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Part One

GEOGRAPHY, CULTURE, AND ENVIRONMENT

A t Issue

The past decade has seen extraordinary, rapid changes inpolitical, social, and environmental arrangements. The ColdWar order has come to an end, ethnic conflicts haveintensified in many places, and we increasingly read aboutthe myriad ways in which humans are altering theenvironment. In the midst of these developments, policy-makers and scholars are scrambling to find new ways ofmaking sense of the world—and a growing number of themare looking to geographical concepts and tools in theprocess. They are seeking insight into how things areorganized and relate to one another on the surface of the

Earth; they are using geographic information systems (GISs)to study the relationship among spatial data; and they areasking questions about the importance of “location,”“place,” and “region” in human affairs. Why is geographyso much a part of the effort to come to terms with ourrapidly changing world? What does it mean to thinkgeographically? Can geography offer insights into thediversity of changes unfolding around us?

Green and gold in the skyline of a city with a high-techhinterland: San Francisco.

Par t Out l ine

1 Geography and Human Geography

2 Cultures, Environments, and Regions

3 The Earth as Humanity’s Home

Chapter 1Geography and Human Geography

3

From the field notes

“Along the road north from Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, on the way to

Kandy, every square foot of level land, natural or (terraced) artificial,

seems to be devoted to the cultivation of rice. The rich, well-watered soil

yields bountiful crops, but farming methods remain labor-intensive. I

stopped here to watch about 20 workers unwrap the bundles of shoots and

plant them in the muddy paddy. Standing in the waterlogged soil, bent

over almost without letup, they filled the paddy with amazing dexterity

and speed; soon they moved to the waiting field in the foreground, where

the bundles were already waiting. It is a scene repeated countless times in

much of tropical Asia, where a majority of the population remains rural

and where survival depends directly on what the paddies can produce.”

80°E

10°N

INDIAN OCEAN

Colombo

INDIA

SRILANKA

Geography is at the very heart of the human expe-rience. For many people, place of birth is one ofthe most powerful determinants of a lifetime’s

experiences. Even in the modern era of migration andtravel, global interaction, and mass communication, thevast majority of people do not move far beyond theirplaces of birth, and even those who do are influenced bywhere they were born. The first language you learn, thefirst foods you eat, the first religion of which you becomeaware, the first clothing with which you become com-fortable—all these, and much else, are associated withyour birthplace.

Yet this is only the beginning. How and where youmove through life, the people you meet, and what you areable to see and acquire are all tied to geography—for eachof these is fundamentally influenced by the character ofthe places you encounter and by the human and environ-mental patterns that make up our world. We now live in anage of increasing globalization. Peoples and economiesthroughout the world are interconnected as never before.Nevertheless, our world still encompasses a jigsaw ofcountries, a collage of religions, a Babel of thousands oflanguages, a hodgepodge of settlement types, an assort-ment of innumerable customs and modes of livelihood.Each of these is constantly in flux, and they each influencethe others in important ways. Moreover, they come to-gether in different ways around the globe to create a worldof endlessly diverse places. Understanding and explainingthis diversity is the mission of human geography.

Geography sometimes is referred to as the “study ofplace,” but it is much more than that. Knowing where

countries and important places are located is useful, but itis only a beginning, a bit like knowing some introductoryvocabulary when you start studying a foreign language.Knowing why places and people are where they are;what their location means in the past, present, and fu-ture, and how their location affects other places—under-standing matters such as these brings us much closer toknowing what geography is about.

Note that we just referred to places and people.This book is mainly about places and their human in-habitants. It also deals with how the world has becomeorganized, and in many places transformed, by humanactivity. But make no mistake: there is more to geographythan human geography. The other half of geography istermed physical geography. Actually, a more precisename for this subdiscipline might be natural geographybecause it deals not only with mountains, glaciers,coastlines, and climates but also with soils, plants, andanimals. As we will see, it is often difficult to discusshuman geography without also referring to the physicalstage on which the human drama is being played out.Indeed, so many contemporary issues occur at the intersection of human and physical geography that environmental geography is emerging as a thirdbasic subdivision of geography. However, in this bookour focus will be on human geography. Although it represents only part of the discipline, human geo-graphy encompasses several subfields (Fig. 1-1). Eachof these has an environmental component that con-nects it to the domains of physical and environmental geography.◆

KEY POINTS

◆ Geography offers fundamental insightsinto the world in which we live through itsconcern with the spatial organization andcharacter of the Earth’s surface.

◆ Physical and human geography are twogreat branches of the discipline, but envi-ronmental geography is emerging as a linkbetween the two.

◆ Geography’s spatial perspective pro-motes a focus on location, interaction be-tween humans and the environment, re-gions, place, movement, and landscape.

◆ The use of maps and Geographic Infor-mation Systems reflects the centrality of aspatial perspective to geography.

◆ Maps are used to portray the distinctivecharacter of places; their relationship toenvironmental issues; the movements ofpeople, goods, and ideas; and regions ofvarious types.

◆ People’s perceptions of places and re-gions are influenced by their individualmental maps as well as by printed maps.

4

◆ THE COMMON BOND: A SPATIAL PERSPECTIVE

If geography deals with so many aspects of our world,ranging from people and places to coastlines and cli-mates, what do the various facets of this wide-rangingdiscipline have in common? The answer lies in a term thatoften is used most effectively as an adjective: spatial.Whether they are human geographers or physical geo-graphers, virtually all geographers are interested in theway places and things are laid out, organized, andarranged on the surface of the Earth. Sometimes a partic-ular spatial arrangement of human activities or conditionsleads geographers to raise questions as to how thisarrangement has come about, what processes create andsustain particular patterns, and what relationships existbetween different places and things. In such instances,the spatial pattern already is evident, and the search is onfor an explanation. But in other cases the spatial arrange-ment may not be evident at all and must be discoveredbefore it can lead to answers. As we will see in our dis-cussions of medical geography, for example, the map-ping of the distribution of people afflicted by certain ill-nesses led researchers directly to the sources of theillnesses and thus to remedies for them.

