Module 1
Introduction to Human Geography
A. Geography and Human Geography
The fundamental question asked by geographers is, “What difference does it make
where things are located?” For example, it matters a great deal that languages of a certain
kind are spoken in certain places. But knowledge of the location of a specific language
group is not of itself particularly significant. Geographic study of a language requires that
we try to answer questions about why and how the language shows different
characteristics in different locations and how the present distribution of its speakers came
about. In the course of our study, we would logically discuss such concepts as migration,
acculturation, the diffusion of innovation, the effect of physical barriers on
communication, and the relationship of language to other aspects of culture. As
geographers, we are interested in how things are interrelated in different regions and give
evidence of the existence of “spatial systems.
Many people associate the word geography simply with describing where things
are and the characteristics of things at particular locations; where are countries such as
Myanmar and Uruguay, what are the populations of cities such as Timbuktu or Almaty,
or where are large deposits of natural resources such as petroleum or iron ore? Some
people pride themselves on knowing which are the longest rivers, the tallest mountains,
and the largest deserts. Such factual knowledge about the world has value, permitting us
to place current events in their proper spatial setting. When we hear of an earthquake in
Turkey or an assault in Timor-Leste, we at least can visualize where they occurred.
Knowing why they occurred in those places, however, is considerably more important.
Geography is much more than place names and locations. It is the study of spatial
variation, of how and why things differ from place to place on the surface of the Earth. It
is, further, the study of how observable spatial patterns evolved through time. Just as
knowing the names and locations of organs in the human body does not equip one to
perform open-heart surgery, and just as memorizing the periodic table does not enable
one to formulate new medications, so knowing where things are located geographically is
only the first step toward understanding why things are where they are, and what events
and processes determine or change their distribution. Why is Chechnya but not Tasmania
wracked by insurgency, and why do you find a concentration of French speakers in
Quebec but not in other parts of Canada? Why are famines so frequent and severe in East
Africa and why, among all the continents, has African food production and distribution
failed to keep pace with population growth over the past half century?
Although space is central to geography, time is important, too. How do places
change over time, how do structures and processes change location over time, and how
do patterns of interaction change over time? Buffalo, New York, was one of the ten
largest cities in the United States around 1900. Its location at the western terminus of the
Erie Canal, and then along rail lines for transporting the manufacturing and agricultural
products of the Midwest, attracted job seekers and investors. Now it is around the 80th
largest city in the United States and continuing to shrink in population (in both absolute
terms and relative to fast-growing cities such as Houston and Phoenix). Manufacturing in
the United States decreased dramatically at the end of the 20th century, and agricultural
products have found other routes to move. In other words, geography is about both static
and dynamic aspects of space and place.
The fundamental inspiration for geographical thought probably originated with
the recognition of areal differentiation—that one place is different than another. Climate
varies, plants vary, people vary. This insight surely occurred in prehistoric times. Early
developments in the study of geography took place in ancient Egypt, China,
Mesopotamia, the Arab world, Greece, and Rome. This early work was motivated by
practical problems in astronomy, land surveying and agriculture, trade, and military
activity. From the beginning, geographic thought was characterized by three scholarly
traditions: a literary tradition, including travel logs written about foreign places; a
cartographic tradition, in which places were mapped; and a mathematical tradition, which
involved measuring and calculating spatial and nonspatial information about places.
Although their relative importance to geographic scholarship has varied over time, all
three traditions are still active parts of the study of geography.
These are enduring and universal interests. The ancient Chinese, for example,
were as involved in geography as an explanatory viewpoint as were Westerners, though
there was no exchange between them. Further, as Christian Europe entered its Middle
Ages between ce 500 and 1400 and lost its knowledge of Greek and Roman geographical
work, Muslim scholars—who retained that knowledge— undertook to describe and
analyze their known world in its physical, cultural, and regional variation. 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 we know today. In its
European rebirth, geography from the outset 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 concern with humans as part of the Earth’s variation from place to
place. The rapid development of geology, botany, zoology, and other natural sciences by
the end of the 18th century strengthened regional geographic investigation and increased
scholarly and popular awareness of the intricate interconnections of items in space and
between places. By that same time, accurate determination of latitude and longitude and
scientific mapping of the Earth made assignment of place information more reliable and
comprehensive.
