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1. The nature of geography and the role of human

geography, pp. 2–5.

2. Seven fundamental geographic observations and the basic concepts that underlie them, pp. 5–15.

3. The regional concept and the characteristics of regions, pp. 15–19.

4. Why geographers use maps and how maps show

spatial information, pp. 19–26.

5. Other means of visualizing and analyzing spatialdata: mental maps, systems, and models,pp. 26–28.

1

C H A P T E R

Introduction:Some Background Basics

The Trans-Alaska

pipeline carries

the imprint of

human action to

the remotest ofNorth America’s

natural

landscapes.

11



2 Introduction: Some Background Basics

Getting Started

The fundamental question asked by geographers is “Does itmake a difference where things are located?” If for any oneitem or group of objects the answer is “You bet it does!” thegeographer’s interest is aroused and geographic investiga-tion is appropriate. For example, it matters a great deal thatlanguages of a certain kind are spoken in certain places.But knowledge of the location of a specific language groupis not of itself particularly significant. Geographic study of alanguage requires that we try to answer questions aboutwhy and how the language shows different characteristics

in different locations and how the present distribution of itsspeakers came about. In the course of our study, we wouldlogically discuss such concepts as migration, acculturation,the diffusion of innovation, the effect of physical barrierson communication, and the relationship of language toother aspects of culture. As geographers, we are interestedin how things are interrelated in different regions and giveevidence of the existence of “spatial systems.”

Geography is often referred to as the spatial science,that is, the discipline concerned with the use of earth

space. In fact, geography literally means “description of theearth,” but that task is really the responsibility of nearly allthe sciences. Geography might better be defined as thestudy of spatial variation, of how—and why—physical andcultural items differ from place to place on the surface of the earth. It is, further, the study of how observable spatialpatterns evolved through time. If things were everywherethe same, if there were no spatial variation, the kind of human curiosity that we call “geographic” simply wouldnot exist. Without the certain conviction that in some in-

teresting and important way landscapes, peoples, and op-portunities differ from place to place, there would be nodiscipline of geography.

But we do not have to deal in such abstract terms.You consciously or subconsciously display geographicawareness in your daily life. You are where you are, doingwhat you are doing, because of locational choices youfaced and spatial decisions you made. You cannot be herereading this book and simultaneously be somewhereelse—working, perhaps, or at the gym. And should you

now want to go to work or take an exercise break, thetime involved in going from here to there (wherever“there” is) is time not available for other activities in otherlocations. Of course, the act of going implies knowingwhere you are now, where “there” is in relation to “here,”and the paths or routes you can take to cover the distance.

These are simple examples of the observation that“space matters” in a very personal way. You cannot avoidthe implications of geography in your everyday affairs.Your understanding of your hometown, your neighbor-

hood, or your college campus is essentially a geographicunderstanding. It is based on your awareness of wherethings are, of their spatial relationships, and of the varying

content of the different areas and places you frequent.You carry out your routine activities in particular placesand move on your daily rounds within defined geographicspace, following logical paths of connection between dif-ferent locations.

Just as geography matters in your personal life, so itmatters on the larger stage as well. Decisions made by cor-porations about the locations of manufacturing plants orwarehouses in relation to transportation routes and mar-kets are spatially rooted. So, too, are those made by shop-

ping center developers and locators of parks and gradeschools. On an even grander scale, judgments about theprojection of national power or the claim and recognitionof “spheres of influence and interest” among rival coun-tries are related to the implications of distance and area.

Geography, therefore, is about space and the contentof space. We think of and respond to places from thestandpoint not only of where they are but, rather moreimportantly, of what they contain or what we think theycontain. Reference to a place or an area usually calls up

images about its physical nature or what people do thereand often suggests, without conscious thought, how thosephysical objects and human activities are related. “Col-orado,” “mountains,” and “skiing” might be a simple exam-ple. The content of area, that is, has both physical andcultural aspects, and geography is always concerned withunderstanding both (Figure 1.1).

Evolution of the DisciplineGeography’s combination of interests was apparent even inthe work of the early Greek geographers who first gavestructure to the discipline. Geography’s name was reputedlycoined by the Greek scientist Eratosthenes over 2200 yearsago from the words geo, “the earth” and graphein, “to write.”From the beginning, that writing focused both on the physi-cal structure of the earth and on the nature and activities of the people who inhabited the different lands of the known

world. To Strabo (ca. 64 B.C.–A.D. 20) the task of geographywas to “describe the several parts of the inhabited world . . .to write the assessment of the countries of the world [and] totreat the differences between countries.” Greek (and, later,Roman) geographers measured the earth, devised the globalgrid of parallels and meridians (marking latitude and longi-tude), and drew upon that grid surprisingly sophisticatedmaps (Figure 1.2). Employing nearly modern concepts, theydiscussed patterns and processes of climates, vegetation,and landforms and described areal variations in the natural

landscape. Against that physical backdrop, they focusedtheir attention on what humans did in home and distantareas—how they lived; what their distinctive similarities and



Introduction: Some Background Basics 3

Figure 1.1 The ski development at Whistler Mountain, British Columbia, Canada clearly shows the interaction of physical environment and

human activity. Climate and terrain have made specialized human use attractive and possible. Human exploitation has placed a cultural

landscape on the natural environment, thereby altering it.

Figure 1.2 World map of the 2nd century A.D. Greco-Egyptian geographer-astronomer Ptolemy. Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus) adopted

a previously developed map grid of latitude and longitude based on the division of the circle into 360°, permitting a precise mathematicallocation for every recorded place. Unfortunately, errors of assumption and measurement rendered both the map and its accompanying six-

volume gazetteer inaccurate. Ptolemy’s map, accepted in Europe as authoritative to the time of Columbus and later, was published in many

variants in the 15th and 16th centuries. The version shown here summarizes the extent and content of the original.



differences were in language, religion, and custom; and howthey used, altered, and perhaps destroyed the lands theyinhabited.

These are enduring and universal interests. The an-cient Chinese, for example, were as involved in geography

as an explanatory viewpoint as were Westerners, thoughthere was no exchange between them. Further, as Chris-tian Europe entered its Middle Ages between A.D. 500 and1400 and lost its knowledge of Greek and Roman geo-graphical work, Muslim scholars—who retained thatknowledge—undertook to describe and analyze theirknown world in its physical, cultural, and regional varia-tion (see “Roger’s Book”).

Modern geography had its origins in the surge of scholarly inquiry that, beginning in the 17th century, gave

rise to many of the traditional academic disciplines weknow today. In its European rebirth, geography from theoutset was recognized—as it always had been—as a

broadly based integrative study. Patterns and processes of the physical landscape were early interests, as was con-cern with humans as part of the earth’s variation fromplace to place. The rapid development of geology, botany,zoology, and other natural sciences by the end of the 18thcentury strengthened regional geographic investigationand increased scholarly and popular awareness of the in-tricate interconnections of items in space and betweenplaces. By that same time, accurate determination of lati-tude and longitude and scientific mapping of the earth

made assignment of place information more reliable andcomprehensive. During the 19th century, national cen-suses, trade statistics, and ethnographic studies gavefirmer foundation to human geographic investigation.

By the end of the 19th century, geography had be-

come a distinctive and respected discipline in universitiesthroughout Europe and in other regions of the worldwhere European academic examples were followed. Theproliferation of professional geographers and geographyprograms resulted in the development of a whole series of increasingly specialized disciplinary subdivisions.

Geography and Human GeographyGeography’s specialized subfields are not divisive but areinterrelated. Geography in all its subdivisions is charac-terized by three dominating interests. The first is in theareal variation of physical and human phenomena on thesurface of the earth. Geography examines relationships

between human societies and the natural environmentsthat they occupy and modify. The second is a focus onthe spatial systems1 that link physical phenomena and


Roger’s Book

The Arab geographer Idrisi, or

Edrisi (ca. A.D. 1099–1154), a descen-

dant of the Prophet Mohammed, was

directed by Roger II, the Christian

king of Sicily in whose court he

served, to collect all known geographi-

cal information and assemble it in a

truly accurate representation of the

world. An academy of geographers

and scholars was gathered to assist

Idrisi in the project. Books and maps

of classical and Islamic origins were

consulted, mariners and travelers in-

terviewed, and scientific expeditions

dispatched to foreign lands to observe

and record. Data collection took

15 years before the final world map

was fabricated on a silver disc some

200 centimeters (80 inches) in diame-ter and weighing over 135 kilograms

(300 pounds). Lost to looters in 1160,

the map is survived by “Roger’s Book,”

containing the information amassed

by Idrisi’s academy and including a

world map, 71 part maps, and 70 sec-

tional itinerary maps.

Idrisi’s “inhabited earth” is di-

vided into the seven “climates” of

Greek geographers, beginning at the

equator and stretching northward to

the limit at which, it was supposed,

the earth was too cold to be inhabited.

Each climate was then subdivided by

perpendicular lines into 11 equal

parts beginning with the west coast of

Africa on the west and ending with

the east coast of Asia. Each of the re-

sulting 77 square compartments was

then discussed in sequence in“Roger’s Book.”

Though Idrisi worked in one of

the most prestigious courts of Eu-

rope, there is little evidence that his

work had any impact on European

geographic thought. He was strongly

influenced by Ptolemy’s work and

misconceptions and shared the then

common Muslim fear of the un-

known western ocean. Yet Idrisi’s

clear understanding of such scientific

truths as the roundness of the earth,

his grasp of the scholarly writings of

his Greek and Muslim predecessors,

and the faithful recording of infor-

mation on little-known portions of

Europe, the Near East, and North

Africa set his work far above the

mediocre standards of contemporary

Christian geography.

1A “system” is simply a group of elements organized in a way that everyelement is to some degree directly or indirectly interdependent withevery other element. For geographers, the systems of interest are thosethat distinguish or characterize different regions or areas of the earth.



human activities in one area of the earth with other areas.Together, these interests lead to a third enduring theme,that of regional analysis: geography studies human–environmental—“ecological”—relationships and spatial sys-tems in specific locational settings. This areal orientation

pursued by some geographers is called regional geography.Other geographers choose to identify particular

classes of things, rather than segments of the earth’s sur-face, for specialized study. These systematic geographersmay focus their attention on one or a few related aspects of the physical environment or of human populations and so-cieties. In each case, the topic selected for study is exam-ined in its interrelationships with other spatial systems andareal patterns. Physical geography directs its attention to thenatural environmental side of the human–environment

structure. Its concerns are with landforms and their distribution, with atmospheric conditions and climatic patterns,with soils or vegetation associations, and the like. The othersystematic branch of geography—and the subject of this

book—is human geography.