Medical geography is just one part of human geo-graphy in which spatial analysis has practical applica-tion. Yet another interest of geographers is the impact ofparticular spatial patterns on some process or idea. Polit-ical geographers, for example, are interested in how thedivision of the world into discrete countries influenceseverything from concepts of nationality—“I am a Ger-man, Russian, Pole”—to how environmental issues areunderstood and addressed.

Like their human geographer counterparts, physi-cal geographers are also concerned with the spatialorganization of the planet. Early in the twentieth cen-tury a climatologist, Alfred Wegener, became con-vinced after extended observation that the jigsaw-likefit of the continental landmasses on opposite sides ofthe North and South Atlantic oceans could not be amatter of chance. He marshaled a vast array of geo-graphical and geological evidence, most of it spatial innature, and on the basis of this evidence he proposeda hypothesis of continental drift. His theory was thatthe continental landmasses were once united as a giantsupercontinent that later broke apart. Wegener’s geo-graphic hypothesis, based on the spatial layout of thephysical world he knew so well, set the direction forthe geological research that was to lead (a half century

CHAPTER 1 Geography and Human Geography 5

Environmental

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Figure 1-1 Fields of Human Geogra-phy. A schematic diagram showing the re-lationships among the fields of human ge-ography and related fields outside thediscipline. Geography brings a spatial per-spective to questions raised in adjacentfields—situating different areas of inquirywithin a spatial and environmental con-text. Source: From authors’ sketch.

later) to the discovery of plate tectonics and crustalspreading, the mechanism that drives the continentsapart.

Human and physical geographers thus share thisspatial perspective, this way of looking at theworld’s—and the Earth’s—layout. So the language ofgeography is not only the language of places and peoplebut also a whole vocabulary of spatial terms, many ofwhich will become familiar (though occasionally from anew viewpoint) as we proceed. We have already usedsome of these terms: location is one, and pattern and dis-tribution are others. In due course we will become famil-iar with others, making geographic communication inthe pages that follow not only easier but also more effi-cient and accurate.

The important point here is that we cannot hope tounderstand the complexity and diversity of our planet ifwe do not think geographically. No amount of informa-tion about the workings of the Russian government canprovide insight into the future of the Russian state if wedo not understand the distribution of ethnic groups inand around Russia and their differing ideas about terri-tory and place. And no amount of analysis of data ontrade among the countries in Pacific Asia can provide asense of the economic challenges facing the region if wedo not consider the patterns of advantage and disadvan-tage within individual countries. In short, geography isindispensable to an appreciation of who we are, wherewe came from, and where we are going.

◆ THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCEOF GEOGRAPHIC INQUIRY

What does it mean to look at the world from a geographicperspective? Much more than many people seem tothink. Those with little understanding of geographysometimes treat it as an exercise in place-name memo-rization. If you know where things are on a map, you aresaid to be geographically literate. Yet no one would claimthat someone has a deep knowledge of history just be-cause they know the dates of major events. Instead, tounderstand history is to appreciate how events, circum-stances, and ideas came together at particular times toproduce certain outcomes. And a knowledge of howthings have developed over time is thought to be criticalto understanding who we are and where we are going.

If a concern with understanding change over time isof critical importance, wouldn’t it make sense that un-derstanding change across space would be of impor-tance as well? This was the view of the great Germanphilosopher, Immanuel Kant, who argued that we needdisciplines focused not only on particular phenomena(economics, sociology, etc.), but on the perspectives oftime (history) and space (geography) as well. Followingthis view, history and geography can be understood as

disciplines that have intellectual cores defined not somuch by subject matter as by perspective. Returning toFigure 1-1, human geography can be seen as a meetingpoint of a variety of disciplines not because it covers theturf of all those disciplines, but because it offers insightsinto subject matter covered by those disciplines bybringing a spatial perspective to bear. Just because aspatial perspective is at the core of geography does notmean that time is a matter of concern only for historians,however. Geography is often at its most powerful whenit seeks to understand changing spatial arrangementsover time, just as history can make sense of the worldonly if space is taken into consideration. What distin-guishes the two are their points of entry or emphases—not any definable boundary that separates them.

Whatever their differences and points of overlap, aclear commonality between history and geography is theirconcern with explanation. Knowing when things hap-pened may be a first step toward historical understanding,but real understanding requires an appreciation of whyand how things came together at certain times to produceparticular outcomes. Adopting a similar approach, thewell-known cultural geographer Marvin Mikesell has de-fined geography in shorthand as the “why of where.” Whyand how do things come together in certain places to pro-duce particular outcomes? Why are some things found incertain places but not in others? To what extent do thingsin one place influence those in other places? Questionssuch as these are at the core of geographic inquiry—andthey are of critical importance in any effort to make senseof our world. They help explain why geography has be-come a core intellectual concern in major universitiesaround the world. They also reveal why efforts are beingmounted to enhance geography’s role in education andresearch in the United States.