Geography’s specialized subfields are not entirely distinct but are interrelated.
Geography in all its subdivisions is characterized by three dominating interests. The first
is in the areal variation of physical and human phenomena on the surface of the Earth.
Geography examines relationships between human societies and the natural environments
that they occupy and modify. The second is a focus on the spatial systems1 that link
physical phenomena and 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-environment—ecological—relationships and spatial systems in
specific locational settings. This areal orientation pursued by some geographers is called
regional geography. Similar to many of the articles in National Geographic Magazine,
regional geography typically focuses on a comprehensive understanding of physical and
human characteristics of particular regions. For some, the regions of interest may be
large: Southeast Asia or Latin America, for example; others may focus on smaller areas
differently defined, such as Alpine France or the Corn Belt in the United States.
Other geographers choose to identify particular classes of things, rather than
segments of the Earth’s surface, for specialized study. These systematic geographers may
focus their attention on one or a few related aspects of the physical environment or of
human populations and societies. In each case, the topic selected for study is examined in
its interrelationships with other spatial systems and areal patterns. Physical geographers
practice systematic geography by directing their attention to the natural environmental
side of the human-environment structure. Their concerns are with landforms and their
distribution, with atmospheric conditions and climatic patterns, with soils or vegetation
associations, and the like. The other systematic branch of geography—and the subject of
this book—is human geography.
Human geography deals with the world as it is and with the world as it might be
made to be. Its emphasis is on people: where they are, what they are like, how they
interact over space, and what kinds of landscapes of human use they erect on the natural
landscapes they occupy. It encompasses all those interests and topics of geography that
are not directly concerned with the physical environment or, like cartography, are
concerned with geographic techniques that apply to all domains of geography. Its content
provides integration for all of the social sciences, for it gives to those sciences the
necessary spatial and systems viewpoint that they might otherwise lack. For example,
economists are often concerned with trends and patterns over time but do not fully
appreciate that many of their interests concern patterns over space, too. Similarly,
psychologists have long been interested in mind and behavior but have often failed to
recognize the spatial context of this mind and behavior. At the same time, human
geography draws on other social sciences in the analyses identified with its subfields,
such as behavioral, political, economic, and social geography.
B. Core Geographic Concepts
The topics included in human geography are diverse, but that very diversity
emphasizes the reality that all geographers—whatever their particular topical or regional
specialties—are united by the similar questions they ask and the common set of basic
concepts they employ to consider 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 it in relation to other things that affect it or are affected by it? How
is it changing? How is it part of a functioning whole? How do people affect it? How does
its location affect people’s lives and the content of the area in which it is found? These
and similar questions are rooted in geography’s central concern with space and place and
in the special meanings geographers attach to those terms.
For geographers, space implies areal extent and may be understood in both an
absolute and a relative sense. Absolute space is about fixed coordinate systems, like
latitude and longitude, and measurement units, like miles or kilometers. Such absolute
space remains the same in all contexts. In contrast, relative space is comparative and
varies with context. As such, it is more flexible in recognizing that different ways of
“measuring” space are more relevant for particular domains of human activity. For
instance, different cultures think of space differently depending on their livelihood and
travel habits. Economically, spaces vary depending on how much money it costs to get
from one place to another. In other cases, relative spaces are mental or subjective, as
when a route seems longer because a person thinks that it goes through a dangerous area.
In all these examples, relative space measures space in terms other than those of a fixed
physical layout.
Our individual or group sense of place and attachments can, of course, set us off
from others. Our home neighborhood that we find familiar and view favorably may
equally be seen as alien and, perhaps, dangerous by others. The attributes and culture of
places shape the lives and outlooks of those who inhabit them in ways basic to the
socioeconomic patterning of the world. The viewpoints, normative behavior, religious
and cultural beliefs, and ways of life absorbed and expressed by a middle-class, suburban
American are undoubtedly vastly different from the understandings, cultural convictions,
and life expectations of, for example, a young, unemployed male resident of Baghdad or
the slums of Cairo. The implicit, ingrained, place-induced differences between the two
help us understand one reason for the resistance to the globalization of Western social
and economic values by those of different cultural backgrounds and place identification.