Human GeographyHuman geography deals with the world as it is and withthe world as it might be made to be. Its emphasis is onpeople: where they are, what they are like, how they in-teract over space, and what kinds of landscapes of humanuse they erect on the natural landscapes they occupy. Itencompasses all those interests and topics of geographythat are not directly concerned with the physical environ-ment or, like cartography, are technical in orientation. Itscontent provides integration for all of the social sciences,for it gives to those sciences the necessary spatial and sys-tems viewpoint that they otherwise lack. At the sametime, human geography draws on other social sciences inthe analyses identified with its subfields, such as behav-ioral, political, economic, or social geography (Figure 1.3).

Human geography admirably serves the objectives of a liberal education. It helps us to understand the world weoccupy and to appreciate the circumstances affecting peo-ples and countries other than our own. It clarifies the con-trasts in societies and cultures and in the humanlandscapes they have created in different regions of the

earth. Its models and explanations of how things are inter-related in earth space give us a clearer understanding of the economic, social, and political systems within whichwe live and operate. Its analyses of those spatial systemsmake us more aware of the realities and prospects of ourown society in an increasingly connected and competitiveworld. Our study of human geography, therefore, can helpmake us better-informed citizens, more able to under-stand the important issues facing our communities andour countries and better prepared to contribute to their so-lutions. Importantly, it can also help open the way to won-derfully rewarding and diversified careers as professionalgeographers (see “Careers in Geography”).


HUMAN

GEOGRAPHY

P o p u l a t i o n G e o g r a p h y

U r b a n

G e o g r a p h y

S o c i a l

G e o g r a p h y

E c o n o m i c

G e o g r a p h y

B e h a v i o r a l

G e o g r

a p h y

C u l t u r a l

G e o g r a p h y

P o l i t i c a

l

G e o g r a p h

y

D e m o g r a p h y

P o l i t i

c a l S

c i e n c

e

A n t h r o p o l o g y ,

S o c i o l o g y ,

H i s t o r y

P s y c h o l o g y ,

E c o n o m i c s

R e g i o n a l E

c o n o m i c s,

E c o n o m i c

s

S o c

i o l o

g y ,

L a n g u a g e ,

R e l i g i o u s

S t u

d i e

s

U r b a

n S t u d i e s ,

U r b a n S o c i a l

S

c i e n c e , P

l a n n i n g

Figure 1.3 Some of the subdivisions of human geography and

the allied fields to which they are related. Geography, “the mother of

sciences,” initiated in antiquity the lines of inquiry that later led to

the development of these and other separate disciplines. That

geography retains its ties to them and shares their insights and data

reinforces its role as an essential synthesizer of all data, concepts,and models that have integrative regional and spatial implications.

Background Basics

Basic Geographic ConceptsThe topics included in human geography are diverse,

but that very diversity emphasizes the real ity that allgeographers—whatever their particular topical or re-

gional specialties—are united by the similar questionsthey ask and the common set of concepts they employ toconsider their answers. Of either a physical or cultural

phenomenon they will inquire: What is it? Where is it?How did it come to be what and where it is? Where is itin relation to other things that affect it or are affected byit? How is it part of a functioning whole? How does its lo-cation affect people’s lives and the content of the area inwhich it is found?

These questions are spatial in focus and systems ana-lytical in approach and are derived from enduring central



themes in geography.2 In answering them, geographersdraw upon a common store of concepts, terms, and meth-ods of study that together form the basic structure and vo-

cabulary of geography. Collectively, they reflect thefundamental truths addressed by geography: that things arerationally organized on the earth’s surface and that recog-nizing spatial patterns is an essential starting point for

understanding how people live on and shape the earth’ssurface. That understanding is not just the task and interestof the professional geographer; it should be, as well, part of

the mental framework of all informed persons. As the pub-lication Geography for Life summarizes, “There is now awidespread acceptance . . . that being literate in geographyis essential . . . to earn a decent living, enjoy the richnessof life, and participate responsibly in local, national, and in-ternational affairs.” (See “The National Standards.”)

Geographers use the word spatial as an essentialmodifier in framing their questions and forming their con-cepts. Geography, they say, is a spatial science. It is con-cerned with spatial behavior of people, with the spatial

relationships that are observed between places on theearth’s surface, and with the spatial processes that create ormaintain those behaviors and relationships. The word


Careers in Geography

Geography admirably serves the

objectives of a liberal education. It

can make us better informed citizens,

more able to understand the impor-

tant issues facing our communities,

our country, and our world and better

prepared to contribute solutions.

Can it, as well, be a pathway to

employment for those who wish to

specialize in the discipline? The an-

swer is “Yes,” in a number of different

types of jobs. One broad cluster is con-

cerned with supporting the field itself

through teaching and research. Teach-

ing opportunities exist at all levels,

from elementary to university post-

graduate. Teachers with some train-

ing in geography are increasingly in

demand in elementary and high

schools throughout the United States,

reflecting geography’s inclusion as a

core subject in the federally adopted

Educate America Act (Public Law 103-

227) and the national determination

to create a geographically literate so-

ciety (see “National Geography Stan-

dards,” p. 8). At the college level,

specialized teaching and research in

all branches of geography have long

been established, and geographically

trained scholars are prominently as-

sociated with urban, community, and

environmental studies, regional sci-

ence, locational economics, and other

interdisciplinary programs.

Because of the breadth and di-

versity of the field, training in geogra-

phy involves the acquisition of

techniques and approaches applicable

to a wide variety of jobs outside the

academic world. Modern geography is

both a physical and social science and

fosters a wealth of technical skills.

The employment possibilities it pre-

sents are as many and varied as are

the agencies and enterprises dealing

with the natural environment and

human activities and with the acquisi-

tion and analysis of spatial data.

Many professional geographers

work in government, either at the

state or local level or in a variety of

federal agencies and international or-

ganizations. Although many positions

do not carry a geography title, physi-

cal geographers serve as water, min-

eral, and other natural resource

analysts, weather and climate experts,

soil scientists, and the like. An area of

recent high demand is for environ-

mental managers and technicians. Ge-

ographers who have specialized in

environmental studies find jobs in

bo th publ ic and pr ivate agenci es .

Their work may include assessing the

environmental impact of proposed de-

velopment projects on such things as

air and water quality and endangered

species, as well as preparing the envi-

ronmental impact statements re-

quired before construction can begin.

Human geographers work in

many different roles in the public sec-

tor. Jobs include data acquisition and

analysis in health care, transporta-

tion, population studies, economic

development, and international eco-

nomics. Many geography graduates

find positions as planners in local and

state governmental agencies con-

cerned with housing and community

development, park and recreation

planning, and urban and regional

planning. They map and analyze land

use plans and transportation systems,

monitor urban land development,

make informed recommendations

about the location of public facilities,

and engage in basic social science

research.

Most of these same specializa-

tions are also found in the private

sector. Geographic training is ideal

for such tasks as business planning

and market analysis; factory, store,

and shopping center site selection;

2Five fundamental themes of geography—basic concepts and topics thatare essential elements in all geographic inquiry and at all levels of instruction—have been recognized by a joint committee of the NationalCouncil for Geographic Education and the Association of AmericanGeographers. They are: (1) the significance of absolute and relativelocation; (2) the distinctive physical and human characteristics of place;(3) relationships, including human–environmental relationships, withinplaces; (4) movement, expressing patterns and change in human spatialinteraction; and (5) how regions form and change.



spatial comes, of course, from space, and to geographers italways carries the idea of the way items are distributed,the way movements occur, and the way processes operate

over the whole or a part of the surface of the earth. Thegeographer’s space, then, is earth space, the surface areaoccupied or available to be occupied by humans. Spatialphenomena have locations on that surface, and spatial in-teractions occur between places, things, and people withinthe earth area available to them. The need to understandthose relationships, interactions, and processes helpsframe the questions that geographers ask.

Those questions have their starting point in basic ob-servations about the location and nature of places and about

how places are similar to or different from one another.Such observations, though simply stated, are profoundly im-portant to our comprehension of the world we occupy.

• Places have location, direction, and distance withrespect to other places.

• A place has size; it may be large or small. Scale is

important.• A place has both physical structure and culturalcontent.

• The attributes of places develop and change overtime.

• The elements of places interrelate with other places.• The content of places is rationally structured.• Places may be generalized into regions of

similarities and differences.

These are basic notions understandable to everyone.They also are the means by which geographers express fun-damental observations about the earth spaces they examine


community and economic develop-

ment programs for banks, public util-

ities, and railroads, and similar

applications. Publishers of maps, at-

lases, news and travel magazines, and

the like employ geographers as writ-

ers, editors, and map makers.

The combination of a tradi-

tional, broadly based liberal arts per-

spective with the technical skills

required in geographic research and

analysis gives geography graduates a

competitive edge in the labor market.

These field-based skills include famil-

iarity with geographic information

systems (GIS), cartography and com-

puter mapping, remote sensing and

photogrammetry, and competence in

data analysis and problem solving. In

particular, students with expertise in

GIS, who are knowledgeable about

data sources, hardware, and software,

are finding that they have ready ac-

cess to employment opportunities.

The following table, based on the

booklet “Careers in Geography,”* sum-

marizes some of the professional op-

portunities open to students who have

specialized in one (or more) of the

various subfields of geography.

Geographic Field of Concentration Employment Opportunities

Cartography and geographic information systems Cartographer for federal government (agencies such as Defense Mapping Agency, U.S. Geological

Survey, or Environmental Protection Agency) or private sector (e.g., Environmental Systems

Research Institute, ERDAS, Intergraph, or Bentley); map librarian; GIS specialist for planners, land

developers, real estate agencies, utility companies, local government; remote-sensing analyst;

surveyor

Physical geography Weather forecaster; outdoor guide; coastal zone manager; hydrologist; soilconservation/agricultural extension agent

Environmental studies Environmental manager; forestry technician; park ranger; hazardous waste planner

Cultural geography Community developer; Peace Corps volunteer; health care analyst

Economic geography Site selection analyst for business and industry; market researcher; traffic/route delivery manager;

real estate agent/broker/appraiser; economic development researcher

Urban and regional planning Urban and community planner; transportation planner; housing, park, and recreat ion planner;

health services planner

Regional geography Area specialist for federal government; international business representative; travel agent; travel writer

Geographic education or general geography Elementary/secondary school teacher; college professor; overseas teacher

*”Careers in Geography,” by Richard G. Boehm. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1996. Previously published by Peterson’s Guides, Inc.



and put those observations into a common framework of reference. Each of the concepts is worth further discussion,for they are not quite as simple as they at first seem.

Location, Direction, and Distance Location, direction, and distance are everyday ways of as-

sessing the space around us and identifying our positionin relation to other items and places of interest. They arealso essential in understanding the processes of spatial in-teraction that figure so importantly in the study of humangeography.

Location

The location of places and objects is the starting point of allgeographic study as well as of all our personal movementsand spatial actions in everyday life. We think of and refer to

location in at least two different senses, absolute and relative.