During the 1980s, when concern about geographicilliteracy in the United States was growing, several orga-nizations began campaigns to reintroduce geographyinto school curricula. Leading these campaigns was theGeography Education National Implementation Project(GENIP)—an initiative of the four major U.S. geo-graphical organizations. The National Geographic Soci-ety published the results of their work in a document en-titled Maps, the Landscape, and Fundamental Themesin Geography (1986), which introduced “Five Themes”of geography. Several million copies of the publicationwere disseminated to schools throughout the UnitedStates, and the “Five Themes” became, for many stu-dents, an introduction to the perspectives of geography.

Geography’s Themes and PerspectivesIt is worth considering the themes proposed by theGENIP initiative, for they provide insight into what liesbehind geography’s spatial emphasis. The first theme,location, highlights how the geographical position of

Part One Geography, Culture, and Environment6

people and things on the Earth’s surface affects whathappens and why. A concern with location underlies al-most all geographical work, for location helps to estab-lish the context within which events and processes aresituated. Some geographers seek to develop elaborate(usually quantitative) models describing the locationalproperties of particular phenomena—and even predict-ing where things are likely to occur. Such undertakingshave fostered an interest in location theory, an ele-ment of contemporary human geography that seeks an-swers to a wide range of questions—some of them theo-retical, others highly practical: Why are villages, towns,and cities spaced the way they are? Given a market of acertain size and wealth, where in the surrounding coun-tryside should particular products be grown or raised?What would be the best location for a new shoppingcenter or medical facility, given existing settlement pat-terns, road networks, and the like?

A spatial perspective invites consideration of the re-lationship among phenomena in individual places—including the relationship between humans and thenatural world. Thus, the second of the “Five Themes”identified by GENIP concerns human–environment in-teractions. How do different culture groups understand,use, and transform their environments? And how doesenvironment influence human activity? Many years ago,some geographers were tempted to generalize about theimpacts of the natural environment (mainly climate) onthe technological development of societies—concludingthat the natural environment played the most importantrole in determining whether and how human societiesprogressed. As we will see, this led to assumptions aboutpredictable advantages and disadvantages of differentenvironments, which were both highly controversial andmisused by demagogues. The result is that most geo-graphers turned away from work on the role of environ-ment in human affairs. Yet societies and cultures are situ-ated in physical-environmental contexts that necessarilyinfluence important aspects of what they do—a point thatis increasingly recognized in the wake of more generalconcerns about human–environment interactions. Armedwith new, nondeterministic perspectives, geographersare now making fundamental contributions to an under-standing of the interrelationships between humans andthe environments in which they live and work.

The third highlighted theme of geography is thatof the region. Phenomena are not evenly distributedon the surface of the Earth. Instead, features tend tobe concentrated in particular areas, which we oftenthink of as regions. And throughout history, humanshave divided up the surface of the Earth into regionsin their struggles to organize political, economic, andsocial activity. The character and location of regionsis thus a critical element of the Earth’s geography—not simply reflecting particular geographic concentra-tions, but influencing how they change over time.

Geographers have long sought to develop insightfuldescriptions of different regions of the Earth. More re-cently, efforts to develop formal approaches to thedelimitation and analysis of regions led to the devel-opment of regional science—an undertaking that involves the application of modern quantitative spatial-analytic techniques to regional questions. In what-ever form it exists and whatever it is called, regionalstudy will survive as one of the central traditions ofgeography. James Michener once wrote that when-ever he started writing a new book, he first preparedhimself by turning to books written by regional geog-raphers about the area where the action was to occur.Geography’s regional dimension is, indeed, one of itspermanent traditions.

In addition to the foregoing traditional themes, theNational Geographic Society’s publication identified twoothers. The fourth theme is represented by the seem-ingly simple word place. All places on the surface of theEarth have distinguishing human and physical character-istics, and one of the purposes of geography is to studythe special character and meaning of places. Indeed,human understanding of the Earth’s diversity is often



“On the main street of Dalian, Northeast China, Iwatched this artist create an image full of symbolism: thecomputer in the land (and the hand) of the Manchus. Thiswas no mass-produced billboard. He had painted these im-ages on large sheets of paper, had pasted these up, and wasnow adding the finishing touches. I pointed to the computerand asked if he knew how to use it. He shook his head,grabbed a paint brush, and pointed it to himself. But hiswork symbolized the importance of understanding the diffu-sion of ideas from one place to another in our ever-more in-terconnected world.”

rooted in place, so a focus on this concept is critical tobringing human experience into the geographic picture.The fifth theme, movement, refers to the mobility ofpeople, goods, and ideas across the surface of theplanet. Interactions of many kinds shape the human geo-graphy of the world, and understanding these is an im-portant aspect of the global spatial order.

Although not specifically highlighted by GENIP asone of the core themes of geography, one other conceptfigured in the committee’s work and is widely seen as acore element of geography: landscape. Geographersuse the term landscape to refer to the material characterof a place—the complex of natural features, humanstructures, and other tangible objects that give a place aparticular form. Human geographers look to landscapeboth to obtain clues into the processes that create indi-vidual places and to understand how the form of a placeshapes the ideas and interactions of those who inhabit it.A concern with landscape is fundamental to a spatialperspective because landscapes are the product of par-ticular spatial convergences. The landscape of the Mis-sissippi delta reflects the convergence of different cul-tural, social, economic, and political influences in aparticular place, as well as the interaction of those influ-ences with the natural environment. As such, the land-scape can be read as a text offering insights into theforces and processes that have shaped human occu-pance of the portion of the planet where the MississippiRiver flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

Taken as a set, the “Five Themes” plus the conceptof landscape provide a sense of what is entailed whenone adopts a spatial perspective—and these themeshave been promoted to good advantage in efforts tobuild geography in American education. Geography’simportance is not limited to the educational arena, how-ever; it also has an important role to play in academic re-search and policy making. This was highlighted in a re-

cent report of the National Research Council entitled Re-discovering Geography: New Relevance for Science andSociety. The report focuses on the integrative characterof geography’s perspective through its identification ofthree spatial themes that cut across the human, environ-mental, and physical parts of the discipline: integrationin place, interdependencies between places, and inter-dependencies among scales (Fig. 1-2).