The sense of place is reinforced by recognized local and regional distinctiveness.
It may be diminished or lost and replaced by a feeling of placelessness as the uniformity
of brand-name fast-food outlets, national retail store chains, uniform shopping malls,
repetitive highway billboards, and the like spread nationally and even internationally,
reducing or eliminating the uniqueness of formerly separated locales and cultures.
Geographers use the word spatial as an essential modifier in framing their questions and
forming their concepts. Geography, they say, is a spatial science. It is concerned with
spatial behavior of people, with the spatial relationships that are observed between places
on the Earth’s surface, and with the spatial processes that create or maintain those
behaviors and relationships. The word spatial comes, of course, from space, and to
geographers, it always 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. The geographer’s space, then, is Earth space, the surface area occupied or
available to be occupied by humans. Spatial phenomena have locations on that surface,
and spatial interactions occur among places, things, and people within the Earth area
available to them. The need to understand those relationships, interactions, and processes
helps frame the questions that geographers ask.
Of course, space and (especially) place are not empty. Geographic features
include natural features such as mountains, rivers, forests, oceans, and atmospheric
fronts. They also include cultural features such as buildings, roads, cornfields, cities, and
countries. Although all geographic features, like all material entities of any kind, are in
reality three-dimensional, we often think of them or depict them on a map as if their
dimensionality were less. So zerodimensional features are thought of as points; an
example might be a water well or a mountain peak. One-dimensional features are like
lines, whether curved or straight; an example might be a river or a highway. Two-
dimensional features are like areas or polygons; an example might be a forest or a
neighborhood. Finally, some features are best thought of as being fully three-dimensional
or volumetric. An oil deposit and a cloud are examples of this. It is important to
recognize that the most appropriate way to think about a feature’s dimensionality can
depend greatly on the scale with which you examine it. A city may be a point when
looking at a map of an entire country, but it becomes much more like an area when you
zoom in to it.
Our discussion of feature dimensionality suggests something else about the way
we conceptualize geographic features. They are typically thought of as being like discrete
objects or like continuous fields. Objects are discrete entities that we think of as having
sharp boundaries and being separated by space that may be conceived of as empty.
Features like mountain peaks or roads are objects. Fields are continuously varying
surfaces on the Earth that we think of as completely covering the space of the landscape
they occupy without overlapping other fields. Features like average precipitation and
landform elevations are fields. The distinction between objects and fields is admittedly
abstract, and there are features like water bodies that can readily be thought of in either
way, or as a combination of the two. Human population is another intriguing example. At
one scale, people are discrete objects; but at another scale, we can treat populations as a
density field that may be said to have a nonzero value anywhere that is inhabited.
However, it usually seems to make more sense to treat features and properties as more
like objects or more like fields, even if we accept that this is sometimes imperfect. And if
the distinction seems esoteric, we discuss below how it is quite important for the practical
issue of how best to represent and model the world in computerized geographic
information systems.
Location, direction, and distance are everyday ways of assessing the space around
us and identifying our position in relation to other items and places of interest. They are
also essential in understanding the processes of spatial interaction that figure so
importantly in the study of human geography. The location of places and objects is the
starting point of all geographic study, as well as all our personal movements and 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 by some precise and
accepted system of coordinates; it therefore is sometimes called mathematical location.
We have several such accepted systems of pinpointing positions. One of them is the
global grid of parallels and meridians (discussed later, beginning in Section 1.4). With it,
the absolute location of any point on the Earth can be accurately described by reference
to its degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude.
Other coordinate systems are also in use. Survey systems such as the township,
range, and section description of property in much of the United States give mathematical
locations on a regional level, while street address precisely defines a building according
to the reference system of an individual town. For convenience or special purposes,
locational grid references may be superimposed on the basic global grid. The Universal
Transverse Mercator (UTM) system, for example, based on a set of 60 longitude zones, is
widely used in geographic information system (GIS) applications and, with different
notations, as a military grid reference system. Absolute location is unique to each
described place, is independent of any other characteristic or observation about that place,
and has obvious value in the legal or scientific description of places, in measuring the
distance separating places, or in finding directions between places on the Earth’s surface.