Absolute location is the identification of place bysome precise and accepted system of coordinates; it there-fore is sometimes called mathematical location. We haveseveral such accepted systems of pinpointing positions.One of them is the global grid of parallels and meridians(discussed later on page 20). With it the absolute location

of any point on the earth can be accurately described byreference to its degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitudeand longitude (Figure 1.4).

Other coordinate systems are also in use. Survey sys-tems such as the township, range, and section descriptionof property in much of the United States give mathemati-cal locations on a regional level, while street address pre-cisely defines a building according to the referencesystem of an individual town. Absolute location is uniqueto each described place, is independent of any other char-

acteristic or observation about that place, and has obvious


The National Standards

Geography is a core subject in the

national Educate America Act. Its inclu-

sion reflects a national conviction that

a grasp of the skills and understand-

ings of geography are essential in an

American educational system “tailored

to the needs of productive and re-

sponsible citizenship in the global

economy.” The National Geography

Standards 1994 were developed to help

achieve that goal. They specify the es-

sential subject matter, skills, and per-

spectives that students who have gone

through the U.S. public school system

should acquire and use. Although not

all of the standards are relevant to our

study of human geography, together

they help frame the kinds of under-

standing we will seek in the following

pages and suggest the purpose and ben-

efit of further study of geography.

The 18 standards from Geogra-

phy for Life tell us:

The geographically informed person

knows and understands:

The World in Spatial Terms

1. How to use maps and other geographic

tools and technologies to acquire,

process, and report information from a

spatial perspective.

2. How to use mental maps to organize

information about people, places, and

environments in a spatial context.

3. How to analyze the spatial

organization of people, places, and

environments on Earth’s surface.

Places and Regions

4. The physical and human

characteristics of places.

5. That people create regions to interpret

Earth’s complexity.

6. How culture and experience influence

people’s perceptions of places and

regions.

Physical Systems

7. The physical processes that shape the

patterns of Earth’s surface.

8. The characteristics and spatial

distribution of ecosystems on Earth’s

surface.

Human Systems

9. The characteristics, distribution, and

migration of human populations on

Earth’s surface.

10. The characteristics, distribution, and

complexity of Earth’s cultural

mosaics.

11. The patterns and networks of

economic interdependence on Earth’s

surface.

12. The processes, patterns, and

functions of human settlement.

13. How the forces of cooperation and

conflict among people influence the

division and control of Earth’s surface.

Environment and Society

14. How human actions modify the

physical environment.

15. How physical systems affect human

systems.

16. The changes that occur in the

meaning, use, distribution, and

importance of resources.

The Uses of Geography

17. How to apply geography to interpret

the past.

18. How to apply geography to interpret

the present and plan for the future.

Source: Geography for Life: National GeographyStandards 1994. Washington, D.C.: NationalGeographic Research and Exploration, 1994.



value in the legal description of places, in measuring thedistance separating places, or in finding directions be-tween places on the earth’s surface.

When geographers—or real estate agents—remarkthat “location matters,” however, their reference is usu-

ally not to absolute but to relative location—the posi-tion of a place in relation to that of other places oractivities (Figure 1.5). Relative location expresses spatialinterconnection and interdependence. On an immediateand personal level, we think of the location of the schoollibrary not in terms of its street address or room number

but where it is relative to our classrooms, or the cafete-ria, or some other reference point. On the larger scene,relative location tells us that people, things, and placesexist not in a spatial vacuum but in a world of physical

and cultural characteristics that differ from placeto place.

New York City, for example, may in absolute terms be descri bed as loca ted at (approximate ly) la ti tude40° 43' N and longitude 73° 58' W. We have a better un-derstanding of the meaning of its location, however, whenreference is made to its spatial relationships: to the conti-nental interior through the Hudson–Mohawk lowland cor-ridor or to its position on the eastern seaboard of theUnited States. Within the city, we gain understanding of

the locational significance of Central Park or the Lower

East Side not solely by reference to the street addresses orcity blocks they occupy, but by their spatial and functionalrelationships to the total land use, activity, and populationpatterns of New York City.

In view of these different ways of looking at loca-

tion, geographers make a distinction between the siteand the situation of a place. Site, an absolute locationconcept, refers to the physical and cultural characteris-tics and attributes of the place itself. It is more thanmathematical location, for it tells us something about theinternal features of that place. The site of Philadelphia,for example, is an area bordering and west of the DelawareRiver north of its intersection with the Schuylkill Riverin southeast Pennsylvania (Figure 1.6). Situation, on theother hand, refers to the external relations of a locale. It

is an expression of relative location with particular refer-ence to items of significance to the place in question.The situation of Chicago might be described as at thedeepest penetration of the Great Lakes system into theinterior of the United States, astride the GreatLakes–Mississippi waterways, and near the western mar-gin of the manufacturing belt, the northern boundary of the corn belt, and the southeastern reaches of a majordairy region. Reference to railroads, coal deposits, andore fields would amplify its situational characteristics

(Figure 1.7).


Figure 1.4 The latitude and longitude of Hong Kong is 22° 15' N,

114° 10’ E (read as 22 degrees, 15 minutes north; 114 degrees,

10 minutes east). The circumference of the earth measures

360 degrees; each degree contains 60 minutes and each minute has

60 seconds of latitude or longitude. What are the coordinates of Hanoi?

Figure 1.5 The reality of relative location on the globe may be

strikingly different from the impressions we form from flat maps.

The position of Russia with respect to North America when viewed

from a polar perspective emphasizes that relative location properly

viewed is important to our understanding of spatial relationships and

interactions between the two world areas.



DirectionDirection is a second universal spatial concept. Like loca-tion, it has more than one meaning and can be expressed inabsolute or relative terms. Absolute direction is based onthe cardinal points of north, south, east, and west. Theseappear uniformly and independently in all cultures, de-rived from the obvious “givens” of nature: the rising andsetting of the sun for east and west, the sky location of thenoontime sun and of certain fixed stars for north and south.

We also commonly use relative or relationaldirections. In the United States we go “out West,” “backEast,” or “down South”; we worry about conflict in the “NearEast” or economic competition from the “Far Eastern coun-tries.” These directional references are culturally based andlocationally variable, despite their reference to cardinalcompass points. The Near and the Far East locate parts of Asia from the European perspective; they are retained inthe Americas by custom and usage, even though one wouldnormally travel westward across the Pacific, for example, toreach the “Far East” from California, British Columbia, orChile. For many Americans, “back East” and “out West” arereflections of the migration paths of earlier generations forwhom home was in the eastern part of the country, towhich they might look back. “Up North” and “down South”reflect our accepted custom of putting north at the top andsouth at the bottom of our maps.

Distance

Distance joins location and direction as a commonly un-

derstood term that has dual meanings for geographers.Like its two companion spatial concepts, distance may beviewed in both an absolute and a relative sense.

Absolute distance refers to the spatial separation between two points on the earth’s surface measured bysome accepted standard unit such as miles or kilometersfor widely separated locales, feet or meters for moreclosely spaced points. Relative distance transforms thoselinear measurements into other units more meaningfulfor the space relationship in question.

To know that two competing malls are about equidis-tant in miles from your residence is perhaps less impor-tant in planning your shopping trip than is knowing that

because of street conditions or traffic congestion one is5 minutes and the other 15 minutes away (Figure 1.8).Most people, in fact, think of time distance rather than lin-ear distance in their daily activities; downtown is 20 min-utes by bus, the library is a 5-minute walk. In someinstances, money rather than time may be the distancetransformation. An urban destination might be estimatedto be a $10 cab ride away, information that may affect ei-ther the decision to make the trip at all or the choice of travel mode to get there.

A psychological transformation of linear distance isalso frequent. The solitary late-night walk back to thecar through an unfamiliar or dangerous neighborhoodseems far longer than a daytime stroll of the same dis-tance through familiar and friendly territory. A first-time trip to a new destination frequently seems muchlonger than the return trip over the same path. Distancerelationships, their measurement, and their meaning forhuman spatial interaction are fundamental to our under-

standing of human geography. They are a subjectof Chapter 3, and reference to them recurs throughoutthis book.


Figure 1.6 The site of Philadelphia.

Figure 1.7 The situation of Chicago helps suggest the reasons

for its functional diversity.



Size and ScaleWhen we say that a place may be large or small, wespeak both of the nature of the place itself and of the gen-eralizations that can be made about it. In either instance,geographers are concerned with scale, though we may

use that term in different ways. We can, for example,study a problem—say, population or agriculture—at thelocal scale, the regional scale, or on a global scale. Herethe reference is purely to the size of unit studied. Moretechnically, scale tells us the mathematical relationship

between the size of an area on a map and the actual sizeof the mapped area on the surface of the earth. In thissense, scale is a feature of every map and essential to rec-ognizing the areal meaning of what is shown on that map.

In both senses of the word, scale implies the degree of generalization represented (Figure 1.9). Geographic inquirymay be broad or narrow; it occurs at many different sizescales. Climate may be an object of study, but research andgeneralization focused on climates of the world will differ indegree and kind from study of the microclimates of a city.Awareness of scale is very important. In geographic work,concepts, relationships, and understandings that havemeaning at one scale may not be applicable at another.

For example, the study of world agricultural patternsmay refer to global climatic regimes, cultural food prefer-ences, levels of economic development, and patterns of world trade. These large-scale relationships are of little


Figure 1.8 Lines of equal travel time (isochrones) mark off

different linear distances from a given starting point, depending on

the condition of the route and terrain and changes in the roads and

traffic flows over time. On this map, the areas within 30 minutes’

travel time from downtown Los Angeles are recorded for the period

1953 to 1971.

Redrawn by permission from Howard J. Nelson and William A.V. Clark,The Los Angeles Metropolitan Experience, page 49, Association of AmericanGeographers, 1976.

Figure 1.9 Population density and map scale. “Truth” depends on one’s scale of inquiry. Map (a) reveals that the maximum population

density of Midwestern states is no more than 123 people per square kilometer (319 per sq mi). From map (b), however, we see that populationdensities in two Illinois counties exceed 494 people per square kilometer (1280 per sq mi). Were we to reduce our scale of inquiry even further,

examining individual city blocks in Chicago, we would find densities as high as 2000 people per square kilometer (5200 per sq mi). Scale matters!

(a) (b)



concern in the study of crop patterns within single coun-ties of the United States, where topography, soil anddrainage conditions, farm size, ownership, and capitaliza-tion, or even personal management preferences may be of greater explanatory significance.

Physical and Cultural AttributesAll places have physical and cultural attributes that distin-guish them from other places and give them character, po-tential, and meaning. Geographers are concerned withidentifying and analyzing the details of those attributesand, particularly, with recognizing the interrelationship

between the physical and cultural components of area:the human–environmental interface.