The concept of integration in place concerns howand why people or things found in the same place on thesurface of the Earth influence each other and shape thecharacter of places. Why are areas of high populationdensity so often areas with good arable land? How doesthe configuration of the street pattern in a particular sub-urb affect the location of retail establishments? How dothe distinctive social, cultural, political, and environmen-tal characteristics of a town or region shape its characteras a place? Questions such as these are all tied to thequest to understand integration in place.

Geography’s interest in interdependencies betweenplaces reflects its focus on the nature and significance ofthe patterns and networks that tie places together. Howdid migration out of southeastern Europe in the 1990s af-fect the relationship of parts of Western Europe to theBalkans? What impact is the Internet having on the abilityof people in one place to influence those living in an-other? How has the European integration project alteredthe relationships among peoples located on either side ofinternational boundaries? These questions are illustrativeof a concern with interdependencies between places.

An emphasis on the nature and significance of inter-dependencies among scales is tied to geography’s spatialperspective. It is impossible to understand the characterof most places or spatial patterns without consideringthe role of arrangements and processes operating at dif-ferent scales. For example, the location and character ofan immigrant neighborhood within a city is not just the


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GEOGRAPHY’S WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD

SPATIAL REPRESENTATION

Figure 1-2 Matrix of Geographic Per-spectives. Geography’s ways of looking atthe world—through its focus on place andscale (horizontal axis)—cuts across its threedomains of synthesis: human-societal dynam-ics, environmental dynamics, and environ-mental-societal dynamics (vertical axis). Spa-tial representation, the third dimension of thematrix, underpins and sometimes drives re-search in geography. Source: National Re-search Council, Rediscovering Geography:New Relevance for Science and Society.Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press,1997.

product of local social, political, and environmental cir-cumstances. It likely also reflects regional/state policies,interstate migration patterns, economic and environ-mental forces operating at the global scale, and muchmore. The scale issue is so key to geography that it de-serves special emphasis in an introductory text that mustnecessarily be selective about the scale at which mostmaterial will be presented (see “Sense of Scale: Geo-graphy and Scale”).

The third dimension in Figure 1-2—shown on theright-hand side of the diagram—depicts the tools geo-graphers use in their efforts to understand and explainfacets of the world’s spatial organization. As we will see,visual representations such as the map are key, but geo-graphers also use descriptions (the verbal “line”), mathe-matical representations and calculations, digital displaysand manipulations, and tools designed to understandhow people think about space and environment (thecognitive “line”).

Geography’s ImportanceThe National Research Council’s interest in the currentstatus of geography reflects growing recognition of the

insights to be gained from a focus on the spatial organi-zation and material character of the Earth’s surface. Canwe really hope to develop sensible trade policies if wedo not understand changing patterns of economic inter-action among peoples? How can we prepare individualsfor intelligent participation in a democratic society with-out providing them with an understanding of the im-pacts of changing political boundaries on citizenshipand governance? What progress can we make in re-searching biodiversity loss if we do not understand thepressures on tropical rainforests resulting from differentpatterns of human activity? Geography’s importance isrevealed in the obvious answers that each of these ques-tions elicits.

Against this backdrop, it will not surprise you toknow that geographers (although often too few ofthem!) are employed by universities, research institutes,laboratories, public agencies, and private businesses towork on issues of contemporary relevance and con-cern. For example, geographers study where medicalfacilities should be located to benefit the largest num-ber of people, they research why states are fightingover particular territories, they investigate why someareas are becoming richer while others are becoming


A SENSE OF SCALE

cal, and cultural. The extent to which phenomena at one scaleare influenced by those at other scales is so great that somescholars talk about a “local-global continuum.”

It is impossible for a single text to cover all the complexitiesof the local-global continuum. We have therefore chosen tofocus on the global and regional scales, both because thisbook is designed as an introductory survey of the field andbecause an understanding of developments at larger scalesis critical to an appreciation of what is happening at smallerscales. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that influ-ences flow not just from top to bottom, but in the other di-rection as well, and we talk about some of these in thebook. It is also important to recognize that the tools of in-quiry that we employ in this book can be employed atsmaller scales as well: population can be mapped and ana-lyzed in a neighborhood, cultural landscapes can be stud-ied in a village, and the environmental impacts of agricul-ture can be studied in a watershed. To help highlight thispoint, the Sense of Scale boxes scattered through the texthighlight local manifestations of larger-scale phenomenaand show how developments at one scale influence those atanother scale.

Geographers examine places and patterns at a variety ofscales, from local to regional to global. Indeed, geography’sconcern with space puts scale at the center of its agenda. Afterall, the very process of examining and mapping a phenome-non involves making choices about scale. The things onemight say about the distribution of French speakers willchange depending on whether one looks at that distributionthroughout the world, in Europe, in France, or in a Parisneighborhood. And geographers’ sensitivity to scale leadsthem always to question what is revealed and what is hiddenwhen a generalization is made about a people or a place at aparticular scale.