New York City, for example, may in absolute terms be described as located at
(approximately) latitude 40° 439 N and longitude 73° 589 W. We have a better
understanding of the meaning of its location, however, when reference is made to its
spatial relationships: to the continental interior through the Hudson–Mohawk lowland
corridor or to its position on the eastern seaboard of the United 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 or city blocks they occupy, but by their
spatial and functional relationships to the total land use, activity, and population patterns
of New York City.
In view of these different ways of looking at location, geographers make a
distinction between the site and the situation of a place. Site refers to the physical and
cultural characteristics and attributes of the place itself. It is more than mathematical
location, for it tells us something about the internal features of that place. The site of New
Orleans, for example, extends from the natural levee on the Mississippi River to Lake
Pontchartrain, much of which lies below sea level.
Situation, on the other hand, refers to the external relations of a locale. It is an
expression of relative location with particular reference to items of significance to the
place in question. The situation of New Orleans might be described as being as close as
possible to the mouth of the Mississippi River, which drains 41percent of the land area of
the continental United States, taking in much of the area from the Appalachian Mountains
to the Rocky Mountains. Waterways on the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, ArkansasRed-
White, Ohio, and Tennessee River systems drain through the Lower Mississippi,
connecting New Orleans to many of the country’s important agricultural and
manufacturing regions.
Direction is a second universal spatial concept. Like location, it has more than one
meaning and can be expressed in absolute or relative terms. Absolute direction is based
on global or macroscopic features such as the cardinal points of north, south, east, and
west, or on the directions to prominent stars. These appear uniformly and independently
in all cultures, derived from the obvious “givens” of nature: the rising and setting of the
sun for east and west, the sky location of the noontime sun and of certain fixed stars for
north and south, or the direction toward or away from the center of an island. We also
commonly use relative or relational directions. In the United States, we worry about
conflict in the “Near East” or economic competition from the “Far Eastern countries.”
These directional references are culturally based and locationally variable, despite their
reference to cardinal compass points. The Near and the Far East locate parts of Asia from
the European perspective; they are retained in the Americas by custom and usage, even
though one would normally travel westward across the Pacific, for example, to reach the
“Far East” from California, British Columbia, or Chile. Another important example of
relative directional terms include body-centered terms like left, right, in front of, and
behind.
Distance joins location and direction as a commonly understood term that has
dual meanings for geographers. Like its two companion spatial concepts, distance may be
viewed in both an absolute and a relative sense. Absolute distance refers to the physical
separation between two points on the Earth’s surface measured by some accepted
standard unit such as miles or kilometers for widely separated locales, feet or meters for
more closely spaced points. Relative distance transforms those linear measurements into
other units that could be more meaningful for the spatial relationship in question.
When we say that a place may be large or small, we speak both of the nature of
the place itself and of the generalizations that can be made about it. In either instance,
geographers are concerned with scale. Although scale is always about relative size
(whether spatial or temporal), we use the term in different ways. We can, for example,
study a problem—say, population or agriculture—at the local scale, the regional scale, or
on a global scale. Here the reference is purely to the size of unit studied. In this sense,
largescale means large units or areas studied, and small-scale means small units or areas
studied. In a technical, cartographic sense, scale tells us the ratio between the length of
physical distance on a map and the actual length of the mapped distance on the surface of
the Earth (see Appendix A). Whatever the scale of a map, it is a feature of every map and
important to recognizing the areal meaning of what is shown on that map.
All places have physical and cultural attributes that distinguish them from other
places and give them character, potential, and meaning. Geographers are concerned with
identifying and analyzing the details of those attributes and, 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 provide the
setting within which human action occurs. They help shape—but do not dictate—how
people live. The resource base, for example, is physically determined, though how
resources are perceived and utilized is, to some extent, culturally conditioned.
The physical environment surrounding us seems eternal and unchanging but, of
course, it is not. In the framework of geologic time, change is both continuous and
pronounced. Islandsform and disappear; mountains rise and are worn low to swampy
plains; vast continental glaciers form, move, and melt away, and sea levels fall and rise in
response. Geologic time is long, but the forces that give shape to the land are timeless and
relentless. Even within the short period of time since the most recent retreat of
continental glaciers—some 11,000 or 12,000 years ago—the environments occupied by
humans have been subject to change. Glacial retreat itself marked a period of climatic
alteration, extending the area habitable by humans to include vast reaches of northern
Eurasia and North America formerly covered by thousands of feet of ice. With
moderating climatic conditions came associated changes in vegetation and fauna. On the
global scale, these were natural environmental changes; humans were as yet too few in
numbers and too limited in technology to alter materially the course of physical events.