Physical characteristics refer to such natural aspects of

a locale as its climate and soil, the presence or absence of water supplies and mineral resources, its terrain features,and the like. These natural landscape attributes providethe setting within which human action occurs. They helpshape—but do not dictate—how people live. The resource

base, for example, is physically determined, though how re-sources are perceived and utilized is culturally conditioned.

People modify the environmental conditions of agiven place simply by occupying it. The existence of theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency (and its counter-

parts elsewhere) is a reminder that humans are the activeand frequently harmful agents in the continuing interplay

between the cultural and physical worlds (Figure 1.10).


Figure 1.10 Sites (and sights) such as this devastation of

ruptured barrels and petrochemical contamination near Texas City,

Texas are all-too-frequent reminders of the adverse environmental

impacts of humans and their waste products. Many of those impacts

are more hidden in the form of soil erosion, water pollution,increased stream sedimentation, plant and animal extinctions,

deforestation, and the like.

Figure 1.11 This Landsat image reveals contrasting cultural

landscapes along the Mexico-California border. Move your eyes from

the Salton Sea (the dark patch at the top of the image) southward to the

agricultural land extending to the edge of the image. Notice how the

regularity of the fields and the bright colors (representing growing

vegetation) give way to a marked break, where irregularly shaped fields

and less prosperous agriculture are evident. Above the break is theImperial Valley of California; below the border is Mexico.

© NASA.

Virtually every human activity leaves its imprint on anarea’s soils, water, vegetation, animal life, and other re-sources and on the atmosphere common to all earthspace. The impact of humans has been so universal andso long exerted that essentially no “natural landscape” any

longer exists.The visible expression of that human activity is the

cultural landscape. It, too, exists at different scalesand different levels of visibility. Differences in agricul-tural practices and land use between Mexico and south-ern California are evident in Figure 1.11, while thesigns, structures, and people of, for instance, Los Ange-les’s Chinatown leave a smaller, more confined imprintwithin the larger cultural landscape of the metropolitanarea itself.

Although the focus of this book is on the humancharacteristics of places, geographers are ever aware thatthe physical content of an area is also important in under-standing the activity patterns of people and the intercon-nections between people and the environments theyoccupy and modify. Those interconnections and modifica-tions are not static or permanent, however, but are subjectto continual change.



The Changing Attributes of PlaceThe physical environment surrounding us seems eternaland unchanging but, of course, it is not. In the frameworkof geologic time, change is both continuous and pro-nounced. Islands form and disappear; mountains rise and

are worn low to swampy plains; vast continental glaciersform, move, and melt away, and sea levels fall and rise inresponse. Geologic time is long, but the forces that giveshape to the land are timeless and relentless.

Even within the short period of time since the mostrecent retreat of continental glaciers—some 11,000 or12,000 years ago—the environments occupied by humanshave been subject to change. Glacial retreat itself marked aperiod of climatic alteration, extending the area habitable

by humans to include vast reaches of northern Eurasia andNorth America formerly covered by thousands of feet of ice. With moderating climatic conditions came associatedchanges in vegetation and fauna. On the global scale, thesewere natural environmental changes; humans were as yettoo few in numbers and too limited in technology to altermaterially the course of physical events. On the regionalscale, however, even early human societies exerted an im-pact on the environments they occupied. Fire was used toclear forest undergrowth, to maintain or extend grasslandfor grazing animals and to drive them in the hunt, and,later, to clear openings for rudimentary agriculture.

With the dawn of civilizations and the invention andspread of agricultural technologies, humans accelerated

their management and alteration of the now no longer“natural” environment. Even the classical Greeks notedhow the landscape they occupied differed—for the worse—from its former condition. With growing numbers of peo-ple and particularly with industrialization and the spread

of European exploitative technologies throughout theworld, the pace of change in the content of area acceler-ated. The built landscape—the product of human effort—increasingly replaced the natural landscape. Each newsettlement or city, each agricultural assault on forests,each new mine, dam, or factory changed the content of re-gions and altered the temporarily established spatial inter-connections between humans and the environment.

Characteristics of places today, therefore, are the re-sult of constantly changing past conditions. They are, as

well, the forerunners of differing human–environmental balances yet to be struck. Geographers are concerned withplaces at given moments of time. But to understand fullythe nature and development of places, to appreciate thesignificance of their relative locations, and to comprehendthe interplay of their physical and cultural characteristics,geographers must view places as the present result of thepast operation of distinctive physical and culturalprocesses (Figure 1.12).

You will recall that one of the questions geogra-

phers ask about a place or thing is: How did it come to bewhat and where it is? This is an inquiry about processand about becoming. The forces and events shaping the


Figure 1.12 The process of change in a cultural landscape. Before the advent of the freeway, this portion of suburban Long Island, New York, was largely devoted to agriculture (left). The construction of the freeway and cloverleaf interchange ramps altered nearby land use patterns

(right) to replace farming with housing developments and new commercial and light industrial activities.



physical and explaining the cultural environment of places today are an important focus of geography. Theyare, particularly in their human context, the subjects of most of the separate chapters of this book. To under-stand them is to appreciate more fully the changing

human spatial order of our world.

Interrelations between PlacesThe concepts of relative location and distance that we ear-lier introduced lead directly to a fundamental spatial real-ity: Places interact with other places in structured andcomprehensible ways. In describing the processes and pat-terns of that spatial interaction, geographers add accessi-bility and connectivity to the ideas of location and distance.

A basic law of geography tells us that in a spatial

sense everything is related to everything else but that re-lationships are stronger when items are near one another.Our observation, therefore, is that interaction betweenplaces diminishes in intensity and frequency as distance

between them increases—a statement of the idea of dis-tance decay, which we explore in Chapter 3.

Consideration of distance implies assessment of accessibility. How easy or difficult is it to overcome the“friction of distance”? That is, how easy or difficult is it tosurmount the barrier of the time and space separation of

places? Distance isolated North America from Europeuntil the development of ships (and aircraft) that reducedthe effective distance between the continents. All parts of the ancient and medieval city were accessible by walking;they were “pedestrian cities,” a status lost as cities ex-panded in area and population with industrialization. Ac-cessibility between city districts could only be maintained

by the development of public transit systems whose fixedlines of travel increased ease of movement between con-nected points and reduced it between areas not on the

transit lines themselves.Accessibility therefore suggests the idea of

connectivity, a broader concept implying all the tangibleand intangible ways in which places are connected: byphysical telephone lines, street and road systems,pipelines and sewers; by unrestrained walking acrossopen countryside; by radio and TV broadcasts beamedoutward uniformly from a central source. Where routesare fixed and flow is channelized, networks—the patternsof routes connecting sets of places—determine the effi-ciency of movement and the connectedness of points.

There is, inevitably, interchange between connectedplaces. Spatial diffusion is the process of dispersion of anidea or an item from a center of origin to more distantpoints with which it is directly or indirectly connected. Therate and extent of that diffusion are affected by the distanceseparating the originating center of, say, a new idea or tech-nology and other places where it is eventually adopted. Dif-fusion rates are also affected by population densities,

means of communication, obvious advantages of the inno-vation, and importance or prestige of the originating node.These ideas of diffusion are further explored in Chapter 2.

Geographers study the dynamics of spatial relation-ships. Movement, connection, and interaction are part of the social and economic processes that give character toplaces and regions (Figure 1.13). Geography’s study of those relationships recognizes that spatial interaction is

not just an awkward necessity but a fundamental organiz-ing principle of human life on earth.

The Structured Content of PlaceA starting point for geographic inquiry is how objects aredistributed in area—for example, the placement of churchesor supermarkets within a town. That interest distinguishesgeography from other sciences, physical or social, and


Figure 1.13 The routes of the 5 million automobile

trips made each day in Chicago during the late 1950s are recorded

on this light-display map. The boundaries of the region of interaction

that they created are clearly marked and document the centrality of

Chicago at that time as the employment destination of city-fringe

and suburban residents. Those boundaries (and the dynamic region

they defined) were subject to change as residential neighborhoods

expanded or developed, as population relocations occurred, and as

the road pattern was altered over time. If made today, the light-

display would show a much more complex commuting pattern, with

most trips between suburbs and not from suburbs to the central city.From Chicago Area Transportation Study, Final Report, 1959, Vol. I, p. 44, figure 22“Desire Lines of Internal Automobile Driver Trips.”



underlies many of the questions geographers ask: Where isa thing located? How is that location related to other items?How did the location we observe come to exist? Such ques-tions carry the conviction that the contents of an area arecomprehensibly arranged or structured. The arrangement

of items on the earth’s surface is called spatial distributionand may be analyzed by the elements common to all spatialdistributions: density, dispersion, and pattern.

Density

The measure of the number or quantity of anythingwithin a defined unit of area is its density. It is thereforenot simply a count of items but of items in relation to thespace in which they are found. When the relationship isabsolute, as in population per square kilometer, for exam-

ple, or dwelling units per acre, we are defining arithmeticdensity (see Figure 1.9). Sometimes it is more meaningfulto relate item numbers to a specific kind of area. Physio-logical density, for example, is a measure of the number of persons per unit area of arable land. Density defined inpopulation terms is discussed in Chapter 4.

A density figure is a statement of fact but not neces-sarily one useful in itself. Densities are normally em-ployed comparatively, relative to one another. High or lowdensity implies a comparison with a known standard, with

an average, or with a different area. Ohio, with (2000)107 persons per square kilometer (277 per sq mi), might bethought to have a high density compared to neighboringMichigan at 68 per square kilometer (175 per sq mi), and alow one in relation to New Jersey at 438 (1134 per sq mi).

Dispersion

Dispersion (or its opposite, concentration) is a state-ment of the amount of spread of a phenomenon over anarea. It tells us not how many or how much but how far

things are spread out. If they are close together spatially,they are considered clustered or agglomerated. If they arespread out, they are dispersed or scattered (Figure 1.14).

If the entire population of a metropolitan countywere all located within a confined central city, we mightsay the population was clustered. If, however, that samepopulation redistributed itself, with many city residentsmoving to the suburbs and occupying a larger portion of

the county’s territory, it would become more dispersed. In both cases, the density of population (numbers in relationto area of the county) would be the same, but the distribu-tion would have changed. Since dispersion deals with sep-aration of things one from another, a distribution thatmight be described as clustered (closely spaced) at onescale of reference might equally well be considered dis-

persed (widely spread) at another scale.

Pattern

The geometric arrangement of objects in space is calledpattern. Like dispersion, pattern refers to distribution,

but that reference emphasizes design rather than spacing(Figure 1.15). The distribution of towns along a railroad orhouses along a street may be seen as linear. A centralized pattern may involve items concentrated around a singlenode. A random pattern may be the best description of anunstructured irregular distribution.

