeer, llamas, alpacas, and water buffaloes

• Pastoralism: agriculture based on the seasonal movement of animals from winter to summer pastures and back again

• Nomadic herding: a practice where whole communities would drive their herds from one seasonal grazing area to another following an annual cycle that was repeated over centuries

• Ranching: grazing livestock in a single large area,

• People learned to domesticate and grow more abundant plants, which led to more permanent and organized farm settlements

  • Other plant cultivars were added to these early farms so that there were a variety of crops

• Multi-cropping if one crop failed or was damaged by pests, another crop would provide a backup food supply

  • More secure than single-crop monoculture

• Monoculture became common in the era of early political civilization and empires, when farms produced a staple crop in large order to feed whole societies and armies

• Mixed farming, or general farming: where multiple crops and animals exist on a single farm to provide diverse nutritional intake and non-food items, such as bone for tools and leather for different materials such as saddles, rope, and coats

• Subsistence agriculture: intensive mixed farming that provides for all of the food and material needs of a household

  • All the daily needs of the household could be provided for on the farm, allowing people to settle permanently and subsist without having to migrate seasonally

• Extensive subsistence agriculture: occurs when there are low amounts of labor inputs per unit of land

  • More likely to occur in less-populated regions or in less-habitable areas where pastoralism is common

  • Today, most subsistence agriculture is usually very intensive and done on small plots of land

• Physiologic density: the number of people per unit of arable land

  • Very high in third world countries compared to first world countries

  • Many rural communities much more susceptible to famine from drought or armed conflicts

• Food preservation: a necessity for survival for thousands of years via drying, pickling, cooking, and storage jars that has led to many cultural variations in food consumption

  • Many specialized crops were grown for both immediate consumption and preservation as a result

  • (EX: cabbages spiced with red pepper and soaked in vinegar were buried in clay storage jars to make kimchi in Korea eight thousand years ago)

• Cash-cropping: a form of extensive agriculture in which harvested crops are exchanged for currency, goods, or credit

  • The credit is then used to buy equipment or seed for the next planting season and in part to buy food, clothing, and other necessities for the farm family t

  • The commercial crops are transported, sold at other markets, and finally preserved or processed into other goods for sale

Communism and Agriculture

• Farming under communism was also done on a non-subsistence basis, with much of the food grown being produced collectively in farm communities and distributed across the country

• In the late 1800s, armed with knowledge of The Communist Manifesto, peasants staged uprisings in Eastern Europe that called for a rejection of not only aristocracy and landlords, but also the whole capitalist system.

• The Russian Revolution in 1917 had a number of political and military causes combined with a crisis of poverty in many rural Russian farming communities.

• The solution was a collectivization of farms and elimination of privately owned land

  • The communes that resulted were large farms where several families were organized as labor units

    • Were assigned quotas by the government that detailed exactly how much each farm should produce each year

    • There were no incentives to produce over the quota or produce other crops or products outside the mandated crop, which usually encouraged monoculture

  • The land was owned collectively by the whole state

  • Over time, farming communes began to produce crop yields similar to those in capitalist economies

  • Result: a system that had no surplus food and not much variety available to consumers

Human Ecology

• Human ecology: human interactions with nature

• Human-environment interactions is more commonly used to describe forestry techniques, fisheries, and environmental regulation in addition to farming practices

• Our ecological relationship to the land is a food web in which each type of crop and animal is dependent on a number of human inputs, soil and climate conditions, and other crops

• Food chain: the order of predators in the animal world that is used to describe several integrated human and mechanical inputs, from developing seeds to planting, fertilizing, harvesting, processing, packaging, and transporting food to market and finally to your dinner plate

Farming Practices

• Crop rotation: occurs when one crop is planted on a plot of land and then switched to another plot in subsequent years

  • The rotation cycle will vary back and forth due to one or more factors

• Multi-cropping: the planting of more than one crop on the same plot of land

  • An intensive strategy in which either crops are planted together simultaneously or one crop is planted right after another in the same row

  • (EX: after summer vegetables are harvested, winter vegetables like kale and spinach can be planted and harvested before the cold)

• Double cropping: planting two crops one after another on a single plot in a year

• Triple cropping: planting three crops in the same year

  • These practices often rely on fertilizers and irrigation

• Each crop has its own growing season, but the general rule is to plant in spring, grow in summer, and harvest in fall

  • (EX: Spring wheat is planted in the spring and harvested in late summer. Winter wheat is planted in the fall, lies dormant in the winter, and then grows in the spring to be harvested by the start of summer.)

• Irrigation: opens up more land to cultivation than would normally be possible in arid climates and is responsible for close to three-quarters of world freshwater use and up to 90 percent of freshwater use in the most poverty-stricken countries of the world

  • Governments heavily subsidize irrigation agriculture with the result that the crops produced are often worth less than the water

• Aquifers: underground water tables that gives water to irrigation farms

  • Depleting at a rapid rate in large-scale grain-producing countries

• Farming practices can be criticized for their dependence on external inputs such as fuel and agricultural chemicals and the effects of farming on soil erosion and local water usage

• Conservation: the practice of preserving and carefully managing the environment and its natural resources

• Conservation agriculture: an increasingly important way of providing a sustainable farming system without sacrificing crop production

Methods:

• No-tillage: involves not plowing the soil so that soil erosion is greatly reduced and soil fertility is increased by retaining natural vegetation

• Crop rotation is used to increase soil fertility and discourage pests

• Inter-planting: planting fast-growing crops alongside slow-growing crops, allowing a farmer to harvest the fast-growing crop before the slow-growing crop shades it out

• Sustainable yield: the amount of crops or animals that can be raised without endangering local resources such as soil, irrigation, or groundwater, or what can be raised without too many expensive inputs that would make farming unprofitable

  • By reducing inputs and using ecologically sound methods, farmers can reduce the risk that their farming practices may lead to long-term environmental or economic problems

Non-Food Crops

• A number of crops are raised for industrial use, textiles (clothing), or animal feed

• Alternative energy crops have become important as oil prices have increased over time

  • (EX: corn has been used to make ethanol, an alcohol that can supplement gasoline and make it burn cleaner)

Shifting Cultivation

• In some third world countries, farming occurs in environmentally sensitive areas such as tropical rainforest or dry grasslands.

• Slash and burn agriculture: occurred in tropical rainforest regions with farmers shifting from one plot of land to another every few years as soil nutrients become depleted

• Abandoned land would fallow and natural vegetation would return, increasing the nutrient biomass of the area

• Rainforest soils are very poor due to the water and nutrients in the environment being sapped up by the natural vegetation

  • People who move to the forest who often discover that they can farm for only a few seasons before soil nutrients are sapped or eroded by heavy tropical rains

    • Puts dangerous pressure on a very sensitive and valuable natural resource

• Extensive pastoralism: the shifting of animal herds between grazing pastures, has remained popular in several arid parts of the world, especially Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, where dry grassland is the common landcover

  • Too many people and too many animals are placing population pressure on too little land

• Overgrazing has led to significant amounts of dry grassland being denuded, eroded, and as a result, decertified

• Desertification: any human process that turns a vegetated environment into a desert-like landscape

• Soil salination: the evaporation of water that can trap mineral salts on the surface soil layer. High daytime temperatures cause water vapor to be drawn out of irrigated farmland. As evaporation continues over several growing seasons, the amount of mineral salt can build to toxic levels and poison crops

Agricultural Practices

• Cultural practices affect how food is grown

  • Religion plays a role in determining agricultural trade and practices

    • EX: dietary restrictions can limit the trade of beef (to India) or pork (to Islamic societies)

  • Family history plays other types of roles in agriculture

    • EX: first-generation farmers may view planting differently than second- or third-generation farmers

  • Culture determines different levels of societal support for farmers, many of whose fortunes often rise and fall based on the weather

    • EX: Countries with larger governmental safety nets tend to support farmers in a more socialistic manner

  • Available resources also affect agricultural practice

    • EX:  Irrigation becomes necessary in water-scarce regions

Agricultural Revolutions

• New farming methods reduced the amount of labor needed to produce goods and increased the amount of goods harvested per unit of land

• The general historical pattern is that revolutions began in one place and diffused around the world over time

First Agricultural Revolution:

• Vegetative planting: where the shoots, stems, and roots of existing wild plants were collected and grown together

• Seed agriculture: where the fertilized seed grains and fruits of plants were collected and replanted together

  • The domestication of plants took place by early farmers rejecting the poorly growing crops, and taking cuttings or seeds from the more productive, better-tasting plants to grow future generations

• Horticulture: where plant varieties that thrived in different soil or climate conditions were cultivated

  • Regions of agriculture emerged where certain crops were grown under optimal conditions for an area’s specific cultural tastes

• Hearths of domestication: the areas where most of this early agricultural activity originated

• Wild breeds that were productive were purposely interbred or hybridized to be reproduced through animal husbandry

• Growing areas of crops and livestock expanded as domesticated varieties were traded and diffused across the landscape

• The Columbian exchange: domesticated New World crops that made their way to the rest of the world through relocation diffusion

  • (EX: maize, from the new world, and wheat, from the old world, were exchanged)

Second Agricultural Revolution:

• Technological changes in agriculture were enabled by parallel innovations in manufacturing from the Industrial Revolution

  • (EX: Whitney’s cotton gin in 1793)

• Big changes were the development of specialized hybrids, artificial chemical fertilizers, early chemical pesticides, and mechanization in the form of trucks, tractors, and pumps

  • Increased food production and allowed for better diets and therefore longer life expectancy

• Modern science has had a critical role to play in horticulture and chemistry by using laboratory techniques to develop plant and animal hybrids that grow larger or under certain climatic conditions to meet the needs of farmers in different regions.