The geographer’s concern with scale goes beyond an interestin the scale of individual phenomena to a concern with howprocesses operating at different scales influence one another.If one is to understand the conflict between the Tutsi and theHutu people in Rwanda, for example, one cannot look solelyat this small African country. That conflict is influenced by de-velopments at a variety of different scales, including patternsof migration and interaction in Central Africa, the economicand political relations between Rwanda and parts of Europe,and the variable impacts of globalization—economic, politi-

Geography and Scale

poorer, and they develop land-use maps designed tominimize the negative environmental impacts of devel-opment. Their work often looks backwards as well sothat we can better understand how the world got to bethe way that it is.

Geography also can be forward looking. What dochanging demographic trends in different regions sug-gest about the population issues countries will be fac-ing in the middle of the twenty-first century? Whatdoes the growing use of English portend for the lin-guistic diversity of the planet? What are the likely im-plications of the acceleration of rural-to-urban migra-tion for the character of human settlement in thedecades to come? Each of these is a geographic ques-tion that helps crystallize the issues that will shape ourworld in the years and decades to come. We will focuson such matters in a series of “Looking Ahead” boxesat the end of each part of this book. The goal is to seehow human geography can shed light on the worldthat is coming into being.

◆ USING THE SPATIALPERSPECTIVE

There is no better way to demonstrate the insightsgained through spatial analysis than through the use ofmaps. Maps are an incredibly powerful geographic tool,and mapmaking is as old as geography itself. (For detailson cartography, see Resource A at the end of this book.)Maps are used to wage war, to make political propa-ganda, to solve medical problems, to locate shoppingcenters, to bring relief to refugees, to warn of naturalhazards—in short, for countless purposes.

We have already seen that the theme of location isfundamental to geography. Maps tell us where places arelocated in relation to other places. However, there ismore to this statement than first meets the eye. True,maps provide the locations of places in terms of theEarth’s latitude-longitude grid, but it really means verylittle to know that Chicago lies at 41 degrees, 53 minutesNorth Latitude and 87 degrees, 38 minutes West Longi-tude. Those data identify Chicago’s absolute location—its location in relation to a neutral, agreed-upon frame ofreference. They become interesting when compared toother absolute locations, but for our purposes they arenot useful for much else. By checking a map, we can de-termine that Chicago lies approximately at the same lati-tude as Madrid, Spain, and Beijing, China, and (this maysurprise you) at the same longitude as the Galapagos Is-lands in the Pacific Ocean. So the coordinates of absolutelocation are useful mainly in determining exact distancesand directions.

The relative location of a place is a very differentmatter. This is its location relative to other human andphysical features on the landscape. Where does Chicago

lie in relation to Lake Michigan, its important waterway;to Milwaukee, its not-too-distant neighbor; to the mineralresources and farmlands of the Midwest; or to the roadand railroad networks? All of these could be representedon maps. Note that a vast system of roads and railroadsconverges on Chicago from all parts of the surroundingregion (Fig. 1-3). This means that the city’s interconnec-tions with the region around it are exceptionally effi-cient. Whether you wanted to distribute something fromChicago to the four states that lie within 60 miles (100kilometers) of it, or reach the Chicago market fromsomeplace in the region, surface communications arereadily available. What the map does not show isChicago’s role as a hub of airline transportation. As urbangeographers (those who study the spatial organizationand landscapes of cities) say, Chicago has great central-ity. Centrality is a function of location, relative to other



“As I walked into the control room of Tokyo’searthquake emergency response center, I was dazzled bythe technology that surrounded me. Rows of the latest, mostsophisticated computers faced toward large screens wheredigital maps of the Tokyo metropolitan area were displayed.A quick run through a few simulations showed me that thesystem was based on an elaborate GIS. The impacts of a dis-aster hitting one part of the city could be traced and ana-lyzed through the manipulation of spatial information oneverything from transportation networks to population con-centrations. Geography is no luxury here; it is a matter oflife and death.”

urban places, resources, productive farmlands, and effi-cient transport linkages.

Whereas the absolute location of a place does notchange, its relative location is subject to constant mod-ification. From its beginning, Chicago was an impor-tant city in the interior of North America, but its relativelocation changed markedly in 1959 when the St.Lawrence Seaway was opened and the city acquired adirect maritime connection to the North AtlanticOcean. Although the seaway closes in the winter whenice blocks navigation, Chicago can be reached byoceangoing vessels throughout the rest of the year. Asan inland port, its relative location has changed sub-stantially. Ships that could once get no closer than theeastern ports of North America now dock in sight ofChicago’s downtown skyline.

An especially dramatic change in relative locationhas affected an entire country, Japan, during the pastcentury. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, Japanwas relatively isolated from the developing global econ-omy. When the Japanese decided to embark on the roadto industrialization, they chose Britain as their model(which is why they still drive on the left side of the road).

However, Japan was half a world removed from Europe,the center of the industrial world at the time. Then dur-ing the twentieth century, the United States became theworld’s most important industrial power, and now Japanlay directly across the Pacific from the newly dominantAmerican market. Today, Japan’s relative location ischanging again as China, right across the East China Sea,becomes a growing trading partner and Russia beckonsfrom across the Sea of Japan. In relative location Japanthus has gone from remote isolation to global hub—butits absolute location has never changed!

◆ THE ROLE OF MAPS IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

One of the ways geographers can gain a better under-standing of places and issues is by comparing spatialdata. Frequently, these comparisons make use of geo-graphic information systems (GISs), a powerful newtool that allows geographers to combine layers of spatialdata in a computerized environment, creating maps inwhich patterns and processes are superimposed. GISs


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Figure 1-3 Chicago and Its Inter-connections. Notice how surface com-munication lines converge on Chicago—reflecting and shaping its dominance in theregion.

are used not only to display data in the form of maps, butalso to analyze those data—in the process creating newinsights into geographic patterns and relationships (seeFig. 1-4).