The rectangular system of land survey adopted inmuch of the United States under the Ordinance of 1785

creates a checkerboard rural pattern of “sections” and“quarter-sections” of farmland (see Figure 6.26). As a re-sult, in most American cities, streets display a grid or recti-linear pattern. The same is true of cities in Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, which adoptedsimilar geometric survey systems. The hexagonal patternof service areas of farm towns is a mainstay of centralplace theory discussed in Chapter 11. These references tothe geometry of distribution patterns help us visualize anddescribe the structured arrangement of items in space.

They help us make informed comparisons between areasand use the patterns we discern to ask further questionsabout the interrelationship of things.

Place Similarity and RegionsThe distinctive characteristics of places in content andstructure immediately suggest two geographically impor-tant ideas. The first is that no two places on the surface of


Figure 1.14 Density and dispersion each tell us something

different about how items are distributed in an area. Density is simply

the number of items or observations within a defined area; it remains

the same no matter how the items are distributed. The density of

houses per square mile, for example, is the same in both (a) and (b). Dispersion is a statement about nearness or separation. The houses in

(a) are more dispersed than those shown clustered in (b).

Figure 1.15 Pattern describes spatial arrangement and design.

The linear pattern of towns in (a) perhaps traces the route of a road or

railroad or the course of a river. The central city in (b) with its nearbysuburbs represents a centralized pattern, while the dots in (c) are

randomly distributed.

(a) (b) (c)



the earth can be exactly the same. Not only do they havedifferent absolute locations, but—as in the features of thehuman face—the precise mix of physical and culturalcharacteristics of a place is never exactly duplicated.

Since geography is a spatial science, the inevitable

uniqueness of place would seem to impose impossibleproblems of generalizing spatial information. That this isnot the case results from the second important idea: Thephysical and cultural content of an area and the dynamicinterconnections of people and places show patterns of spatial similarity. Often the similarities are strikingenough for us to conclude that spatial regularities exist.They permit us to recognize and define regions—earthareas that display significant elements of internal unifor-mity and external difference from surrounding territories.

Places are, therefore, both unlike and like other places,creating patterns of areal differences and of coherent spa-tial similarity.

The problem of the historian and the geographer issimilar. Each must generalize about items of study thatare essentially unique. The historian creates arbitrary butmeaningful and useful historical periods for reference andstudy. The “Roaring Twenties” and the “Victorian Era” areshorthand summary names for specific time spans, inter-nally quite complex and varied but significantly distinct

from what went before or followed after. The region is thegeographer’s equivalent of the historian’s epoch. It is a de-vice of areal generalization that segregates into compo-nent parts the complex reality of the earth’s surface. In

both the time and the space need for generalization, atten-tion is focused on key unifying elements or similarities of the era or area selected for study. In both the historicaland geographical cases, the names assigned to those timesand places serve to identify the time span or region and toconvey a complex set of interrelated attributes.

All of us have a general idea of the meaning of re-gion, and all of us refer to regions in everyday speechand action. We visit “the old neighborhood” or “go down-town”; we plan to vacation or retire in the “Sunbelt”; orwe speculate about the effects of weather conditions in

the “Corn Belt” on next year’s food prices. In each in-stance we have mental images of the areas mentioned,and in each we have engaged in an informal place classi-fication to pass along quite complex spatial, organiza-tional, or content ideas. We have applied the regionalconcept to bring order to the immense diversity of theearth’s surface.

What we do informally as individuals, geography at-tempts to do formally as a discipline—define and explainregions (Figure 1.16). The purpose is clear: to make the

infinitely varying world around us understandablethrough spatial summaries. That world is only rarely sub-divided into neat, unmistakable “packages” of uniformity.Neither the environment nor human areal actions presentus with a compartmentalized order, any more than thesweep of human history has predetermined “eras” or allplant specimens come labeled in nature with speciesnames. We all must classify to understand, and the geog-rapher classifies in regional terms.

Regions are spatial expressions of ideas or sum-

maries useful to the analysis of the problem at hand. Al-though as many possible regions exist as there arephysical, cultural, or organizational attributes of area,the geographer studies selected areal variables that con-tribute to the understanding of a specific topic or arealproblem. All other variables are disregarded as irrele-vant. Regional boundaries are assumed to be markedwhere the region’s internal unifying characteristicschange so materially that different regional summariesare required.


Figure 1.16 The Middle West as seen by different professional geographers. Agreement on the need to recognize spatial order and to

define regional units does not imply unanimity in the selection of boundary criteria. All the sources concur in the significance of the Middle

West as a regional entity in the spatial structure of the United States and agree on its core area. These sources differ, however, in their assessment

of its limiting characteristics.

Sources: (a ) John H. Garland, ed., The North American Midwest (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1955); (b ) John R. Borchert and Jane McGuigan, Geography of the New World (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1961); and (c ) Otis P. Starkey and J. Lewis Robinson, The Anglo-American Realm (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).

(a) (b) (c)



The Characteristics of Regions

The regional concept tells us that all regions share certaincommon characteristics related to earth space.

• Regions have location, often expressed in the

regional name selected, such as the Middle West,the Near East, North Africa, and the like. Thisform of regional name underscores theimportance of relative location.

• Regions have spatial extent. They defineterritories across which are found uniform sets of physical, cultural, or organizational features.

• Regions have boundaries based on the arealspread of the features selected for study. Sinceregions are the recognition of the features

defining them, their boundaries are drawn wherethose features no longer occur or dominate(Figure 1.17). Regional boundaries are rarely assharply defined as those suggested by Figure 1.17or by the regional maps in this and othergeography texts. More frequently, broad zones of transition from one distinctive core area toanother exist, as the dominance of the definingregional features gradually diminishes outward from the core to the regional periphery. Linear

boundaries are arbitrary divisions madenecessary by the scale of world regional mapsand by the summary character of most regionaldiscussions.

• Regions are hierarchically arranged. Althoughregions vary in scale, type, and degree of generalization, none stands alone as the ultimatekey to areal understanding. Each defines a part of spatial reality (Figure 1.18) and at the same

time exists as a part of a larger, equally valid regional unit.

Types of Regions

Regions may be either formal, functional, or perceptual.Formal or uniform regions are areas of essential unifor-mity in one or a limited combination of physical or cul-tural features. Your home state is a precisely boundedformal political region within which uniformity of law andadministration is found. Later in this book we will en-

counter formal (homogeneous) cultural regions in whichstandardized characteristics of language, religion, ethnic-ity, or economy exist. The frontpaper foldout maps of landform regions and country units show other formal re-gional patterns. Whatever the basis of its definition, theformal region is the largest area over which a valid gener-alization of attribute uniformity may be made. Whateveris stated about one part of it holds true for its remainder.

The functional or nodal region, in contrast, is aspatial system defined by the interactions and connections

that give it a dynamic, organizational basis (Figure 1.19).


Figure 1.17 Aachen, Germany, in 1649. The acceptance of

regional extent implies the recognition of regional boundaries. At

some defined point, urban is replaced by nonurban, the Midwest ends

and the Plains begin, or the rain forest ceases and the savanna

emerges. Regional boundaries are, of course, seldom as precisely and

visibly marked as were the limits of the walled medieval city. Its

sprawling modern counterpart may be more difficult to define, but

the boundary significance of the concept of urban remains.

Figure 1.18 A hierarchy of regions. One possible nesting of

regions within a regional hierarchy defined by differing criteria. On

a formal regional scale of size progression, the Delmarva Peninsula

of the eastern United States may be seen as part of the Atlantic

Coastal Plain, which is in turn a portion of the eastern North

American humid continental climatic region. Each regional unit has

internal coherence. The recognition of its constituent parts aids inunderstanding the larger composite areal unit.




SILICON VALLEYTotal number of trips by

place of residence

10–50

51–100

101–200

201–500501–10001001–2000

SONOMA

MARIN

N

SAN FRANCISCO

SAN MATEO

SILICON VALLEY

0 5 MILES

San Jose

SOLANO

CONTRA COSTA

ALAMEDA

SANTA CLARA

Oakland

Figure 1.19 (a) The functional (or nodal) regions shown

on this map were based on linkages between large banks of

major central cities and the “correspondent” banks they served in smaller towns in the 1970s, before the advent of electronic

banking and bank consolidation. (b) A different form of

connectivity is suggested by the “desire line” map recording the

volume of daily work trips within the San Francisco Bay area

to the Silicon Valley employment node. The outer periphery of

a dynamic functional region is marked by the farthest extent

of the commuting lines. The intensity of interchange and the

strength of regional identity increases toward the center or

core. See also Figure 1.13.

(a ) Redrawn by permission from Annals of the Association of American Geographers, John R. Borchert, vol. 62, p. 358, Association of American

Geographers, 1972. (b ) Reprinted with permission from Robert Cervero,Suburban Gridlock, © 1986 Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, theState University of New Jersey.(b)

(a)



Those characterizing features are most clearly defined atthe core of the region and lessen in dominance toward itsmargins or periphery. The region’s boundaries remain con-stant only as long as the interchanges establishing it re-main unaltered.

Perceptual regions are less rigorously structuredthan the formal and functional regions geographers de-vise. They reflect feelings and images rather than objec-tive data and because of that may be more meaningful inthe lives and actions of those who recognize them thanare the more abstract regions of geographers.

Ordinary people have a clear idea of spatial varia-tion and employ the regional concept to distinguish be-tween territorial entities. People individually andcollectively agree on where they live. The vernacular re-

gions they recognize have reality in their minds and arereflected in regionally based names employed in busi-nesses, by sports teams, or in advertising slogans. Thefrequency of references to “Dixie” in the southeasternUnited States represents that kind of regional consensusand awareness. Such vernacular regions reflect the waypeople view space, assign their loyalties, and interprettheir world. At a different scale, such urban ethnic en-claves (see Chapter 6) as “Little Italy” or “Chinatown”have comparable regional identity in the minds of their

inhabitants. Less clearly perceived by outsiders but un-mistakable to their inhabitants are the “turfs” of urbanclubs or gangs. Their boundaries are sharp, and the per-ceived distinctions between them are paramount in thedaily lives and activities of their occupants.

MapsMaps are tools to identify regions and to analyze theircontent. The spatial distributions, patterns, and rela-tions of interest to geographers usually cannot easily beobserved or interpreted in the landscape itself. Many,such as landform or agricultural regions or major cities,are so extensive spatially that they cannot be seen orstudied in their totality from one or a few vantagepoints. Others, such as regions of language usage or reli-gious belief, are spatial phenomena, but are not tangibleor visible. Various interactions, flows, and exchanges

imparting the dynamic quality to spatial interaction maynot be directly observable at all. And even if all mattersof geographic interest could be seen and measuredthrough field examination, the infinite variety of tan-gible and intangible content of area would make itnearly impossible to isolate for study and interpretationthe few items of regional interest selected for specialinvestigation.