  • Dwarf varieties were an important plant hybrid innovation

• German chemists were the first to synthesize both artificial fertilizers and chemical insecticides

  • Ammonium nitrate was first mass-produced as a fertilizer to replace lost nitrogen in soils

  • Pesticides were developed during the 1840s from natural sources and from synthetic chemicals

    • Included insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, rodenticides, and nematocides

• Green Revolution: occurred in the 1950s and 1960s when tropical plant and animal hybrids and chemical fertilizers and pesticides began to be used in Third-World agriculture

  • Impact on the Third World has made for far greater amounts of crop production on small plots of land

  • Mechanization has been much slower to diffuse, mainly due to the high cost of large-scale farm equipment, excluding irrigation pumps

• Some modernized practices have done significant environmental damage:

  • Water supplies have been depleted from irrigation and contaminated by chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers

  • Focus on exportable cash crops can result in a loss of biodiversity and soil degradation

  • The rising cost of seeds, equipment, and chemicals forces many small farmers into debt

Third Agricultural Revolution:

• Marked the start of a more inclusive way of farming and the internationalization of industrialized farming

  • Primary economic activity - farmers now produce one or more crops

  • Secondary economic activity - process the crop

  • Tertiary economic activity - advertise and market it through afarmer’s co-op or other market

• The use of larger, more powerful agricultural machinery is the second hallmark of modern commercial agriculture

  • Replaced both human and beast in the early 20th century in the United States and then spread to Europe after World War II

• Research in biotechnology and food processing has made agribusiness a truly “big business.”

• Increased economies of scale, meaning that large-scale producers are able to achieve lower per-unit costs

Agricultural Production Regions

• Factors that have all combined to enable industrial agriculture, or factory farming

  • Genetic engineering has further increased the possibilities and productivity of global agriculture

    • (EX: BT corn has spliced genes from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis to make them pest-resistant)

  • Veterinary science and biotechnology research have developed vaccines, antibiotics, and growth hormones that have reduced farm animal mortality and increased the yields of meat, eggs, etc

• Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, or rBGH: a synthetic hormone widely used in both the production of beef and milk in the United States and some other countries.

  • Investment in these drugs can significantly increase meat and milk yields, and thus increase farm profitability

• The combination of genetically modified chicken breeds, avian growth hormones, and antibiotics to prevent bacterial diseases from spreading in large flocks has made indoor egg-farming operations possible

• Agriculture is moving toward extensive monoculture of staple crops, especially in Anglo-America

• Corporate agriculture, or agribusiness: large- scale extensive farms of several thousand acres or several thousand animals that are controlled by a single regional business

  • Large multinational corporations purchase hundreds of thousands of acres that are then leased to local contractors who use the company’s seed or chemicals to produce crops

  • Increasingly dependent on factory farms

• Downer cattle: beef cows that appear ill or are lame and cannot be used for human consumption, but can wind up in pet food or animal feed instead

• Low crop prices, low profitability, increasing fuel costs, and competition from big agribusiness firms have made farming very difficult for the traditional small-scale family farm

• Governments extended vast amounts of low-interest loans, price supports, and other subsidy programs to aid farmers who at the time had significant political influence in agricultural states and provinces

• Many farms’ mortgages were foreclosed due to the farmers’ inability to make money as a result of low commodity prices for crops

SPECIALIZED AGRICULTURE

• Those who wanted to survive the farm crisis in rural areas had a few options:

  • Start farming as a contractor for agribusiness

  • Buy out other farmers and go into agribusiness for yourself

  • Stick with your current farm and get into specialized farm products

• The public and consumers resistant to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), skeptics of artificial hormones, and those concerned about animal welfare have rejected many of the farming practices used by agribusiness

  • A large market for so-called natural food products has emerged, and many small family farms have restructured their operations to meet the rapidly increasing demand for such products as a result

Non-GMO Foods

• Farmers can certify their products as non-GMO and bring a premium price from natural foods processors and consumers looking for the non-GMO label in the U.S. and Canada

• Food from GMOs must carry a label warning consumers of the product’s contents in Europe

  • Consumers worry that genetically modified plants and animals could interbreed and contaminate natural food supplies or the environment, thus doing potential long-term harm

Organics, Antibiotics, and Hormone-Free

• Organic: crops and animals must not be grown using genetic engineering, must be free of pesticides, antibiotics, and synthetic hormones, must not use artificial fertilizers, and must feed on completely organic crops

  • Seen as a much more sustainable form of farming due to the lack of artificial chemicals

• Many crops have been so highly modified by hybridization that only a few commercial

heirloom varieties are available to consumers

• Concerns over animal welfare and loss of flavor in agribusiness-produced meats and eggs have led to increased consumer demand for free-range poultry, eggs, and beef

  • Farmers must have open pastures or large outdoor poultry pens where natural vegetation grows

• Grass-fed cattle have also brought significantly higher prices to gourmet consumers who seek the more natural-tasting beef, as corn- and soy-based cattle feed has been blamed for less flavorful beef

• Many small farms have expanded or switched to alternative livestock such as duck, lamb, and goosesince they also produce wool and feather down for clothing and housewares for added farm earnings

• There is increased consumer demand for value-added agricultural products, where food is processed on the farm and significantly increases in value, and more money goes to the farmer

  • Advertised by their appellation, the local or regional geographic name for the product

    • Champagne, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and other names are protected so that only products produced in the local area or region can have the appellation on the label.

Fair Trade

• To maximize profits, some corporations pay producers at the base of the supply chain extremely low wages, forcing them to work long hours in potentially unsafe working conditions.

• Fair trade movement: focuses on ensuring that small farmers and artisans are paid a fair price for their products

  • Businesses that want to source fair trade products typically undergo a certification process with one of several international fair trade federations and work with cooperatives of small farmers

Aquaculture

• Fish farming is a rapidly growing industry that small farmers can engage in and be profitable

  • Aquaculture in bays and estuaries has resulted in very profitable small-scale oyster and salmon farms

General Specialized Agriculture

• Specialized crops play an important role in the diversity of foods in terms of both farm economy and the cultural specificity of consumers

  • Small family farms and commercial farms grow these crops since they bring higher amounts of money per acre than basic grain staples

• Truck farms in the eastern United States and Canada grow specialty crops during the summer growing season, since much industrial dairy production has moved to the upper Midwest

• Suitcase farmers: farm owners who have city jobs but still own land in rural areas

  • Engage in specialty crop farming for added personal earnings and to keep old family traditions and farms alive

• Community-supported agriculture (CSA): programs in which produce and other farm products are delivered directly to individual consumers

• Specialty crops form Florida, South Texas, and Southern California and imports from Newland, Mexico and Australia keep Canadian and American stores stocked

Mediterranean Agriculture

• Mediterranean crops that have been domesticated and continuously grown in the region:

• Areas outside of the Mediterranean that have a similar climate and produce Mediterranean crops:

  • Southern and Central California

  • Central Florida

  • South Texas

  • Southern and Central Brazil

  • Southern China and Southeast Asia

  • Hawaii

  • Northern Argentina

  • Uruguay

  • Central Chile

  • Black Sea Coastal Areas

  • South Africa

  • Southern Australia

Plantation Agriculture

• In the tropical and sub-tropical climates of the world, it is common to find extensive plantation agriculture, specialized crops intended for both domestic consumption and for export to other parts of the world

  • Plantation production can prove to be a risky financial investment for many countries, leading to attempts to diversify the types of crops grown for export and reduce the potential for national economic downturns due to losses from a single crop