Maps and PlacesMaps demonstrate a vital rule of geography: that placeson the Earth have their own distinctive propertieswhich, taken together, give each place its own charac-ter. No place is exactly like another, and a map is thebest way to demonstrate this. Geographers study boththe physical and human properties of places. TheEarth’s surface, its elevation and relief, slopes anddrainage, soils, natural vegetation, and atmosphericconditions (climate and weather) form the physical set-ting. The uses to which people put this setting—in theform of settlement layout, population patterns, transport

networks, land use, and other activity—create thehuman imprint. Together, these physical and humanfeatures constitute the overall geographic character of aparticular place.

Geographers therefore have a special interest in thequality of places. Whether it’s a fishing village on China’scoast or a bustling Arab town, geographers want toknow how the people have implanted their traditions onthat locale, why they have done so, what sustains themnow, and how they interact with the outside world. It isimpossible, of course, to study all these aspects at once,so geographers tend to specialize in certain features ofplaces. Some study the street layout and architecture of atown; others concentrate on the transport systems thatserve it; still others focus on the business and industrythat sustain the local economy. In the process, a kind ofgeographic overview of the place emerges. If you wereto become a professional geographer and found yourself


PARCELS

ZONING

FLOODPLAINS

WETLANDS

LAND COVER

SOILS

SPATIALREFERENCESYSTEM

COMPOSITEOVERLAY

Figure 1-4 The different lay-ers that are a part of the Geo-graphic Information Systemused to evaluate soil erosionin a U.S. county. The layers areeach digitally encoded as points,lines, or areas. Assessments aremade through computer analysisof the different layers and theirrelationships to one another.Source: N. Chrisman, ExploringGeographic Information Sys-tems, 2nd ed. New York: JohnWiley & Sons, 2002, p. 6.

assigned to study, say, the growth of suburbs aroundSantiago, the capital of Chile, you would first read whatgeographers (and others) have already written aboutthat city. With the many specialized maps they have pre-pared, you would be well informed before you ever setfoot in the field.

Maps and Environmental IssuesThroughout this book the theme of human interactionwith the environment emerges time and again. Humangeography, whether economic, political, urban, or cul-tural, cannot be studied without reference to the envi-ronment in which the action takes place. In the course ofour journey, we will look at maps of “acid rain” distribu-tion, deforestation, river basins, ice ages, and other as-pects of the natural environment. Some of these mapswill raise as many questions as they answer. For exam-ple, if Bangladesh faces certain disaster from cyclonesthat can kill hundreds of thousands, why do people con-tinue to inhabit low-lying ground in the most dangerousareas? Is the southward spread of the Sahara in WestAfrica a natural phenomenon, or are human groups andtheir livestock responsible for this devastating process? Ifthe Amazonian rainforest in Brazil and adjacent coun-tries continues to be destroyed at present rates, what willhappen to rainfall patterns there?

In Part One we will take a closer look at past andpresent global environments, but it is useful now to con-sider a map of one vital ingredient of our Earthly exis-tence: water. Figure 1-5 is a map of the mean annualprecipitation around the world. Note the prevalence ofdry conditions over much of the globe, from inner Asiato western Africa to central Australia. As the Earth’shuman population grows, the demands on this limitedsupply of water also increase. Drought-caused famineshave struck many vulnerable areas, including the north-eastern corner of South America, the southern marginsof the Sahara in Africa, and south-central Asia. Oftensuch death-dealing droughts cause people to seek reliefelsewhere, creating migration streams that cause furtherdislocation in neighboring zones. For example, thou-sands of people and their livestock, fleeing from the lastdrought in West Africa, migrated southward into themoister savanna lands of coastal countries. Their cattletrampled crops and destroyed harvests, and the resultwas armed conflict between the local farmers and themigrants.

Water shortages are not confined to desert-edgegrazing lands in remote corners of the world. Water ra-tioning became a fact of life in California in the early1990s, yet people continue to move not only into Califor-nia but also into other water-deficient areas of the Amer-ican Southwest. As Figure 1-5 suggests, the prospects forwater supply in a burgeoning world are worrisome. Ex-

pensive desalinization plants, using ocean water, mod-eled after those on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf,are making their appearance in California. But their ca-pacity is a drop in the proverbial bucket.

The map of world precipitation also emphasizesthe importance of the Atlantic Ocean. Note that exceptfor South Asia and Southeast Asia, the moistest areas ofthe world lie clustered against Atlantic shores, fromwater-warmed Western Europe to Amazonian SouthAmerica and from the southeastern United States toWest and Equatorial Africa. These regions owe most oftheir annual water supply to the Atlantic Ocean, whoseslowly circulating waters bring warmth and moisture toareas from Britain to Brazil. Even the peaks of theAndes Mountains in western South America, and thedensely populated highlands of eastern Africa, getmost of their snow and rain not from the neighboringPacific and Indian oceans but from the faraway At-lantic. Here again we see that a map can tell far morethan mere distribution.

Field observation can provide many insights intothe Earth’s changing environment, but to understandthe scale and rate of environmental change it is oftennecessary to monitor the Earth’s surface from a distanceusing modern technology. Remote sensing is thus animportant geographic technique. Remote sensing datacollected by satellites and aircraft (airplanes, balloons,etc.) reveal both physical changes, such as the extent offlooding in the Mississippi River Valley, and changesthat are more directly due to human activity, such asdeforestation in the Brazilian Amazon resulting fromagricultural activities. More recently, the establishmentof a satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) hasallowed us to locate things on the surface of the Earthwith extraordinary accuracy. Not only does this permitlocational data to be collected more quickly and easilyin the field, but GPS units also have more mundaneuses, such as helping lost campers find their way out ofthe woods.