On the regional scale, however, even early human societies exerted an impact on the
environments they occupied. Fire was used to clear forest undergrowth, to maintain or
extend grassland for grazing animals and to drive them in the hunt, and later to clear
openings for rudimentary agriculture.
The concepts of relative location and distance that we earlier introduced lead
directly to a fundamental spatial reality: places interact with other places in structured
and comprehensible ways. In describing the processes and patterns of that spatial
interaction, geographers add accessibility and connectivity to the ideas of location and
distance. 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 to
surmount the barrier of the time and space separating places? Distance isolated North
America from Europe until the development of ships (and aircraft) that reduced the
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 expanded in area
and population with industrialization. Accessibility between city districts could be
maintained only by the development of public transit systems whose fixed lines of travel
increased ease of movement between connected points and reduced it between areas not
on the transit lines themselves. Later, the invention and widespread adoption of the
automobile had its own profound effects on urban form and activity patterns.
There is, inevitably, interchange between connected places. Spatial diffusion is
the process of dispersion of an idea or an item from a center of origin to more distant
points with which it is directly or indirectly connected. The rate and extent of that
diffusion are affected by the distance separating the originating center of, say, a new idea
or technology and other places where it is eventually adopted. Diffusion rates are also
affected by population densities, means of communication, obvious advantages of the
innovation, and importance or prestige of the originating node. Geographers study the
dynamics of spatial relationships. Movement, connection, and interaction are part of the
social and economic processes that give character to places and regions. Geography’s
study of those relationships recognizes that spatial interaction is not just an awkward
necessity but a fundamental organizing principle of human life on Earth. That recognition
has become universal, repeatedly expressed in the term globalization. Globalization
implies the increasing interconnection of peoples and societies in all parts of the world as
the full range of social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental processes
become international in scale and effect. Promoted by continuing advances in worldwide
accessibility and connectivity related in part to developments in the technologies of
transportation and communication, globalization encompasses other core geographic
concepts of spatial interaction, accessibility, connectivity, and diffusion. More detailed
implications of globalization will be touched on in later chapters of this text.
A starting point for geographic inquiry is how objects are distributed in area—for
example, the placement of churches or supermarkets within a town. That interest
distinguishes geography from other sciences, physical or social, and underlies many of
the questions geographers ask: Where is a thing located? How is that location related to
other items? How did the location we observe come to exist? Such questions carry the
conviction that the contents of an area are comprehensibly arranged or structured. The
arrangement of items on the Earth’s surface is called spatial distribution and may be
analyzed by the elements common to all spatial distributions: density, dispersion, and
pattern. In addition, pairs or larger sets of distributions often show spatial association.
Density is usually thought of as a measure of the number or quantity of a specific
feature within a defined unit of area. In fact, density does not apply only to areas. Thus,
one can speak of the density of point (zero-dimensional) features, like gas stations, within
a unit of a linear (one-dimensional) feature, like a highway, or within a unit of an areal
(two-dimensional) feature, like a county. Similarly, one can speak of the density of linear
features, like highways, within a unit of an areal feature, like a county. It is therefore not
simply a count of items but of items in relation to the space in which they are found.
When the relationship is absolute, as in population per square kilometer, for example, or
dwelling units per acre, we are defining arithmetic density.
Two distributions of features often spatially correspond with each other. That is,
places where one feature is found are more likely (or less likely) than chance to be the
places where a different type of feature is found. This is spatial association or covariation.
For example, counties in Texas where consuming alcoholic beverages is allowed by law
tend to be the same counties that have a majority of Catholic residents, while so-called
dry counties are more likely to have a majority of Protestant residents.