Dairy

• Dairying is done mainly with cows but can also be a specialized agricultural activity using goats and buffalo for cheese production

  • Yields milk for drinking, cheeses, yogurt, butter, and cream

  • A major concern with milk is spoilage, hence the long history of producing cheeses and yogurt to preserve excess milk for long-term usage

• Milkshed: the region around a city to which fresh milk is delivered without spoiling In terms of travel time and distance

• Processed dairy like cheese and yogurt production in the United States has continually moved westward over the last 150 years

• Milk is often homogenized (mixed in large batches) to create a consistent flavor and sold in a number of grades based on the amount of fat content

• Ultra-high temperature (UHT) pasteurization: a new milk preservation method where milk is flash-pasteurized at very high temperatures and under pressure to keep the water in it from turning to steam and then stored in a sterile box container that is sealed in plastic to prevent contamination

Women in Agriculture

• Women play an essential role in global agricultural production, but face a gender gap in pay equity and access to resources

  • May be unpaid workers on family farms or paid labor on other farms even though women make up 43% of the agricultural labor force on average

  • Agricultural extension services and training exclude women in many developing countries

  • Female-headed farms are less likely to be extended credit than male-owned farms

  • Areas in which women face greater barriers in farming also tend to have higher rates of undernourishment

Global Systems of Agriculture

• Agriculture accounted for a full third of the global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014

  • Most of that economic activity occurs in poor and developing countries, so the ability to grow and export crops can have an enormous impact on economic growth

• Commodity chains: links between producers and consumers in the journey from raw material to delivery of a finished product

Stages:

1. Inputs: Farming requires a number of elements to maximize both the size and quality of crop yield, such as fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, water, tools, mechanical equipment, training, certifications, and research & development.

2. Production: Growing and harvesting crops takes place. Farmers and laborers who work to raise crops receive only a tiny share of the selling price of the end product.

3. Processing: Raw agricultural goods are turned into consumer products. Agribusinesses may contract with outside industries for services such as marketing, packaging, and transport.

4. Distribution: Agricultural products are sent to market by contracting with outside transport providers. This can be an independent farmers, wholesaler, or sold internationally.

5. Consumption: retailers and restaurants sell the final product to consumers

   • In the age of globalization and multinational agribusiness firms, many commodities follow a global supply chain

     • Affected by other factors such as infrastructure, political relationships, and economic and trade developments

       • Infrastructure is an essential piece of being able to move goods around a country

       • Internal and external political developments may impact the functionality of a supply chain

       • Shifting policies and political tensions often lead to reduced trade activity, or embargoes that completely ban trade or commercial interaction with a particular country

   • Commodity-dependent: when a single product or type of good accounts for more than 60% of its exports

     • The share of commodity-dependent countries sharply increases as the level of development decreases

MODELS

• Von Thünen’s Model: land use (the type of farming) is determined by how labor intensive the type of farming is

Rings Explained:

1. Village: the organization of a central marketplace and place of consumption for the agricultural goods produced in the surrounding area

2. Intensive Farming: Labor-intensive crops include fruits, garden vegetables, herbs, and anything that required constant tending or weeding or that needed to be picked for market at a particular time. Labor-intensive animals include dairy cows and egg-producing poultry. Medicinal crops, such as herbs, were grown along with vegetables in town market gardens for local sale

3. Village Forest: A managed forest was needed to meet the energy and lumber needs of the community. Managed cutting and replanting of trees was done sustainably to be a renewable resource.

4. Extensive Farming: Labor-extensive crops require large plots of land and far less tending because they dominated potential weed invaders.

5. Grazing Lands: Highlands in peripheral areas were often not suitable for crop farming but perfect for grazing. Animals have to be moved periodically to keep from overgrazing meadows and pastures.

• Cost-to-distance relationship: an inverse relationship between the value of labor and the distance from the center of the model; the higher the total labor costs, the closer it is to the center, and the lower the labor costs, the farther it is from the center

  • Labor costs can be equated to the price of rent paid by peasants to farm a piece of land generally owned by aristocrats under the political economy of feudalism

• Land-rent curve: a mathematical function that shows the changes in rent prices across the model

Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land Use Patterns and Processes

Key Concepts:

• Central place theory: all market areas are focused on a central settlement that is a place of exchange and service provision

  • Holds that all market areas are focused on a central settlement that is a place of exchange and service provision

  • The market areas of settlements (hinterlands) overlap one another at different scales

• Large settlements = larger market areas, few in number

  • Have a larger number of services, which consumers are willing to travel large distances to access

• Small settlements = smaller, more numerous market areas

  • Have a smaller number of services, which are closer to consumers

• Research in the 1920s by German theorist Walter Christaller showed a hierarchy of places across the landscape that follow a regular pattern

  • Seven levels, from a small hamlet to the large regional service-center city

  • Used hexagons to represent individual market areas

  • Overlapped smaller-scale patterns with larger-scale layers of hexagonal market areas

Threshold and Range

• Threshold: the minimum number of people required to support a business

  • Partly calculated based on the earnings of the local population

• Range: the maximum distance that people are willing to travel to gain access to a service

  • Calculated in travel time that a consumer needs to get to a service location

  • Both are modified by income and travel time

• Traffic patterns become more important than distance in terms of how long it takes to reach a destination

Agglomeration

• Exists when similar business activities are found in a local cluster

  • (EX: Computer hardware and software firms in the Silicon Valley area south of San Francisco: this is due to close proximity to the high-tech growth poles of Stanford University and the NASA Ames Research Center.)

• Competition within markets is common in heavily populated areas

• Planning and zoning rules often push some businesses with similar building space requirements into the same local areas

• Manufacturers and corporate services often locate near one another in search of technical knowledge and labor-sharing

Urban Origins

• The origins of an urban place often have to do with one of two categorical factors:

1. Access to resources

2. Access to transportation

• Resource nodes: towns and cities that were founded due to access to natural resources

• Transport nodes: places that were founded as settlements due to their location as intersections of two or more lines of transportation

  • (Oceans, rivers, bays, trails, airports, roads, and rail lines)

• EX: the Gold Rush in California

Resource node: Sacramento, California (gold)

Transport node: San Francisco, California (port)

Settlement Patterns

• Clustered rural settlements: communities in which all of the residential and farm structures of multiple households are arranged closely together

  • Commonly seen in Europe and New England

  • Usually in places where peoples of the same culture group or clan settled nearby one another for social interaction, use of common land holdings, and security

• Dispersed rural settlements: households that are separated from one another by significant distances

  • Seen in the farm regions of the American South, Midwest, and Great Plains

  • No cultural or family relations on the agricultural frontier, making people less likely to settle near one another

• Circular settlements: generally a circle of homes surrounding a central open space

  • Found in medieval-era German and English towns, and enclosed villages of tribal herding communities in sub-Saharan Africa

• Linear settlements: tend to follow along a road or a stream front

  • Seen in French long lots

Site and Situation

• In terms of urban origins:

• Site: the physical characteristics of a place or its absolute location

• Situation: a place’s relationship with other locations, or its relative location

  • (EX: New York City’s site characteristic is that it lies on a large, deep, enclosed water harbor at the end of the navigable Hudson River, giving it an economic advantage during the colonial and postcolonial era.)

• Economic site factors such as land, labor, and capital can be used to estimate the capacity of industry and services to develop in a particular place

Housing and the Built Environment

• The built environment (schools, houses, workshops, stores, business, recreational facilities) has become the most important spatial environment for the majority of the world

• The World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that housing is an important factor in human health.