Maps and Human MobilityIt is one thing to map static features, such as existing pat-terns and distributions or the locations of cities andtowns, but it is quite another to represent movement onthe map. Yet movement is a central theme of geography.Whether it is the movement of goods from factories tomarkets, the flow of oil from Middle Eastern wells toAmerican consumers, or the migration of people fromone region to another, movement must be recorded onmaps and interpreted.

To indicate movement, cartographers use manysymbols. For example, you can represent the number oftravelers on key highways or major airline routes usingarrows of varying width; the widths of the arrows reveal


the comparative quantities of traffic (Fig. 1-6). Suchmaps show at a glance the intensity of movement alongcertain routes, and more careful examination reveals theactual numbers or volumes involved.

But there are times when it is not so much the actualvolume but the direction of movement that matters most.Where money flows, for example, can be just as impor-tant as how much money is moving out of a particularplace. More often it is the movement of ideas, notions,and innovations that matters, but such movement cannotbe quantified. The geographic term for this is diffusion,the spread of ideas or knowledge from their origins toareas where they are adopted. Much as we would like to,

we cannot always measure such diffusion quantitatively,but we can trace its direction. So some maps represent-ing this process have arrows that reflect direction only,not volume.

Maps showing movement of various kinds areamong the most interesting in geography. In the chapteron medical geography, you will find a series of mapswith arrows showing the routes of invasion of cholera, adreaded illness of the nineteenth century, which occa-sionally reappears today. At its height over 100 yearsago, no one knew what caused cholera; hundreds ofthousands of people died of it. But others were some-how spared. As it turned out, a map was the key to dis-


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Figure 1-5 Average Annual Precipitation of the World. A generalized map of the meanannual precipitation received around the world. Note that this map projection (see Resource A)is interrupted in the oceans, allowing for maximum clarity of detail on the landmasses.

covering the answer, and a medical geographer solvedthe problem. Today, similar efforts are being made tocombat AIDS, another dreaded disease affecting mil-lions. And again medical geographers are using maps tohelp.

Regions on the MapThroughout this book we will use regions, and the re-gional concept, to clarify what is being discussed. Actu-ally, we use some form of the regional idea all the time,even in everyday conversation. When you plan a vaca-tion in “the Rockies,” or a hiking trip in New England, ora cruise in the Caribbean, you are using regional notionsto convey what you have in mind. Regions, used thisway, serve as informal frames of reference.

In geography, the regional concept is, of course,more specific. To refer to “the Rockies” as a perceivedregion summarizes what is prominent about this region:steep slopes, dramatic mountain scenery, snowcappedpeaks, and ski slopes. But as a geographer you might beasked to define and delimit a Rocky Mountains region.Exactly where are the boundaries of “the Rockies”? Insome places, the answer is easily found as the mountainsrise suddenly from the adjacent Great Plains (another re-gion). Elsewhere, however, the mountainous terrainrises gradually; the plains become hilly, and the slopesbecome steeper. Where, and on what basis, do you drawthe regional boundary?

To identify and delimit regions, we must establishcriteria for them. Imagine that, as an exercise in physicalgeography, you were asked to delimit the Amazon River


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Basin as a geographic region. There would be variousways to do this: you might use vegetation distribution,soil properties, slope angles, or drainage patterns. Whenyou presented your results, you would first state thebasis on which you had mapped the region and thenproduce the resulting map. On a small scale, the mapmight resemble Figure 1-7, which uses drainage lines todefine the Amazon Basin on the basis of the rivers andtributaries that ultimately drain into this great SouthAmerican river.

Thus we know that all regions have certain charac-teristics. These include area—that is, they all have somedefined spatial extent; location, in that all regions liesomewhere on the Earth’s surface; and limits or bound-aries, which are sometimes evident on the ground andsometimes not, and are often based on specifically cho-sen criteria.

Regions are not all of the same type. Some aremarked by visible uniformity, for example, a desert basinmarked by severe aridity, sandy surface, and steep sur-rounding mountain slopes. Geographers refer to such a

homogeneous region as a formal region. Formal re-gions can also be defined by cultural (as opposed tophysical) criteria. A region within which French is spo-ken by, say, 90 percent or more of the population, is also


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Figure 1-6 Railroad Freight in the U.S. Continental Core Region. The comparativeamount of freight carried on major North American railroads can be quickly assessed from thismap.

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Figure 1-7 Amazon Basin. The Amazon Basin as a regiondefined by the main tributaries and topography.

a formal region. A functional region, on the otherhand, is the product of interactions, of movement of var-ious kinds. A city, for example, has a surrounding regionwithin which workers commute, either to the downtownarea or to subsidiary centers such as office parks andshopping malls (Fig. 1-8). That entire urban area, de-fined by people moving toward and within it, is a func-tional region. Thus a functional region is a spatial sys-tem; its boundaries are defined by the limits of thatsystem. Finally, regions may be primarily in the minds ofpeople. These perceptual regions are not just curiosi-ties. How people think about regions has influencedeverything from daily activity patterns to large-scale in-ternational conflict. Regions can be seen in a verticalorder or hierarchy. The French-speaking region towhich we referred earlier can be thought of as a regionwithin a larger region, namely, Western Europe. WesternEurope, in turn, is a region of the European geographicrealm. Regions often form a hierarchy based on size andimportance.

Regions, therefore, are ways of organizing humansgeographically. They are a form of spatial classification, ameans of handling large amounts of information so thatit makes sense. Thus the regional concept is an indis-pensable aid in our journey through human geography.