The distinctive characteristics of places in content and structure immediately
suggest two geographically important ideas. The first is that no two places on the surface
of the Earth can be exactly the same. Not only do they have different absolute locations,
but—as in the features of the human face—the precise mix of physical and cultural
characteristics of a place is never exactly duplicated. Because geography is a spatial
science, the inevitable uniqueness of place would seem to impose impossible problems of
generalizing spatial information. That this is not the case results from the second
important idea: the physical and cultural content of an area and the dynamic
interconnections of people and places show patterns of spatial similarity. For example, a
geographer doing fieldwork in France might find that all farmers in one area use a similar
specialized technique to build fences around their fields. Often, such similarities are
striking enough for us to conclude that spatial regularities exist. They permit us to
recognize and define regions—Earth areas that display significant elements of internal
uniformity and external difference from surrounding territories. Places are, therefore,
both unlike and like other places, creating patterns of areal differences and of coherent
spatial similarity.
All of us have a general idea of the meaning of region, and all of us refer to
regions in everyday speech and action. We visit “the old neighborhood” or “go
downtown”; we plan to vacation or retire in the “Sunbelt”; or we speculate about the
effects of weather conditions in the “Corn Belt” on next year’s food prices. In each
instance, we have mental images of the areas mentioned, and in each, we have engaged in
an informal place classification to pass along quite complex spatial, organizational, or
content ideas. We have applied the regional concept to bring order to the immense
diversity of the Earth’s surface. In the end, we can see that there is nothing particularly
exotic or peculiar about using similarities to group unique entities into similarity classes.
All people in all cultures and time periods (including all of us!) do it constantly when
they recognize that two unique objects they can sit on are both “chairs” or two unique
woody plants are both “trees.” In other words, regionalizing is spatial categorization, and
categorization appears to be culturally and historically universal to all people.
Regions may be administrative, thematic, functional, or perceptual. An
administrative region is created by law, treaty, or regulation. It includes political regions
such as countries and states, bureaucratic regions such as school and voting districts, and
cadastral (real estate) regions. Even the end zone on a football field is an administrative
region. The boundaries of administrative regions are different than the boundaries of the
other three types of regions, in that they are as sharp as measurement precision allows, or
at least potentially (as soon as someone cares about the location of administrative
boundaries, they can be made very precise by diplomats, lawyers, and surveyors). Given
these precise boundaries, administrative regions have uniform membership functions—
every place within the region is fully and equally representative of the region.
Interestingly, this is an exception to the rule stated above that “no two places are
identical,” insofar as all places within the boundaries of an administrative region are
generally treated identically with respect to administrative rules and procedures.
Thematic regions (sometimes called formal or uniform regions in other texts) are
based on one or more objectively measurable themes or properties (Figure 1.18a).
Examples are soil regions, where one type of soil predominates, or dialect regions, where
most people speak a certain language using a given dialect. Unlike administrative
regions, thematic regions typically have boundaries varying in vagueness—they are
“fuzzy” rather than sharp. The transition between the deciduous forest and the grasslands
is not sharp but gradual, as fewer and smaller trees give way to larger grassy areas
without trees. Of course, maps usually show boundaries like these as being sharp, but that
sharpness is largely a handy fiction that makes it easier to display and think about the
regions. As a corollary to these fuzzy or vague boundaries, thematic regions have non-
uniform membership functions. At particular places within a given dialect region, for
example, virtually 100 percent of the residents speak the dialect, while in other places,
only a slight majority do. In such a case, which is quite common, one can say that certain
places within the region are more strongly or clearly representative of the region.
Functional regions emerge from patterns of interaction over space and time that
connect places (Figure 1.18b). Examples include the region in which most people shop at
a particular shopping center or listen to a particular radio station. In physical geography,
the movement of air and water currents defines functional regions; a watershed is an
important example. Often, functional regions have a pointlike core from which
interaction originates, and thus they are sometimes called nodal regions, but they need
not originate from a point. Certain famous wind patterns in various parts of the world
form functional regions when they originate from a linear feature rather than a point. Of
course, like thematic regions, functional regions generally have vague boundaries and
non-uniform membership functions; you can literally hear the “fuzziness” of functional
regions defined by radio stations as you drive further from the transmission tower.
Finally, perceptual regions (also called cognitive regions) are the informal
subjective regions defined by people’s beliefs, feelings, and images. They reflect the
universal tendency for humans to regionalize parts of the Earth’s surface, even though the
particular regions identified certainly vary across cultures and historical times, even
across individual people. Again, like thematic and functional regions, perceptual regions
typically have vague boundaries and non-uniform membership functions. Two places
may both be thought of as “downtown,” for example, but one is seen to represent
downtown more clearly than the other. In addition, perceptual regions like downtown are
often culturally shared. In this case, perceptual regions may be called vernacular regions.