  • Needs to keep its residents dry, safe, and warm

  • Building codes and inspections ensure that safe buildings are built and maintained for home, school, and work use

  • Protect us from building near floodplains or dirty, polluted rivers and industries

  • Must be clean and provide safe drinking water and adequate sewage and garbage-removal systems

  • Must be attractive and well maintained

KNOW THE MODELS

• Concentric Zone Model: a model that represents the Anglo-American city of the United States and Canada during the height of industrialization

  • First published in 1923 by theorist Ernest Burgess

5 concentric rings:

• Central business district (CBD)

  • Contains the highest density of commercial land use

  • Characterized by verticality of buildings such as the tendency to build skyscrapers that maximize the use of one parcel of urban land

  • Contains the peak land value intersection: the downtown intersection surrounded by the most expensive pieces of real estate

• Industrial zone

  • An area of low-density commercial land that contains space-dependent activities such as factories, warehouses, rail yards, and port facilities

  • In the era of deindustrialization, many American and Canadian cities have rebuilt former industrial areas into festival landscapes

    • (EX: converting the spaces and buildings into parks, museums, sports stadiums, arenas, convention centers, and outdoor concert venues)

• Inner city housing

  • Since walking and streetcars were the main modes of transport in the early 1900s, most people tended to live as close to work as possible

  • Ranged from poor tenements and small apartments to row houses and townhouses for better-paid workers

  • Renovated through a process of gentrification: the economic reinvestment into existing buildings

• Suburbs

  • first planned developments with detached single-family homes began to appear on the periphery of American cities in 1870s

  • Victorian-era garden city movement: homes were designed to look like European farmhouses with front lawns, and were built for the growing urban middle class of Chicago

  • Home to a mostly middle-class to upper-class population

• Exurbs

  • Commuter zone: represents a wealthy area of people who own large tracts of land outside the city

    • Could be described as country estates

  • Suitcase farmers: those who worked in the city but kept farms outside of town

    • The owners of other exurban homes

  • Still retain the feel of the large country estate homes on multi-acre lots

  • Many suburban and exurban areas in large cities have pushed well into traditional agricultural areas

    • Prompted the development of a number of regulations, including farmland protection laws, minimum-acreage zoning, and development boundary zones

  • Bid-rent curve: represents the cost-to-distance relationship of real estate prices in the urban landscape

    • A cost function that shows the exponential increase in land prices as one moves closer toward the peak land value intersection

• Sector Model: combines the concepts of the industrial corridor and neighborhood for practical purposes, resulting in a much more realistic urban representation compared to the concentric zone model.

  • Also used to depict ethnic variations in the city

  • Standard central place model with the CBD at the center

  • Outside of the core business district, industrial space tended to be organized as a linear corridor surrounding a main transportation line

  • A corridor of upper-class housing extended outward from the CBD of several cities

  • Working-class neighborhoods radiate out from the CBD along the industrial corridor (recognized as ethnic neighborhoods by some theorists)

  • The middle-class areas of the city are broken into wide, separate areas radiating outward from downtown

  • White flight: people leaving inner-city areas of the United States

• Multiple-nuclei Model of urban structure: attempts to practically represent the urban landscape with neighborhoods and commercial corridors

  • Represents another evolutionary step in the conceptualization of the Anglo-American city

  • The first recognition of suburban business districts forming on the urban periphery

  • New suburban CBDs were emerging in post–World War II cities, and as suburbs spread outward, service industries followed

  • New areas of industrial development were also located on the urban periphery

• Galactic City Model or Peripheral Model

  • Represents the post-industrial city with its several, dispersed business districts

  • Represents a distinct decentralization of the commercial urban landscape as the economy has transitioned to services as the leading form of production

  • Specialization of manufacturing has meant that new manufacturing facilities tend to be much smaller and require low-cost land to afford to operate

  • Suburban retailing often occurs in multiple locations around the city

    • Retail center closer to the old CBD is likely an older center

    • Retail center located at the intersection of the belt highway and the artery leading out from the old CBD is likely a newer center

• Latin American City Model

  • Depicts the common urban landscapes of international locations

  • First presented by Larry Ford and Ernst Griffin in 1980

  • Important as an example of the colonial city as effects of European colonial rule on many cities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia

  • Laws of the Indies: a number of colonial legal codes collectively enacted by the Spanish government in the New World

    • One of these laws dealt specifically with the planning and the layout of colonial cities

• The CBD

  • Plaza: a central square that reproduced the style of European cities such as Madrid

  • Centers of government, religion, and commerce surround the plaza

  • Vertically oriented and most large cities have a cluster of skyscrapers at their core

• The Commercial Spine

  • A main boulevard be constructed leading from the plaza to the outskirts of the city

  • Often the location for the homes of the wealthiest merchants and landowners

  • Today, many of these old homes have been replaced by office towers and high-rise condominiums

• The Zone of Elite Housing

  • an area of upper-class housing straddles the spine leading outward from the city center

  • social status was gained by having your home along these main avenue districts

  • the wealthiest people tend to live on the urban periphery

• The Zone of Maturity

  • Area of middle- to upper-class housing surrounds much of the CBD

  • Laws of the Indies segregated housing in Spanish colonial settlements

    • Only those of European descent were allowed to own homes and live within the city limits or walls

• The Zone of In Situ Accretion

  • The area outside of the city limits or walls where people of indigenous or mixed descent made their homes

  • Relied primarily on local timber and mud brick, known in some areas as adobe for building materials and architecture of housing

  • Are areas of middle-class and working-class housing today

• The Zone of Peripheral Squatter Settlements

  • Squatter settlements on the urban periphery are home to most of the urban poor in Latin America

  • Rise of industrialization and the numerous civil wars fought in rural regions, among other push and pull factors, led to an increase in rural-to-urban migration in the region

  • Squatters: people who settle on land that they don’t own

    • The land available on the urban periphery is owned by either governments or agricultural landowners

  • Land invasion: squatters that generally settle a new area overnight with a large number of families to avoid retributions from landowners and local police

    • Squatter camps can be quickly erected with makeshift homes using available building materials, such as scrap wood, plastic, and blue plastic tarps

  • As you move through to new squatter settlements farther out of the city, the quality of housing declines, as does the availability of utilities and other services such as bus lines

  • Land tenure: the legal right or title to the land upon which they build their homes

• Zones of Disamenity

  • Squatter communities closer to the center of the city

  • Built on land that is deemed unsuitable for standard homes and businesses, including steep hillsides, flood plains, old industrial sites, refuse dumps, and land near airports

  • Settled on because of their availability and due to their close proximity to work opportunities in the city center

• Southeast Asian City Model

  • Developed in 1967 by geographer Terrence Garry McGee

  • Contains some of the fastest growing and most densely populated cities in the world

  • Marked by high-rise developments, and some of the tallest buildings on Earth are located in this part of the world

  • Features a strip of upper-class housing stemming from the center, middle class residential areas close to the inner city, and the presence of squatter settlements on the periphery

  • Elements of a traditional CBD scattered throughout the model

  • Focused around the old colonial port zone, characteristic of a city centered around the export business

  • The Western commercial zone is functionally a CBD, but is populated primarily by Western rather than local businesses

  • The alien commercial zone is dominated by Chinese merchants who have migrated to these cities and typically reside in the same buildings as their businesses

• The Sub-Saharan African City Model

  • Developed by geographer Harm De Blij in 1968

  • The center of the model features three distinct CBDs that reflect the history of African urban development

    • The former colonial CBD is laid out on a grid pattern like that of many European cities, contains the most vertical development, and is connected to other parts of the city by major, planned roads

    • The traditional CBD is the center of most commercial activity and is characterized by traditional, mostly single-story architecture

    • The market zone is an open-air area in which informal business is periodically conducted curb-side or at stalls

    • The mining and manufacturing zone at the outskirts of the city is indicative of the major industries found in sub-Saharan Africa

  • The informal satellite townships surrounding the mining and manufacturing areas are largely composed of squatter settlements, or “shantytowns”

• International Urban Diversity

  • Cities around the world have very different urban forms and structure

  • Cities in Western Europe are much more compact in size than U.S. cities

  • Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union have Soviet era central planning

  • Micro districts: zones of uniform housing that provide worker housing near job sites

  • Cities in the developing world have widely divergent forms determined in large part by their religious makeup, colonial history, socialist influences, and many other cultural and urban land-use influences

KNOW THE CONCEPTS

Suburbanization

• Though many people live in suburban apartments and townhouses, the detached single-family home is the dominant feature on the American suburban landscape.

• The suburbs are predominantly middle-class, economically. However, many upper-class suburbs exist, as do some lower-class suburban neighborhoods.

• The first suburban single-family homes appeared in the1890s.

• The original American suburbs were culturally populated by WASPs. This changed between the late 1960s and the 1980s when suburbs become more integrated with Catholic and non-white middle-class populations, who formerly lived in inner-city areas.

• In the 2010 census, just over 50 percent of the U.S. the population lived in suburban areas.

• Suburbs continue to expand outward and are the largest zones within urban models.

Home Mortgage Finance and Suburban Growth

• In the post of World War II United States, homeownership increased significantly as a result of federal home loan programs such as the G.I. Bill.

• Other federal programs, such as the Federal Housing Administration and the public finance mortgage corporations radically increased the number of mortgages available to the American public with regulated interest rates and limited processing fees.