Maps in the MindWhether we like it or not, we see and study things from aparticular viewpoint, which is shaped by our cultural en-vironment. No matter how hard we try to be objective, aview of the world and its problems (geographic and oth-erwise) from the United States is not the same as theview from Tanzania or China. Certainly, a map of moun-

tain ranges or known oil reserves might look the samewhether it was drawn in China or America, but when westudy more subjective things—culture and tradition, pol-itics, or economic development—we may have quite adifferent outlook. Take, for example, a standard pictureof a major city in another country, such as Mexico City,Mexico, or Nairobi, Kenya. Such a picture is likely toshow the modern, high-rise buildings of the “down-town” area, the heart of the city. However, the fact is thatthe great majority of the people of Mexico City andNairobi (and dozens of other large cities) live in modest,often inadequate dwellings in vast, sprawling housingtracts that surround the urban core. For many of thesepeople, the skyscrapers of the central city are irrelevant,and city life is a battle for survival in quite a different en-vironment. Shouldn’t a “typical” picture of Mexico Cityor Nairobi show that image rather than the downtownarea?

It is important to realize that our study of the humanworld contains some cultural bias, no matter how hardwe try to see alternative viewpoints. As you get to knowgeographers, you will find that they tend to be drawn tothe field partly because of their interest in, and respectfor, other societies and cultures. That, however, does notmake us immune to bias or insensitivity. After all, humangeography deals with population growth and control,race and religion, economic development, and politicalinstitutions, all of which can be touchy subjects.

Mental Maps Imagine that you are attending a seminardiscussion on the political geography of Southern Africa,but there is no wall map to which you can refer. What isyour frame of reference? Obviously, it is the countries ofthe region: South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho,Botswana, Zimbabwe, and their neighbors. As youspeak, you will use the map that is in your mind, yourmental map of that part of the world. That mental maphas developed over years of looking at wall maps, atlasmaps, maps in books, magazines, and newspapers.

Mental maps are a fundamental part of our generalknowledge; we use them constantly. If someone wereto call you to suggest that you go to the theater, a men-tal map would come to mind: the hallway, the frontdoor, the walk to your car, the lane to choose in orderto be prepared for the left turn you must make, whereyou would prefer to park, and so forth. If your mentalmap is vague, you will need a city map to find yourway. However, if the issue is more serious than a trip tothe theater, and a large number of people are poorly in-formed, vague mental maps can lead to major policymistakes.

Environmental Perception Mental maps (also calledcognitive maps) are derived from visual observation ofthe real world (your city or town, college campus, shop-ping center) and from the scrutiny and study of printed


SuburbanCity

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commuter travel

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Figure 1-8 Commuter Travel Patterns. Commuter travelpatterns in an urban area. The lines show the catchment areas ofvarious places in an urbanized area. Source: From authors’sketch.

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Figure 1-9 Different Living Preferences. Where Californians and Pennsylvanians would prefer tolive based on questionnaires completed by college students. Source: P. R. Gould and R. White, MentalMaps. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986, pp. 55 and 58. Redrawn by permission of the publisher.

18

maps. Sights are supplemented by sounds and smells,and the total impression is environmental perception.This is the impression that generates our mental map.

Since geographers are interested in both the physi-cal world and the human organization of it, environmen-tal perception is a popular geographic topic. We haveperceptions of places we know by personal experience,but we also carry images of places we have never visited.What shapes these perceptions? To what extent are theyaccurate or distorted? In a fascinating book titled MentalMaps (1982), geographers Peter Gould and RodneyWhite begin by asking the following question: If youcould move to any place of your choice, without any ofthe usual financial and other obstacles, where wouldyou like to live? (For their respondents’ answers, see Fig.

1-9.) Perhaps you would select a location that you per-ceive as attractive but have never personally experi-enced. However, the actual environment may turn out tobe quite different from your perception of it.

A crucial part of our perception of a place lies in itslayout, that is, its spatial arrangement and organization.To know the location of a country (whether it is Laos orAfghanistan or Bolivia) is only a beginning. From mapswe can gain impressions of topography and relief, cli-mate and weather, the quality of roads, the layout of vil-lages and towns, and countless other conditions—with-out ever having been there. The map is thus our windowon the world.

See Resource A, Maps, at the end of the book forguidelines on how to read and use maps.


◆ KEY TERMS ◆

absolute locationareaboundarydiffusiondistributionenvironmental geographyenvironmental perceptionformal regionfunctional regiongeographic information systems

hierarchyhuman–environment interactionshuman geographylandscapelocation (absolute, relative)location theorymapmental mapmovement

patternperceptual regionphysical (natural) geographyplaceregional scienceregions (formal, functional)relative locationremote sensingspatial perspective

◆ APPLYING GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE ◆

1. Imagine yourself living and working in a small townin a rural area of the Midwest. Your family owns andoperates a small department store located at thebusiest intersection in town, where the through roadcrosses the main shopping street. Now the State High-way Department is building a four-lane highway thatwill bypass your town about six miles away. How willthis change your store’s relative location? How will itaffect your market? What might you and other shopowners do to counter the impact of the new highway?

2. The editor of a city newspaper has appointed you toher staff, and your first job as a geographer is to drawa map of the region within which the paper sells, thatis, its market. Describe how you will go about this:what will be the criteria on which this functional re-gion is based? When you have finished your map, theregion turns out to be quite asymmetrical; the papersells as far as 100 miles north of the city but only 60miles to the south. What might explain this variable“reach” of the newspaper?

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