Therefore, the map has become the essential anddistinctive tool of geographers. Only through the mapcan spatial distributions and interactions of whatever na-ture be reduced to an observable scale, isolated for indi-

vidual study, and combined or recombined to reveal rela-tionships not directly measurable in the landscape itself.But maps can serve their purpose only if their users havea clear idea of their strengths, limitations, and diversityand of the conventions observed in their preparation and

interpretation.

Map ScaleWe have already seen that scale (page 11) is a vital ele-ment of every map. Because it is a much reduced ver-sion of the reality it summarizes, a map generalizes thedata it displays. Scale—the relationship between size orlength of a feature on the map and the same item on theearth’s surface—determines the amount of that general-ization. The smaller the scale of the map, the larger is

the area it covers and the more generalized are the datait portrays. The larger the scale, the smaller is the de-picted area and the more accurately can its content berepresented (Figure 1.20). It may seem backward, butlarge-scale maps show small areas, and small-scale mapsshow large areas.

Map scale is selected according to the amount of generalization of data that is acceptable and the size of area that must be depicted. The user must consider mapscale in evaluating the reliability of the spatial data that

are presented. Regional boundary lines drawn on theworld maps in this and other books or atlases wouldcover many kilometers or miles on the earth’s surface.They obviously distort the reality they are meant to de-fine, and on small-scale maps major distortion is in-evitable. In fact, a general rule of thumb is that the largerthe earth area depicted on a map the greater is the distor-tion built into the map.

This is so because a map has to depict the curved sur-face of the three-dimensional earth on a two-dimensional

sheet of paper. The term projection designates themethod chosen to represent the earth’s curved surface as aflat map. Since absolutely accurate representation is im-possible, all projections inevitably distort. Specific projec-tions may be selected, however, to minimize the distortionof at least one of the four main map properties—area,shape, distance, and direction.3

The Globe Grid Maps are geographers’ primary tools of spatial analysis.

All spatial analysis starts with locations, and all locationsare related to the global grid of latitude and longitude.Since these lines of reference are drawn on the sphericalearth, their projection onto a map distorts their grid rela-tionships. The extent of variance between the globe gridand a map grid helps tell us the kind and degree of distor-tion the map will contain.


3A more detailed discussion of map projections, including examples of their different types and purposes, may be found in Appendix A, beginning on page 529.



The key reference points in the grid system are theNorth and South poles and the equator, which are given innature, and the prime meridian, which is agreed on by car-tographers. Because a circle contains 360 degrees, the dis-tance between the poles is 180 degrees and between theequator and each pole, 90 degrees (Figure 1.21). Latitude

measures distance north and south of the equator (0°),and parallels of latitude run due east-west. Longitude is theangular distance east or west of the prime meridian and isdepicted by north-south lines called meridians, which con-verge at the poles. The properties of the globe grid themapmaker tries to retain and the map user should lookfor are as follows:

1. All meridians are of equal length; each is one-half the length of the equator.

2. All meridians converge at the poles and are truenorth–south lines.

3. All lines of latitude (parallels) are parallel to theequator and to each other.

4. Parallels decrease in length as one nears the poles.5. Meridians and parallels intersect at right angles.6. The scale on the surface of the globe is the same

in every direction.

Only the globe grid itself retains all of these charac-teristics. To project it onto a surface that can be laid flat isto distort some or all of these properties and consequentlyto distort the reality the map attempts to portray.

How Maps Show DataThe properties of the globe grid and of various projectionsare the concern of the cartographer. Geographers aremore interested in the depiction of spatial data and in theanalysis of the patterns and interrelationships those datapresent. Out of the myriad items comprising the content


Figure 1.20 The effect of scale on area and detail. The larger the scale, the greater the number and kinds of features that can be included.

Scale may be reported to the map user in one (or more) of three ways. A verbal scale is given in words (“1 centimeter to 1 kilometer” or “1 inch to

1 mile”). A representative fraction (such as that placed at the left, below each of the four maps shown here) is a statement of how many linear

units on the earth’s surface are represented by one unit on the map. A graphic scale (such as that placed at the right and below each of these

maps) is a line or bar marked off in map units but labeled in ground units.



of an area, the geographer must, first, select those that areof concern to the problem at hand and, second, decide onhow best to display them for study or demonstration. Inthat effort, geographers can choose between differenttypes of maps and different systems of symbolization.

General-purpose, reference, or location maps make

up one major class of maps familiar to everyone. Theirpurpose is simply to show without analysis or interpre-tation a variety of natural or human-made features of anarea or of the world as a whole. Familiar examples arehighway maps, city street maps, topographic maps (Fig-ure 1.22), atlas maps, and the like. Until about the mid-dle of the 18th century, the general-purpose orreference map was the dominant map form, for the pri-mary function of the mapmaker (and the explorer whosupplied the new data) was to “fill in” the world’s un-

known areas with reliable locational information. Withthe passage of time scholars saw the possibilities to usethe accumulating locational information to display andstudy the spatial patterns of social and physical data.The maps they made of climate, vegetation, soil, popula-tion, and other distributions introduced the thematicmap, the second major class of maps.

Thematic map is the general term applied to a map of any scale that presents a specific spatial distribution or asingle category of data—that is, presents a graphic theme.The way the information is shown on such a map may

vary according to the type of information to be conveyed,the level of generalization that is desired, and the symbol-ization selected. Thematic maps may be either qualitativeor quantitative. The principal purpose of the qualitativemap is to show the distribution of a particular class of in-

formation. The world location of producing oil fields, thedistribution of U.S. national parks, or the pattern of areasof agricultural specialization within a state or country areexamples. The interest is in where things are and nothingis reported about—in the examples cited—barrels of oil ex-tracted or in reserve, number of park visitors, or value orvolume of crops or livestock produced.

In contrast, quantitative thematic maps show thespatial characteristic of numerical data. Usually, a singlevariable such as population, income, wheat, or land value

is chosen and the map displays the variation from place toplace in that feature. Important types of quantitative the-matic maps include graduated circle, dot, isometric andisopleth, and choropleth maps (Figure 1.23).

Graduated circle maps use circles of different size toshow the frequency of occurrence of a topic in differentplaces; the larger the circle, the more frequent the inci-dence. On dot maps, a single or specified number of occur-rences of the item studied is recorded by a single dot. Thedot map serves not only to record data but to suggest their

spatial pattern, distribution, and dispersion.An isometric map features lines (isolines) that connect

points registering equal values of the item mapped ( isomeans “equal”). The isotherms shown on the daily weathermap connect points recording the same temperature atthe same moment of time or the same average tempera-ture during the day. Identical elevations above sea levelmay be shown by a form of isoline called a contour line.On isopleth maps, the calculation refers not to a point butto an areal statistic—for example, persons per square kilo-

meter or average percentage of cropland in corn—and theisoline connects average values for unit areas. For empha-sis, the area enclosed by isolines may be shaded to indi-cate approximately uniform occurrence of the thingmapped, and the isoline itself may be treated as the

boundary of a uniform region.A choropleth map presents average value of the data

studied per preexisting areal unit—dwelling unit rents orassessed values by city block, for example, or (in theUnited States) population densities by individual town-

ships within countries. Each unit area on the map is thenshaded or colored to suggest the magnitude of the eventor item found within its borders. Where the choroplethmap is based on the absolute number of items within theunit area, as it is in Figure 1.23d, rather than on areal av-eraging (total numbers, that is, instead of, for example,numbers per square kilometer), a misleading statementabout density may be conveyed.

A statistical map records the actual numbers or oc-currences of the mapped item per established unit areaor location. The actual count of each state’s colleges and


Figure 1.21 The grid system of parallels of latitude and

meridians of longitude. Since the meridians converge at the poles,

parallels become increasingly shorter away from the equator. On the

globe, the 60th parallel is only one-half as long as the equator, and a

degree of longitude along it measures only about 55 1⁄2 kilometers

(about 341

⁄2 miles) compared to about 111 kilometers (about 69 miles) at the equator (0°).



universities shown on an outline map of the United Statesor the number of traffic accidents at each street intersec-tion within a city are examples of statistical maps. A car-togram uses such statistical data to transform territorialspace so that the largest areal unit on the map is the oneshowing the greatest statistical value (Figure 1.24).

Maps communicate information but, as in all formsof communication, the message conveyed by a map re-flects the intent and, perhaps, the biases of its author.Maps are persuasive because of the implied precision of their lines, scales, color and symbol placement, and in-formation content. But maps, as communication de-vices, can subtly or blatantly manipulate the messagethey impart or contain intentionally false information.(Figure 1.25). Maps, then, can distort and lie as readilyas they can convey verifiable spatial data or scientifi-cally valid analyses. The more map users are aware of those possibilities and the more understanding of map

projections, symbolization, and common forms of the-matic and reference mapping standards they possess,the more likely are they to reasonably question andclearly understand the messages maps communicate.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Increasingly, digital computers, mapping software, andcomputer-based display units and printers are employedin the design and production of maps and in the develop-ment of databases used in map production. In computer-assisted cartography, the content of standardmaps—locational and thematic—is digitized and stored incomputers. The use of computers and printers in mapproduction permits increases in the speed, flexibility, andaccuracy of many steps in the mapmaking process but inno way reduces the obligation of the mapmaker to employsound judgment in the design of the map or the communi-cation of its content.


Figure 1.22 A portion of the Santa Barbara, California, topographic quadrangle of the US Geological Survey 1:24,000 series. Topographic

maps portray the natural landscape features of relatively small areas. Elevations and shapes of landforms, streams, and other water bodies,

vegetation, and coastal features are recorded, often with great accuracy. Because cultural items that people have added to the physical landscape,

such as roads, railroads, buildings, political boundaries, and the like are also frequently depicted on them, topographic maps are classed as

general purpose or reference maps by the International Cartographic Association. The scale of the original map no longer applies to this

photographic reduction.

Source: U.S. Geological Survey.




Figure 1.23 Types of thematic maps. Although population is the theme of each, these different California maps present their information

in strikingly different ways. (a) In the graduated circle map, the area of the circle is approximately proportional to the absolute number of

people within each county. (b) In a dot-distribution map where large numbers of items are involved, the value of each dot is identical and stated

in the map legend. The placement of dots on this map does not indicate precise locations of people within the county, but simply their total

number. (c) Population density is recorded by the isopleth map, while the choropleth map (d) may show absolute values as here or, moreusually, ratio values such as population per square kilometer.

Source: Fred M. Shelley and Audrey E. Clarke, Human and Cultural Geography, © 1994. Reproduced by permission of Wm. C. Brown Publishers, Dubuque, Iowa.

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

Population by county

Populationper square mile

0–25

25–65

65–130

130–250

More than 25

Population by county

10,000,000

4,000,000

1,000,000

100,000

Population by countydata in thousands

0–99

100–999

1000–1999

2000–16000




Figure 1.24 Relative traffic congestion. A typical value-by-area cartogram with states drawn in proportion to the number of vehicle-miles

driven per road mile.