• Demand was so high that factory-style housing construction methods that used prefabricated parts and specialized construction teams like Levittowns were common

Service Relocation in the Suburbs

• The boom in suburban home construction prompted a number of small service providers to locate in suburban areas

• Featured basic services like food, the family doctor, fuel, and auto repair, as well as non-basic services such as dry-cleaning and gift shops

• The combination of middle-class flight from the inner city and the deindustrialization of urban manufacturing economies prompted even more and larger service providers to relocate to suburban areas

• Two factors causing people to leave cities were at work:

1. Service providers realized much of their consumer base moved away from the old CBDs that had been the traditional service centers

2. Many service firms such as banks, insurance companies, and other white-collar businesses realized their labor force was moving farther and farther out from the old CBD

• Suburban sprawl: the expansion of housing, transportation, and commercial development to undeveloped land on the urban periphery

• A number of suburban political anti-growth movements have emerged in the United States and Canada

  • Groups push for new laws and regulations that slow suburban development and limit approval of new suburban roads and highways

  • (EX: Loudoun County, Virginia, where in the 1990s, the county board of supervisors enacted a series of growth boundaries that set minimums for the lot sizes of new homes)

• Counterurbanization: the movement of inner-city or suburban residents to rural areas to escape the congestion, crime, pollution, and other negative aspects of the urban landscape

Edge Cities

• First put forward by journalist Joel Garreau in 1991

• To be considered an edge city, a suburban CBD would have the following characteristics:

  • Minimum of 5 million square feet of office space

  • Minimum 600,000 square feet of retail space

  • No city government, except where built atop an existing town

  • High daytime population, low nighttime population

  • Located at transportation nodes or along commuter corridors

• Edge city growth has largely increased lateral commuting in many large metropolitan areas between suburbs and edge cities

  • Significant amounts of counter-commuting have been detected from downtown residences to edge city locations

City Types

• Colonial City

  • Colonial cities: cities with origins as centers of colonial trade or administration are classified together

  • Many of these cities retained their European-style buildings and street networks

  • Newly independent governments have often changed street names and place-names to reflect local culture and social history

• Fall-Line Cities

  • Fall-line cities: the ports that lay upstream on coastal rivers at the point where navigation was no longer possible by ocean-going ships

  • Fall-line: where a river’s tidal estuary transitions to an upland stream at the first set of river falls

  • These were economic break-in-bulk points (or break-of-bulk) where ships were offloaded and then packed with outgoing trade

• Medieval Cities

  • Medieval cities: urban centers that predate the European Renaissance, roughly 1400 C.E.

  • Originally settled during the Roman era and developed into significant centers of trade and population during the medieval period

  • (EX: Istanbul, Turkey)

• Gateway Cities

  • Gateway cities: places where immigrants make their way into a country

  • Tend to have significant immigrant populations

  • (EX: New York City)

• Entrepôt

  • Entrepôt: a port city in which goods are shipped in at one price and shipped out to other port locations at a higher price, resulting in profitable trade

  • Made possible by the lack of customs duties (import and export taxes) that are common in most other port cities

  • Tend to become large centers of finance, warehousing, and the global shipping trade

  • (EX: Dubai, Singapore)

• Megacities

  • Megacity: a metropolitan area with more than 10 million people

  • EX: Mexico City in Mexico (21.6 million), Dhaka in Bangladesh (19.6 million), Cairo in Egypt (20.0million), and Mumbai in India (20.0 million)

• Megalopolis

  • Megalopolis: the merging of the urbanized areas of two or more cities, generally through suburban growth and expansion

  • Name given by French geographer Jean Gottmann following his travels through the Northeastern United States during the 1950s

  • Other megalopolises may form in coming decades, which may challenge Tokyo for the world’s largest conurbation, or combined city

  • (EX: Tokaido: Tokyo, Yokohama)

• World City

  • World city designation signifies a metropolitan area as a global center for finance, trade, and commerce

  • World cities are ranked in levels of importance, and provide an example of urban hierarchy at a global scale

    • First-order world cities are New York City, London, and Tokyo

    • Second-order world cities are Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, Zürich, Hong Kong, São Paulo, and Singapore

    • Third-order world cities are Miami, Toronto, Seoul, Mumbai, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Sydney

• Primate Cities

  • Primate city: when the largest city in a country has at least twice the population of the country’s next largest city

  • The situation of urban primacy is sometimes blamed when there is uneven economic development within a country

  • Rank-size rule: a country’s second largest city is half the size of its largest city; the third-largest city is one-third the size of the largest city; and so on, such that the eighth largest city is one-eighth the size of the largest city

    • Formula: The nth largest city is 1/n the size of the country’s largest city.

Urban Society

Segregation

• De facto segregation: where no law requiring ethnic or racial segregation exists, yet they nonetheless remain zones of separation.

• Historically, legal or “de jure” segregation existed in the United States in a number of ethnic and racial situations

  • (EX: The segregation laws against African Americans in the “Jim Crow” American South)

• Chinatowns are often seen as cultural districts, but many have their origins as zones where Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese migrants were forced to live

• Redlining: designating neighborhoods on company maps where home mortgage and insurance applications would be automatically denied

  • Historically used by banks, insurers, and real estate companies

• Restrictive covenants: means of racial discrimination through the real estate system

  • Homeowners added special covenants to their home real estate titles, restricting future sale of a home to white-only buyers

• Some white urban communities openly engaged in racial steering, mainly through the use of real estate agents

  • When non-whites attempted to buy homes, real estate companies or their agents purposefully drove them to racially specific neighborhoods, regardless of their income or ability to pay for a house.

• Many real estate agents and developers also profited from racial prejudice in a common practice called blockbusting

• Agents would convince white homeowners to sell their homes quickly and cheaply by leading them to believe that minorities were moving into their neighborhoods and that property values would consequently decline. They would then sell those homes at a considerable profit to prosperous non-whites looking to escape the inner city.

Urban Social Change

• A distinct social pattern of invasion and succession typifies the long-term turnover of neighborhood social and ethnic composition

  • One ethnic group or economic class leaves a neighborhood and is replaced by another over time

Women and the City

• The percentage of female-headed households in urban areas has increased significantly in recent decades

• Geographer Susan Hansen’s work shows that the commuting patterns of female heads of household are different from male commuters

• The roles of women in American and Canadian society have changed significantly in recent decades

  • Women make up half of the urban labor force

  • Women are increasingly equal (but not yet equal) to men in terms of pay, access to management positions, and political power

Urban Economies

• Gentrification: the economic reinvestment in existing real estate

• Deindustrialization left many older areas of cities neglected and economically depressed and many gentrifiers saw the opportunity to take old homes and storefronts and convert them into attractive modern accommodations.

  • People in the historical preservation movement began renovating homes in places such as Greenwich Village in New York City and Georgetown in D.C.

  • The whole cottage industry in gentrification had emerged in which flippers bought old homes at low prices, renovated the homes to contemporary standards, and resold them at handsome profits

• Has driven out low-income residents from the community as finding new homes often becomes difficult, and displaced elderly persons can become a costly social welfare program issue for city governments

Urban Economic Growth

• urban governments and investors are concerned with the infrastructure requirements of cities

• economic growth tends to occur only in urban areas where utilities, transportation, safety, health, and education needs are met in terms of access and capacity

• by making the city attractive to young, educated businesspeople, the hope is that major service industry firms in high-paying fields such as technology, computing, research and development, and other creative industries such as media and advertising will relocate downtown

• companies tend to locate their offices near significant growth poles for their industry

• economic multiplier effects around centers have resulted in a multitude of companies and investment in computer hardware and software development

Urban Sustainability

• The sustainability of urban growth and development is measured in economic and environmental terms

• Political attitudes and practical considerations often create a multitude of problems for urban government leaders and policymakers

• City governments must address economic sustainability in terms of public services like transportation, utilities, health care access, public housing, and the most expensive: education

• Since deindustrialization, large city governments have had the difficult job of balancing depressed commercial tax revenues with the high cost of maintaining municipal services

• To combat the high costs of running urban governments is to combine the municipal governments of the core city with the multiple town governments of the surrounding suburbs

The Expense of Schools

• The property taxes collected on homes often do not meet the cost and demand for high- quality schools in areas of the country

• Resistance by homeowners to increased taxes is often expressed by voting down school bond levies, which raise money by increasing property taxes

• School systems are caught between a public that does not want to pay higher taxes and parents who demand higher-quality schools

• Local school districts are increasingly dependent on state governments to help meet funding needs

Urban Transportation

• Traffic congestion plagues many cities in the United States and Canada

  • Public pressure on local politicians to come up with solutions

• Local leaders are often restricted in what they can do in terms of building highways because of the high cost of road construction and federal clean air regulations that limit emissions

Air pollution from cars has two scales of environmental impact:

1. Locally, smog from vehicle emissions is harmful to public health and can create an unsightly haze

2. Globally, carbon dioxide emissions from cars are a significant source of greenhouse gases that contribute to the problem of global warming

• The benefits of mass transit are having fewer cars on the highway, reduced emissions, and increased accessibility for low-income citizens

New Downtown Housing

• Environmentally beneficial because it stops suburban housing sprawl from encroaching on farmland or sensitive environments such as wetlands, coastal zones, forests, or habitats of endangered species

• New downtown housing can also have the added environmental benefit of reducing transportation impacts, fossil fuel use, and air pollution by having workers live downtown close to their jobs

• Brownfield remediation: a process in which hazardous contaminants are removed or sealed off from former industrial sites

• Mixed-use buildings contain both housing and commercial space

  • New Urbanism developments

• Many cities have enacted zoning laws, which separate commercial and residential space

• The purchase and rental prices of many new downtown housing units are so high that only the upper-middle-class income-earners can afford to live there

Unit 7: Industrial and Economic Patterns and Processes

Key Concepts:

• Sectors: different categories the economy can be divided into

  • One common way to group economic activity and employment is by its stage in the production process, from primary production onward

  • Another way is to categorize sectors by the types of products or services they create, such as mining or communications

• Primary production includes agriculture, mining, energy, forestry, and fisheries

• Secondary production includes the processing of the raw materials drawn from the primary sector

  • Reflects all forms of manufacturing

• Tertiary production includes the transportation, wholesaling, and retailing of finished goods to consumers

  • Can include other types of services that could be categorized as quaternary, such as finance, or quinary, such as government

• Quaternary production includes wholesaling, finance, banking, insurance, real estate, advertising, and marketing (business services)

• Quinary production includes retailing, tourism, entertainment, and communications, government, or semi-public services such as health, education, and utilities (consumer services)

Sector Categories by Product or Service Type

• Important to consider the cash value of what is produced in one sector compared to other sectors

• Helps explain why certain products and services are emphasized in an economy and why others might decline or be abandoned

Agriculture

• Economically, what is measured is the combined cash value of what is produced, not the volume in bushels or weight in tons

• Agriculture is the least valuable, despite the fact that a majority of the world’s population still lives in rural agricultural regions

• Subsistence farming is very common in less-developed parts of the world as agriculture supporting the farm family and local people

• Farmers in the Third World who farm plantations or work in cash-cropping generally send crops around in search of buyers

• Farming is most commonly done on a commercial basis in more-developed countries with processed products sold and distributed globally

Commodity Chain

• Commodity chain: exist from the small-scale, family-based producers selling directly from the farm or through local farmers’ markets to transnational supply networks selling to an international customer base

• Tea production employs millions of people worldwide, most of them living in remote poverty-stricken rural communities

  • Most of the profits are made at the retail end of tea’s commodity chain and the oversupply of tea (combined with the poverty of the producers) is a matter of great concern to international aid groups

Natural Resources

• Natural resource production can be divided into two pairs of linked sectors based on their renewability and prices:

  • Mining and energy extraction can be valuable depending on the global commodity prices

    • Oil (petroleum) became highly valuable in 2008 and was traded for over $120 per barrel in mid-summer, only to fall below $50 per barrel by the year’s end

  • Fisheries and timber markets are not as volatile, but have increased in price and value over the years due to reduced supply

    • In these heavily regulated and increasingly protected natural resources, companies must use more technology and larger processing facilities to remain profitable and meet growing consumer demand

Renewability

• Minerals and fossil fuel energy are nonrenewable products

• Some mineral products like metals and glass can be recycled

• Energy sources that do not run on fossil fuels are generally renewable if managed properly

• Alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, nuclear, tidal, and geothermal power tend to be more expensive to harness than fossil fuels and are thus less common

Sustainability

• Products drawn from living resources like fisheries and forestry are renewable

• How trees are cut and how fish are caught makes a difference in terms of overall ecosystem survival and sustainability

  • (EX: a two-mile-long microfilament gill nets to catch fish is considered an unsustainable practice that harms the ocean ecosystem)

Manufacturing

• Hallmark of economic development, and factory-made products far out-value those of agricultural and natural resource–based economies.

• Manufactured goods are farm products and natural resources that have been taken through value-added processing

• Durable goods and non-durable goods, divides production based on the amount of time the product is going to be used

  • Resource processing: oil refineries, metals, plastics, chemicals, lumber, paper, food and beverage, concrete and cement, glass

  • Textiles: clothing, shoes and leather products, artificial fibers and thread

  • Furniture: home, office, bedding

  • Appliances: home appliances, commercial equipment, power tools, lighting

  • Transport: automotive, rail, aerospace, shipbuilding, recreational vehicles

  • Health: pharmaceuticals, medical devices, personal care products

  • Technology: home computers, business computing and servers, industrial control devices, phones, television and audio entertainment

Services

• Services are intangible products, as opposed to manufactured goods, which are physically tangible or touchable

• Low-benefit services: sectors in which the labor force tends to be hourly employees who receive few if any additional benefits, like paid vacation or health insurance

• High-benefit services: sectors in which pay tends to be salaried and includes considerable fringe benefits like health, dental, and vision insurance; vacation; sick days; and retirement reimbursements

• Service firms are typically classified by the type of activity performed as part of the service

Deindustrialization

• The United States and Canadian services produce the majority of the countries’ economic value and employment

  • Roughly 80 percent of these economies’ value is drawn from services, only 19 percent from manufacturing and resources, and a mere 1 percent from agriculture

• Deindustrialization: shifting away from manufacturing as the main source of economic production

  • Downside is that millions of factory workers lost jobs and many old industrial cities suffered from the economic downturn

  • Manufacturing businesses had to focus on highly priced manufactured goods like vehicles, heavy equipment, and computing devices to keep profits and investment up amid foreign competition and keep the remaining First-World manufacturing labor force paid and employed

Understanding Why Services Are Important in America

• Cheaper off-shore locations overseas to build factories

• Deindustrialization has to do with the investment value of each sector

• Investors in new businesses are looking to maximize their returns on investment, and services are the most valuable investments out there

• Moving from natural resources to manufactured products adds a massive amount of value

The Importance of High Technology for Services

• To better understand services is to think historically about how technology has affected economies:

  • In agricultural history, the development of the plow is the technical advancement that revolutionized farming and radically increased the amount of land that could be cultivated.

  • During the industrial era, the product that made all manufacturing possible was steel (railroad locomotives to skyscrapers and automobiles are made possible by steel alloys).

  • In the service economy era, the computer makes all sectors of the service economy more efficient and capable of handling large numbers of consumers and data.

  • The microchip–miniature processor circuits, has made desktop computers possible as well as smaller handheld and wireless devices

Levels of Development

• Used categorize countries in terms of their levels of economic development

• Compare development level verbally and to acknowledge the patterns of uneven development in the world economy

• First World: industrialized and service-based economies that have free markets, a high level of productivity value per person and a high quality of life

• (EX: Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, United States, Canada)

• Second World: describes the communist countries of which only two communist states remain today: Cuba and North Korea

• Centrally planned economies

• Still restructuring their economy to free-market systems like the former Soviet Union and Eastern European states

• Newly industrialized countries are still controlled by communist parties but that have adapted free-market reforms to their economies

• Third World: countries with mainly agricultural and resource-based economies that have low levels of per-person productivity and a low quality of life

  • Underdeveloped states are found across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Asian countries

  • Some made a distinct economic shift toward industrialization and urbanization

  • Others remain firmly in a rural, agricultural category

• More developed countries (MDCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) are terms used to describe the relative economic differences between states

  • First- and Second-World countries generally tend to fit in the MDC category, while Third, Fourth, and Fifth Worlds are LDCs

  • Rule: $10,000 GNP per capita, above it are MDCs, below it, LDCs

• Newly industrialized countries (NICs): Third-World states with economies that have made a distinct shift away from agriculture and toward manufacturing as the focus of economic development and production

  • In a constant process of building infrastructure (roads, ports, power plants, water systems, railways), which facilitate the construction and operation of factories

  • Have rapid population growth and are usually on the border of stage two and stage three of the demographic transition model

  • Experience rapid rural-to-urban migration as their economies industrialize and, as a result, urbanize

  • Funds to develop infrastructure and factories can come from internal sources, from foreign aid, or from foreign direct investment (FDI)

    • Technology transfer: where technical knowledge, training, and industrial equipment is provided to NIC governments to increase business efficiency and capacity

    • FDI is money from international private investors or investment firms in other countries who are looking to earn a profit

  • Development loans sought by NICs to help pay for new large-scale infrastructure projects