Source: Borden D. Dent, Cartography: Thematic Map Design, 4th ed., © 1996. Reproduced by permission of Times Mirror Higher Education Group, Dubuque, Iowa.

Logashkino

Logashkino

A l a z e y

a

R .

Bol'shoy Sovetskiy Atlas Mira, 1939

Atlas Mira, 1954

Karta SSSR, 1958

Logashkino

Atlas SSSR, 1962

Logashkino

Atlas Mira, 1967 Atlas SSSR, 1969

Logashkino

Figure 1.25 The wandering town of Logashkino, as traced in various Soviet atlases by Mark Monmonier. Deliberate, extensive

cartographic “disinformation” and locational falsification, he reports, became a Cold War tactic of the Soviet Union. We usually use—and trust—

maps to tell us exactly where things are located. On the maps shown, however, Logashkino migrates from west of the river away from the coast to

east of the river on the coast, while the river itself gains and loses a distributary and, in 1954, the town itself disappears. The changing

misinformation, Monmonier suggests, was intended to obscure from potential enemies the precise location of possible military targets.

Source: Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps, 2nd ed. © 1996. Reproduced by permission of the University of Chicago.



Geographic information systems (GIS) extendthe use of digitized data and computer manipulation toinvestigate and display spatial information. A GIS is bothan integrated software package for handling, processing,and analyzing geographical data and a computer data-

base in which every item of information is tied to a pre-cise geographic location. In the raster approach, that tieinvolves dividing the study area into a set of rectangularcells and describing the content of each cell. In the vector

approach, the precise location of each object—point, line,or area—in a distribution is described. In either ap-proach, a vast amount of different spatial informationcan be stored, accessed, compared, processed, analyzed,and displayed.

A GIS database, then, can be envisioned as a set of discrete informational overlays linked by reference to a basic locational grid of latitude and longitude (Figure 1.26).The system then permits the separate display of the spatial


INPUTS:Questions Human

landscape

Topography

Surfacedrainage

Vegetationand land use

Settlement

Railroad

Road

Data of pastriver flow

OUTPUTS:Answers: graph - runoff and catchment area map and table - vegetation change

From stereoscopicaerial photographs

From stereoscopicaerial photographs

From satelliteimages

From agencyrecords

Figure 1.26 A model of a geographic information system. A GIS incorporates three primary components: data storage capability,

computer graphics programs, and statistical packages. In this example, the different layers of information held are important in monitoring a

river system. Different data sets, all selected for applicability to the questions asked, may be developed and used in human geography, economic

geography, transportation planning, industrial location work, and similar applications.

Source: Michael Bradshaw and Ruth Weaver, Foundations of Physical Geography, © 1995. Reproduced by permission of Wm. C. Brown Publishers, Dubuque, Iowa.



information contained in the database. It allows the userto overlay maps of different themes, analyze the relationsrevealed, and compute spatial relationships. It shows as-pects of spatial associations otherwise difficult to displayon conventional maps, such as flows, interactions, and

three-dimensional characteristics. In short, a GIS database, as a structured set of spatial information, has be-come a powerful tool for automating geographical analysisand synthesis.

A GIS data set may contain the great amount of place-specific information collected and published by theU.S. Census Bureau, including population distribution,race, ethnicity, income, housing, employment, industry,farming, etc. It may also hold environmental informationdownloaded from satellite imagery or taken from Geologi-

cal Survey maps and other governmental and privatesources. In human geography, the vast and growing arrayof spatial data has encouraged the use of GIS to exploremodels of regional economic and social structure, to ex-amine transportation systems and urban growth patterns,to study patterns of voting behavior, disease incidence,the accessibility of public services, and a vast array of other topics. For physical geographers, the analytic andmodeling capabilities of GIS are fundamental to the un-derstanding of processes and interrelations in the natural

environment.Because of the growing importance of GIS in all

manner of public and private spatial inquiries, demand inthe job market is growing for those skilled in its tech-niques. Most university courses in GIS are taught in Geog-raphy departments, and “GIS/remote sensing” is aprimary occupational specialty for which many geographyundergraduate and graduate majors seek preparation.

Mental Maps

Maps that shape our understanding of distributions andlocations or influence our perception of the worldaround us are not always drawn on paper. We carry withus mental maps that in some ways are more accurate inreflecting our view of spatial reality than the formalmaps created by geographers or cartographers. Mentalmaps are images about an area or an environment devel-oped by an individual on the basis of information or im-pressions received, interpreted, and stored. We use thisinformation—this mental map—in organizing our daily

activities: selecting our destinations and the sequence inwhich they will be visited, deciding on our routes of travel, recognizing where we are in relation to where wewish to be.

Such maps are every bit as real to their creators (andwe all have them) as are the street maps or highway mapscommercially available, and they are a great deal moreimmediate in their impact on our spatial decisions. Wemay choose routes or avoid neighborhoods not on objec-tive grounds but on emotional or perceptual ones. Whole

sections of a community may be voids on our mental

maps, as unknown as the interiors of Africa and SouthAmerica were to Western Europeans two centuries ago.Our areas of awareness generally increase with the in-creasing mobility that comes with age (Figure 1.27), afflu-ence, and education and may be enlarged or restricted for

different social groups within the city (Figure 1.28).


(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 1.27 Three children, aged 6, 10, and 13, who lived in the

same house, were asked to draw maps of their neighborhood. They

received no further instructions. Notice how perspectives broaden

and neighborhoods expand with age. (a) For the 6-year-old, the

“neighborhood” consists of the houses on either side of her own.

(b) The square block on which she lives is the neighborhood for the

10-year-old. (c) The wider horizons of the 13-year-old are reflected in

her drawing. The square block that the 10-year-old drew is shaded in

this sketch.




Figure 1.28 Four mental maps of Los Angeles. The upper-middle-income residents of Northridge and Westwood have expansive views of

the metropolis, reflecting their mobility and area of travel. Residents of Boyle Heights and Avalon, both minority districts, have a much more

restricted and incomplete mental image of the city. Their limited mental maps reflect and reinforce their spatial isolation within the

metropolitan area.

From Department of City Planning, City of Los Angeles, The Visual Environment of Los Angeles, 1971. Reprinted by permission.



Systems, Maps, and ModelsThe content of area is interrelated and constitutes a spatialsystem that, in common with all systems, functions as aunit because its component parts are interdependent. Only

rarely do individual elements of area operate in isolation,and to treat them as if they do is to lose touch with spatialreality. The systems of geographic concern are those inwhich the functionally important variables are spatial: loca-tion, distance, direction, density, and the other basic con-cepts we have reviewed. The systems that they define arenot the same as regions, though spatial systems may be the

basis for regional identification.Systems have components, and the analysis of the

role of components helps reveal the operation of the sys-

tem as a whole. To conduct that analysis, individual sys-tem elements must be isolated for separate identificationand, perhaps, manipulated to see their function within thestructure of the system or subsystem. Maps and modelsare the devices geographers use to achieve that isolationand separate study.

Maps, as we have seen, are effective to the degreethat they can segregate at an appropriate level of general-ization those system elements selected for examination.By compressing, simplifying, and abstracting reality, maps

record in manageable dimension the real-world conditionsof interest. A model is a simplified abstraction of reality,structured to clarify causal relationships. Maps are a kindof model. They represent reality in an idealized form sothat certain aspects of its properties may be more clearlyseen. They are a special form of model, of course. Theirabstractions are rendered visually and at a reduced scaleso they may be displayed, for example, on the pages of this book.

The complexities of spatial systems analysis—andthe opportunities for quantitative analysis of systemsmade possible by computers and sophisticated statisticaltechniques—have led geographers to use other kinds of models in their work. Model building is the technique so-cial scientists use to simplify complex situations, to elimi-nate (as does the map) unimportant details, and to isolatefor special study and analysis the role of one or more in-teracting elements in a total system.

An interaction model discussed in Chapter 3, for in-stance, suggests that the amount of exchange expected be-tween two places depends on the distance separatingthem and on their population size. The model indicatesthat the larger the places and the closer their distance, thegreater is the amount of interaction. Such a model helpsus to isolate the important components of the spatial sys-tem, to manipulate them separately, and to reach conclu-sions concerning their relative importance. When a modelsatisfactorily predicts the volume of intercity interaction

in the majority of cases, the lack of agreement betweenwhat is observed and what is expected in a particular caseleads to an examination of the circumstances contributingto the disparity. The quality of connecting roads, political

barriers, or other variables may affect the specific places

examined, and these causative elements may be isolatedfor further study.Indeed, the steady pursuit of more refined and de-

finitive analysis of human geographic questions—the“further study” that continues to add to our understand-ing of how people occupy and utilize the earth, interactwith each other, and organize and alter earth space—hasled to the remarkably diversified yet coherent field of modern human geography. With the content of this in-troductory chapter as background to the nature, tradi-

tions, and tools of geography, we are ready to begin itsexploration.

The Structure of This Book By way of getting started, it is useful for you to knowhow the organization and topics of this text have beenstructured to help you reach the kinds of understandingswe seek.

We begin by exploring the roots and meaning of culture (Chapter 2), establishing the observed groundrules of spatial interaction and spatial behavior (Chapter3), and examining the areal variations in patterns of pop-ulation distribution and change (Chapter 4). These setthe stage for following separate discussions of spatial pat-terns of language and religion, ethnic distinctions, andfolk and popular culture (Chapters 5–7). These are theprincipal expressions of unity and diversity and of arealdifferentiation among the peoples and societies of theearth. Understanding their spatial patterns and interrela-tions goes far toward providing the world view that is ourobjective.

Beginning with Chapter 8, our focus shifts more tothe economic and organizational landscapes humanshave created. In turn, we look at economic geographyand economic development (Chapters 8–10), urban sys-tems and structures (Chapter 11), and patterns of the po-litical ordering of space (Chapter 12). Finally, in Chapter

13, dealing with human impacts, we return to the under-lying concern of all geographic study: the relationship be-tween human geographic patterns and processes and

both the present conditions and the future prospects of the physical and cultural environments we occupy, cre-ate, or modify. To help clarify the connections betweenthe various topics of human geography, the chapters of this book are grouped by common theme and separatelyintroduced.




SummaryGeography is about earth space and its physical and culturalcontent. Throughout its long history, geography has re-mained consistent in its focus on human–environmental in-teractions, the interrelatedness of places, and the likenessesand differences in physical and cultural content of area that

exist from place to place. The collective interests of geogra-phers are summarized by the spatial and systems analyticalquestions they ask. The responses to those questions are in-terpreted through basic concepts of location, distance, direc-tion, content evolution, spatial interaction, and regionalorganization.


Introduction

The Internet, a vast network of computers electronically joining millions of people and thousands of organizations andinstitutions throughout the world, has become in itsmultimedia component, the World Wide Web, or WWW, animportant tool for academic research and general informationgathering. Users of the Web, navigating through a graphicinterface combining hypertext and hypermedia to linkdocuments, images, video clips, and sound files, gain accessto vast stores of data not easily (or at all) accessible with otherresearch tools. There are numerous Internet resources forgeography, and many of its websites present more current

information in ways not possible with traditional printedsources. For your guidance, each chapter of this text containsa boxed “On-Line” section (like this one) discussing WorldWide Web sites that may themselves be data sources of valuein expanding topics of the chapter or be linked to otherwebsites concerned with those chapter topics.a

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, some of the on-line addresses listed in this book may have changed ormay no longer exist when you try to consult them. In most in-stances, cross-references and directions to replacement ad-dresses are cited at the old website locations for your

guidance. And new and useful sites are constantly being de-veloped. You are invited to report those new sources and ad-dresses you have found valuable and wish to share with otherreaders. Check our home page at www.mhhe.com/fellmann7e/

for directions for leaving an e-mail message with your infor-mation and suggestions. There you will also find additionalWeb addresses for geography in general and for the individualchapter “On-Line” reports, many of them added by the pub-lisher or contributed by helpful users.

For those interested in professional geographic associa-tions and activities, the home page of the Association of American Geographers at www.aag.org/ is a good initialpoint. It offers information about the association itself, itspublications and “specialty groups” (complete with e-mail ad-dresses), and, importantly, gives access to a revealing discus-sion of “Careers in Geography” and through its “Ask a

Geographer” option, offers links to experts in various fields of geography who may be contacted with inquiries about topicsand issues in their fields of expertise. The AAG site also pro-vides links to such other organizations as the Canadian Asso-ciation of Geographers, the National Council for GeographicEducation, and the National Geographic Society.

Are you interested in furthering your geography educa-tion or in learning about geography programs worldwide? Agood—but older—starting point is the Ryerson University geog-raphy department list at www.geo.ryerson.ca/html/

geograph.html. A valuable general set of links and references

to a variety of geography (and related) resources may be foundon the CU Resources for Geographers site at www.Colorado.EDU/

geography/virtdept/resources/contents.htm. Be sure also toscan that site’s “Starting Places” section (www.Colorado.EDU/

geography/virtdept/resources/startplc/start.htm) for quick ac-cess to search engines, lists, and libraries to help you in brows-ing the Web for geography interests. The University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point Internet resources guide atwww.uwsp.edu/geo/internet/geog_geol_resources.html is valu-able, and Michigan State University maintains a useful guide toGeography Related Web Links at www.geo.msu.edu/wlinks.html.

Although each chapter’s “On-Line” report has referencesto subject-specific sites, some general background sites usefulfor all chapters also exist. For example, a deeper understandingof “Geography for Life: the National Geography Standards” can

be found through a tutorial conducted by the National Councilof Geography Teachers: www.ncge.org/publications/tutorial/.

Check out as well the wide variety of popular and scientific de-partments linked to the home page of the National GeographicSociety at www.nationalgeographic.com/ The CIA’s World Fact-book is a useful annually updated collection of informationabout the geography, climate, people, customs, and govern-ments of the world organized by region and country. Consult itas an on-line reference at www.odci.gov/cia/publications/

factbook. Finally, a visit to the Geography site at About.com isa good starting point for searching out many geography inter-ests. It features a comprehensive topical set of “Subject” linksto selected geographical resources, on-line maps, data, andweekly articles, along with a chat room and bulletin board:http://geography.about.com/.

aFor Chapter 1, web sites concerned with maps and cartography are cited in theAppendix A On-Line box, p. 537.



Geographers employ maps and models to abstractthe complex reality of space and to isolate its compo-nents for separate study. Maps are imperfect renderingsof the three-dimensional earth and its parts on a two-dimensional surface. In that rendering, some or all of thecharacteristics of the globe grid are distorted, but con-venience and data manageability are gained. Spatial in-formation may be depicted visually in a number of ways,each designed to simplify and to clarify the infinite com-plexity of spatial content. Geographers also use verbaland mathematical models for the same purpose, to ab-stract and analyze.

In their study of the earth’s surface as the occupiedand altered space within which humans operate, geogra-phers may concentrate on the integration of physical and

cultural phenomena in a specific earth area (regional ge-ography). They may, instead, emphasize systematic

geography through study of the earth’s physical systemsof spatial and human concern or, as here, devote pri-mary attention to people. This is a text in human geogra-

phy. Its focus is on human interactions both with thephysical environments people occupy and alter and withthe cultural environments they have created. We areconcerned with the ways people perceive the landscapesand regions they occupy, act within and between them,make choices about them, and organize them accordingto the varying cultural, political, and economic interestsof human societies. This is a text clearly within the socialsciences, but like all geography, its background is thephysical earth as the home of humans. As a human geog-raphy, its concern is with how that home has been al-tered by societies and cultures. Culture is the starting

point, and in the next chapter we begin with an inquiryabout the roots and nature of culture.


absolute direction 10

absolute distance 10

absolute location 8

accessibility 14

concentration 15

connectivity 14

cultural landscape 11

density 15

dispersion 15

formal region 17functional region 17

geographic information system (GIS) 25

mental map 26

model 28

natural landscape 12

nodal region 17

pattern 15

perceptual region 19

projection 19

region 16

regional concept 16relative direction 10

relative distance 10

relative location 9

scale 11

site 9

situation 9

spatial diffusion 14

spatial distribution 15

spatial interaction 14

spatial system 28

uniform region 17

Key Words

1. In what two meanings and forwhat different purposes do werefer to location?

2. Describe the site and the situationof the town where you live, work,or go to school.

3. What kinds of distancetransformations are suggested bythe term relative distance? How isthe concept of psychological distancerelated to relative distance?

4. What are the common elementsof spatial distribution? Whatdifferent aspects of the spatial

arrangement of things do theyaddress?

5. What are the commoncharacteristics of regions? How are

formal and functional regionsdifferent in concept anddefinition? What is a perceptualregion?

6. List at least four properties of theglobe grid. Why are globe gridproperties apt to be distorted on

maps?7. What does prime meridian mean?

What happens to the length of adegree of longitude as oneapproaches the poles?

8. What different ways of displayingstatistical data on maps can youname and describe?

For Review




1. What is the nature of geography and the role of human geography? pp. 2–5.

Geography is a spatial scienceconcerned with how the contentof earth areas differs from place toplace. It is the study of spatialvariation in the world’s physicaland cultural (human) features.The emphasis of humangeography is on the spatialvariations in characteristics of peoples and cultures, on the way

humans interact over space, andthe ways they utilize and alter thenatural landscapes they occupy.

2. What are the fundamentalgeographic observations andtheir underlying concepts?pp. 5–15.

Basic geographic observations allconcern the characteristics,content, and interactions of

places. Their underlying conceptsinvolve such place specifics aslocation, direction, distance, size,scale, physical and culturalattributes, interrelationships, andregional similarities anddifferences.

3. What are the regional concept and the generalizedcharacteristics of regions?pp. 15–19.

The regional concept tells us thatphysical and cultural features of the earth’s surface are rationallyarranged by understandableprocesses. All recognized regionsare characterized by location,spatial extent, defined boundaries,and position within a hierarchy of regions. Regions may be “formal”

(uniform) or “functional” (nodal)in nature.

4. Why do geographers use mapsand how do maps show spatialinformation? pp. 19–26.

Maps are tools geographers use toidentify and delimit regions andto analyze their content. Theypermit the study of areas andareal features too extensive to be

completely viewed or understoodon the earth’s surface itself.Thematic (single category) mapsmay be either qualitative orquantitative. Their data may beshown in graduated circle, dot

distribution, isometric,choropleth, statistical, orcartogram form.

5. In what ways in addition tomaps may spatial data bevisualized or analyzed?pp. 26–28.

Informally, we all create “mentalmaps” reflecting highlypersonalized impressions andinformation about the spatialarrangement of things (forexample, buildings, streets,

landscape features). Moreformally, geographers recognizethe content of area as forming aspatial system to whichtechniques of spatial systemsanalysis and model building areapplicable.

Focus Follow-Up

Agnew, John, David N. Livingstone, andAlisdair Rogers, eds. HumanGeography: An Essential Anthology.Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996.

Demko, George J., with Jerome Ageland Eugene Boe. Why in the World:

Adventures in Geography. New York:Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1992.

Dent, Borden D. Cartography: Thematic

Map Design. 5th ed. Dubuque, Iowa:WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Gersmehl, Phil. The Language of Maps.15th ed. Indiana, Pa.: National Councilfor Geographic Education, 1996.

Gould, Peter, and Rodney White. Mental Maps. 2d. ed. Boston: Allen & Unwin,1986.

Gritzner, Charles F., Jr. “The Scope of Cultural Geography.” Journal of Geography 65 (1966): 4–11.

Johnston, Ronald J., Derek Gregory,Geraldine Pratt, and Michael Watts.The Dictionary of Human Geography.4th ed. Oxford, England: BlackwellPublishers, 2000.

Johnston, Ronald. J., J. Hauer, and G.

A. Koekveld, eds. RegionalGeography: Current Developments and

Future Prospects. New York:Routledge, 1990.

Lanegran, David A., and Risa Palm. An Invitation to Geography. 2d ed. NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1978.

Ley, David. “Cultural/HumanisticGeography.” Progress in HumanGeography 5 (1981): 249–257; 7(1983): 267–275.

Livingstone, David N. The GeographicalTradition. Cambridge, Mass.:Blackwell, 1992.

Lobeck, Armin K. Things Maps Don’t TellUs: An Adventure into Map

Interpretation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Martin, Geoffrey J., and Preston E.James. All Possible Worlds: A Historyof Geographical Ideas. 3d ed. NewYork: Wiley, 1993.

Selected References

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Monmonier, Mark. How to Lie with Maps. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Morrill, Richard L. “The Nature, Unityand Value of Geography.” ProfessionalGeographer 35 (1983): 1–9.

Muehrcke, Phillip C., and Juliana O.Muehrcke. Map Use: Reading,

Analysis, and Interpretation. 4th ed.Madison, Wis.: J.P. Publications, 1998.

Pattison, William D. “The FourTraditions of Geography.” Journal of Geography 63 (1964): 211–216.

Rogers, Alisdair, Heather Viles, andAndrew Goudie. The Student’sCompanion to Geography.Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell,1992.

White, Gilbert F. “Geographers in aPerilously Changing World.” Annalsof the Association of AmericanGeographers 75 (1985): 10–15.

Wood, Tim F. “Thinking in Geography.”Geography 72 (1987): 289–299.

fellmann et al. - human geography landscapes of human activities-chapter 1-2

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