    • To help develop the necessary infrastructure to attract FDI, some NICs seek international development loans from organizations like the World Bank

    • (EX: electric power systems, dams, water purification and waste treatment centers, pipelines, highways, and national rail systems)

  • Foreign development aid is money provided by donor state governments in the First World that is not expected to be given back

  • When women are given an education, they contribute to forming capital, which lifts their communities, and their nations experience economic growth

India’s Jump to Services

• High-tech markets in software development and computing services began to open up in India due to certain comparative advantages it has over other NICs

• The English-language heritage of India’s colonial past with Britain has two distinctly positive effects:

1. Access to the American technology markets via language

2. A large number of educated workers who speak the language

China’s Demand for Energy

• Industrial development in China and the newly earned wealth of the Chinese people have combined to create a large demand for energy in industry and transportation

• Coal has been the primary source for electrical production and is plentiful

• Oil demand is high, as industry and Chinese citizens have more use for trucks and personal cars

Asian Tigers: Old and New

• Asian Tigers: a term used to describe the industrial economies of Asia that have been aggressive in terms of economic growth rates and their ability to compete for consumers

• The building of a large manufacturing capacity in the Old Asian Tigers was the result of Cold War realities in the region

  • These states were seen as free-market bastions against the spread of Communism

  • Highly efficient factories and a focus on product quality in both Japan and Korea had created significant market share in the American automobile and electronics markets by the 1980s

  • Foreign competition along with the oil shocks of the 1970s triggered deindustrialization in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe

  • (EX: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore)

• Manufacturing development in the New Asian Tigers was mainly funded through FDI that came from firms in New York, London, and Tokyo, as well as from companies in South Korea and Taiwan that constructed and operated the factories in the New Tigers

  • The New Asian Tigers offered cheap labor and low-cost land and resources, as well as few labor and environmental regulations that had become costly for businesses in the First World.

  • (EX: China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam)

The Asian Economic Crisis

• Growth in all of Asia came to an abrupt halt in 1997

• A banking crash in South Korea rippled through the region and resulted in a credit crisis

• Money to develop new factories and infrastructure projects in the New Asian Tigers dried up as a result

• Credit crunch: results from banks and investors holding back on industrial loans and investments

• The 1997 Asian economic crisis also was the trigger for deindustrialization in the Old Asian Tigers

• Large firms, like Japan’s Toyota and the Korean Hyundai conglomerate, had employed extra workers and their adult children under a traditional benefits system of guaranteed family employment

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

• Industrialization rapidly transformed the global economic landscape and the way that people lived

Great Britain

• The process of industrialization began in the second half of the 18th century in Great Britain

• Two driving forces that undoubtedly contributed to Britain’s shift to an industrialized society: a significant shift in the size and distribution of the population.

• The availability of coal and iron ore allowed British industry to rapidly mechanize

  • These two essential resources were ultimately the key combination behind one of the Industrial Revolution’s most important inventions: the railroad

Effects of Industrialization

• Saw major shifts in the size and distribution of their populations in surrounding European nations and to the United States by the mid-19th century

• Technological advancements in manufacturing enabled concurrent innovations in agriculture, spawning the Second Agricultural Revolution

• The use of new mechanical devices in agriculture also reduced the need for farm labor, just as the proliferation of factories in centralized areas called for a much larger workforce in cities

• Caused major shifts in family and class structures

• Industrialization did not meant an end to child labor—it meant that children were sent to work in factories rather than alongside their parents on the family farm

• Workers began to organize into cooperative societies and trade unions, which provided benefits and services to their members and began to advocate for higher wages and better working conditions

• The latter part of the 19th century also saw a burgeoning middle class of professionals such as merchants, engineers, factory owners, doctors, and lawyers

• Women were increasingly discouraged from joining the workforce and instead were expected to focus on raising children and maintaining a comfortable home

Global Impact

• Productivity increased exponentially due to mechanization, helping turn these countries into economic powerhouses

• Periods of explosive growth are followed by periods of economic crises

• The productivity boom in industrialized

• European countries left them hungry for both raw materials and new markets for their finished goods

• European nations had been colonizing other parts of the world for centuries, the speed and scope of this “new imperialism” was unprecedented

  • Were able to easily colonize vast areas of Africa and Asia due to technological advancements

KNOW THE MATH

Measures of Development

• Economic indicators are used to help understand the variable levels of development and measure the degrees of uneven development between states

Gross Domestic Product

• Gross domestic product (GDP): the dollar value of all goods and services produced in a country in one year

  • Measures the total volume of a country’s economy and is done without adjusting for international trade; therefore, it measures only the domestic economy: GDP = GOODS + SERVICES

  • GDP for the most-recent three-month quarter of the year grew by 3.5 percent over the previous three months

Gross National Income

• Gross national income (GNI): the dollar value of all goods and services produced in a country, plus the dollar value of exports minus imports in the same year

  • Measures economic value

  • GNI includes wealth gained when money comes from other countries for exports: GNI = GOODS + SERVICES + (EXPORTS – IMPORTS)

  • Trade Surplus: (EXPORTS > IMPORTS)

  • This is a positive number, and adds value to the economy.

  • Trade Deficit: (EXPORTS < IMPORTS)

  • This is a negative number, and removes value from the economy.

Per Capita Calculations

• Per capita: “for every head” in Latin, meaning for each person

• Gross national income (GNI) per capita: the estimated income of a person converted to U.S. dollars at currency exchange rates

  • A modified form of GDP per capita

  • Level of development comparisons are done by dividing the volume of the economy by the population, like so:

  • GDP per capita = (GOODS + SERVICES) ÷ POPULATION

  • GNI per capita = [(GOODS + SERVICES) + (EXPORTS – IMPORTS)] ÷ POPULATION

• A relative standard of living measured by the services that such productivity provides for the population

• Gross national income purchasing power parity (GNI PPP): an estimate that takes into account differences in prices between countries

• Human Development Index (HDI): designed by the United Nations to measure the level of development of states based on a number of social indicators in addition to economic production

  • An indexed score from 0.00 to 1.00 is calculated for countries by combining GDP per capita, the adult literacy rate, average level of education, and total life expectancy

  • Intent is to provide a more balanced measure of development and indicate some of the factors that illustrate the negative impact of poverty on economic potential in Third-World countries

• Gini coefficient: measures the level of income disparity between the country’s richest and poorest population groups on a scale of 0 to 100

• Gender-Related Development Index (GDI): takes the same indicators used to calculate HDI but replaces GDP per capita with income

• The sectoral structure can be considered in the evaluation of an economy

• Other ways to measure an economy include measuring the size of the black market, income distribution, use of fossil fuels, and even “soft” indicators such as infant mortality rates and literacy rates

KNOW THE THEORIES

The Demographic Transition Link

• Each of the stages represents a type of economic context, and that the economy directly impacts the patterns of birth rates, death rates, and population

Rostow’s Stages of Growth

• Developed in the 1950s by theorist Walt Rostow

• Proposed that countries went through five stages of growth between agricultural and service-based economies

• Each country had at least some form of comparative advantage that could be utilized in international trade and thus fund the country’s economic development over time

1. Traditional society:

• Economy is focused on primary production such as agriculture and fishing

• Country’s limited wealth is spent internally on things that do not promote economic development

• Technical knowledge is low

2. Preconditions for takeoff:

• The country’s leadership begins to invest the country’s wealth in infrastructure such as roads, ports, electrification, and school systems that promote economic development and trade relations with other nations

• More technical knowledge is learned that stimulates the economy

3. Takeoff:

• Economy begins to shift focus onto a limited number of industrial exports

• Participates in traditional agriculture, but the labor force begins to shift to factory work

• Technical experience is gained in industrial production and business management

4. Drive to maturity:

• Technical (or technological) advancements diffuse throughout the country

• Workers become increasingly skilled and educated, and fewer people are engaged in traditional activities like agriculture

5. Age of mass consumption:

• An industrial trade economy develops in which highly specialized production such as vehicles, energy, and consumer products dominate the economy

• Technical knowledge and education levels are high

• Agriculture is mechanized (no longer traditional) and employs a small labor force

  Negatives:

• The colonial legacy and other barriers to development such as government corruption or capital flight are not accounted for in Rostow’s theory

• He assumed that all countries could progress smoothly through the stages if their investment focused on trade and technology development

Dependency Theory

• Dependency theory: holds that most LDCs (including all NICs) are highly dependent on foreign-owned factories, foreign direct investment, and technology from MDCs to provide employment opportunities and infrastructure

• Third-World countries get stuck in a continuous cycle of dependency on First-World loans to pay for additional economic development needs

• Prebisch thesis: detailed the dependency of Third-World economies on First-World loans and investments to pay for the building of new industries and infrastructure

• At the heart stands a claim about the dominant role of First World–based transnational corporations (TNCs) and investors in a postcolonial exploitation of the Third World in which MDCs have economically and politically subordinated LDC populations

• Some describe this as economic imperialism in a modern reference to the European empires of the colonial era

• Creates additional economic risks, as Third- World economies are also subject to the level of demand for LDC-made products and the overall global economic climate

• Market stagnation in an LDC product can be catastrophic to its economy and harm the quality of life of its citizens

Breaking the Cycle of Dependency

• LDC policies and programs that attempted to increase capital accumulation within Third-World national economies:

  • Internalization of economic capital: requires companies to deposit profits from factories in LDC banks and reinvest locally, preventing capital flight, which occurs when factory earnings are sent to banks back in the First World where they cannot be used to further local development in the LDC

  • Import substitution: Instead of buying simple First World–made consumer products like laundry soap, this approach calls for building laundry soap factories and producing it within the LDC. The manufacturing profits can then be sent to LDC banks and reinvested locally.

  • Nationalization of natural resource-based industries**:** foreign corporate ownership of oil fields and mines robs the national government and local companies of potential earnings

  • Profit-sharing agreements: In China, Vietnam, and a few local cases elsewhere, foreign companies are given permission to build new factories on land leased to them by the government.

  • Technology development programs: Some countries have used their limited public funds to invest in high-technology equipment and worker training for locally owned manufacturers.

Tourism

• By attracting international tourists, countries can gain large inputs of cash from foreign countries without having to export manufactured goods

• Beach resorts, golf, skiing, wine regions, historical districts, and cultural attractions like festivals and archaeological sites can all create tourist draw

• Ecotourism: tourism directed toward exotic, often threatened, natural environments, intended to support conservation efforts and observe wildlife

Free-Trade Agreements

• Regional free-trade agreements between states have become a common way to improve international trade

• Supranational free-trade zones like the European Union (EU) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have made regional economies of multiple states much stronger and have opened the doors of development for less-developed neighbors

  • Mexico has benefited significantly from its free-trade relationship with the United States and Canada. The NAFTA treaty, signed in 1991, went into full effect in 2001 with the full removal of all tariffs (taxes on goods that cross international borders) between the three members.

Free-Market Reforms

• Communist states like China and Vietnam began to reform the old Soviet-style command economy in which all economic production was managed and planned by the central government

• The most significant reform is allowing foreign companies to open factories and retail services in these countries

  • China established the first special economic zones (SEZs) in 1980, in which foreign firms were allowed to build facilities in coastal port cities

    • SEZs: a type of export processing zone, defined as port locations where foreign firms are given special tax privileges to incentivize trade

• Economic productivity has more than tripled in China and Vietnam since the introduction of the reforms

Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory

• Immanuel Wallerstein developed a world systems theory that also sought to explain uneven development around the world in the 1970s

• Believed the modern nation-state was birthed in Europe as a way of protecting capitalist interests, which were based on the same highly unequal division of labor as feudalism

1. Core nations are the most developed and economically influential in the world.

• Hold significant cultural, military, and especially economic dominance over the rest of the world

• Import goods from periphery nations, taking advantage of those countries’ cheap labor, raw materials, and agriculture

2. Periphery nations are the least developed.

• Weak governments, high social inequality, dependent economies

• Heavily influenced and exploited by core countries

3. Semi-periphery nations fall in between the core and periphery in terms of development and influence.

• Can play both peripheral and core-like roles

• Able to assert some dominance over the periphery, but they can also be influenced and to some extent exploited by the core

Industrial Location Theory

• From Alfred Weber’s work, whose 1909 Theory of Industrial Location is still influential, the selection of optimal factory locations has much to do with the minimization of land, labor, resource, and transportation costs

• Weber states that, in terms of location, manufactured goods can be classified into two categories based on the amount of input in relation to product output:

1. Weight-losing, or bulk-reducing, manufacturing involves a large amount of input that is reduced to a final product that weighs less or has less volume or bulk than the input

2. Weight-gaining, or bulk-gaining, manufacturing involves a number of inputs that are combined to make a final product that gains bulk, volume, or weight in the production process

Weight-Losing Industries

• In weight-losing processing in which there is only one major input, such as seafood packaging, lumber mills, and metal ore-processing or smelting, the industrial location is in very close proximity to the resource location.

  • (EX: The industrial location of steel factories is dependent on four major inputs: iron ore, coal, limestone, and water. Iron ore is most distance elastic, meaning it can be transported over short or long distances to the steel plant, whereas coal, limestone, and water need to be in close proximity.)

Weight-Gaining Industries

• Weight-gaining manufacturing generally involves the assembly of several inputs into a finished product

• The finished product is more bulky and thus more costly to transport, the factory location should be relatively close to consumers to minimize delivery costs

  • (EX: An issue for food products like bread is the limited shelf life that also affects industrial location. Bread, milk, and other perishable products tend to be manufactured in many individual plants that serve the local regions. This decentralized network approach keeps fresh products in stores longer by reducing transportation time. Bread production is so decentralized that bakeries are found in all cities and are an example of ubiquitous industries.)

The Geography of Supply Chains

• A supply chain exists when parts are assembled into  components that are then joined together to create larger finished products

  • EX: Automobiles are an example of heavy industry that requires a large supply chain network to support the assembly of a final product.

• Fordist production (Fordism): relied on a single company owning all aspects of production, from steel manufacture to advertising.

• In the Post-Fordist era, car companies changed and became dependent on large networks of regional supply chains.

• Just-in-time production: methods in which suppliers send parts to assembly plants on an as-needed basis

Retail Location Theory

• The precise location of retail services is spatially dependent on the relationship between variable cost and revenue surfaces based on local geography

• Spatial margin of profitability: the area where local demand for a service creates revenue higher than the local costs of doing business

  • Used to define these areas of maximization

Service Location Theory

• The location of businesses in the service economy era (since the 1990s) has become a new area of research in economic geography

• Recent work has focused on the location of high-benefit services

• Footloose industry: businesses whose locations are not tied to resources, transportation, or consumer locations

• Often corporate executives are interested in a location for a number of particular qualities that compose a “best fit” for their corporate culture

• Economist Richard Florida has proposed that there is a creative class of high-benefit service-industry firms and workers

• Local economic development programs have become focused on the attraction of “creative” firms and laborers

Agglomeration

• Refers to the concentration of human activities in a cluster or around a central place

• Agglomeration economies: exist where firms with related or similar products locate together in clusters or regions

  • Together, the firms enjoy the advantages of a shared skilled-labor pool, specialized suppliers, and service providers and can share (or steal) technical knowledge on production or marketing

• Deglomeration: occurs when a location is overloaded with similar firms and services

  • If local resources or the labor pool are fully utilized or over-utilized, some firms may seek alternate locations to expand to or may move all operations completely

The Foreign Auto Firms Move South

• As Japanese firms looked into American production sites, they found further reduced-cost advantages as they moved south from Michigan and Ohio.

• These northern unionized-labor states had higher payroll and benefit costs which were ingrained into state workforce regulations.

• Southern locations were right-to-work states where regulation does not favor unions and did not impact pay benefit costs.

KNOW THE MAPS

Industrial Regions

• North America:

  • American Industrial Belt or “Rust Belt” following deindustrialization

  • Canadian Industrial Heartland or Canada’s “Main Street”

  • Piedmont Industrial Region

• Europe

  • British Midlands

  • Ruhr Valley

  • Northern Italy or the “Third Italy”

• Asia

  • Japan

  • Korea

  • Taiwan

  • China

Economies of Scale

• Economies of scale: achieved when producers expand their operations but incur lower per-unit costs in the process

  • When a company increases output of a single product, it can save money by purchasing supplies in bulk, managing more workers, financing large sums of credit at lower interest rates, and negotiating discounts for per-mile transportation costs in larger bulk amounts

• Economies of scope: in which companies benefit from the increase in the number of different products under a larger brand name

  • Larger economies of scope are especially useful when one product at the end of its useful life, or product cycle, is replaced by a new model or alternative device

Women in Development

• Women work more hours per day (in paid and unpaid labor) than men in every country in the world except in Anglo America and Australia

• Women in the paid workforce are also growing in numbers across the world in both developed and developing countries and regions

• Their role in society is changing and improving as opportunities for education, childcare, and maternity benefits open up

• In 2000, the United Nations developed a mandate called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which was designed with the intention of eradicating poverty by the year 2015.