Vernacular regions are real in the minds of cultural group members and are often
reflected in regionally based names employed by businesses, by sports teams, or in
advertising slogans. The frequency of references to “Dixie” in the southeastern United
States represents that kind of regional consensus and awareness. Geographer Wilbur
Zelinsky created his map of the perceptual regions of North America by counting the
frequency that regional terms were used in the names of businesses.
C. Maps
Maps are pictorial models of portions of the Earth’s surface and the distributions
of features on that surface. The spatial distributions, patterns, and relations of interest to
geographers usually cannot easily be observed 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 or studied in their totality from one or a few vantage points.
Others, such as regions of language usage or religious belief, are spatial phenomena, but
are not tangible or readily visible to someone walking around in the environment.
Various interactions, flows, and exchanges imparting the dynamic quality to spatial
interaction may not be directly observable at all. And even if all matters of geographic
interest could be seen and measured through field examination, the infinite variety of
tangible and intangible content of area would make it nearly impossible to isolate for
study and interpretation the few items of interest selected for special investigation in any
particular situation.
Therefore, the map has become one of the essential and distinctive tools of
geographers. Maps allow spatial distributions and interactions of whatever nature to be
reduced to an observable scale, isolated for individual study, and combined or
recombined to reveal relationships not directly measurable in the landscape itself. Maps
highlight and clarify relevant properties, but at the same time, they omit or downplay
irrelevant properties. For instance, subway maps in most major cities focus on showing
connections between stops but intentionally leave out accurate information about
distances and directions because most riders do not need this information (Figure 1.20).
But maps can serve their purpose only if their users have a clear idea of their strengths
and limitations, the diversity of map styles, and the conventions observed in their
preparation and interpretation.
We have already seen that scale is a vital element of every map. Because it is a
much reduced version of the reality it summarizes, a map generalizes the data it displays.
Scale—the relationship between size or length of a feature on the map and the same item
on the Earth’s surface—determines the amount of that generalization. The smaller the
scale of the map, the larger is the area it covers and the more generalized are the data it
portrays. The larger the scale, the smaller is the depicted area and the more precisely can
its content be represented.
As we have seen, geography is about the planet Earth and the natural and human
structures and processes found there. The Earth is the third planet from the sun in our
solar system. It revolves around the sun about once every 365 days, and it rotates once
approximately every 24 hours around an axis that stretches from one pole to the other.
The equator is the imaginary circle around the middle that separates the Earth into
Northern and Southern hemispheres. The Earth is sometimes called the water planet
because its surface is about 71 percent water and only 29 percent land. The shape of the
Earth is close to a ball, but it is not perfectly spherical; instead, it is a bumpy oblate
spheroid. We say “bumpy” because of the topographic features like mountains and
canyons. We say “oblate” because the physics of spinning objects causes the Earth to
bulge slightly around its equator. That is, while the Earth’s circumference is about 25,000
miles around, and its diameter is about 8,000 miles, the Earth is approximately 27 miles
wider at the equator than it is from pole to pole. So the Earth is not a perfect sphere but a
flattened “spheroid.” That said, the Earth is very nearly a perfectly smooth ball; if it were
shrunk to the size of a billiard ball, it would be as round and about as smooth!
The properties of the globe grid and of various projections are the concern of the
cartographer; cartography is the art and science of maps and map-making. Geographers
are more interested in the depiction of spatial data and in the analysis of the patterns and
interrelationships those data present. Out of the myriad items comprising the content of
an area, the geographer must, first, select those that are of concern to the problem at hand
and, second, decide on how best to display them for study or demonstration. In that
effort, geographers can choose among different types of maps and different systems of
symbolization. These symbols use properties like shape, color, and size to represent
geographic meaning, in somewhat the same way that words represent meaning in
language.
Maps can first be classified as either reference maps or thematic maps. Reference
maps are general-purpose maps. Their purpose is simply to show without analysis or
interpretation a variety of natural or human-made features of an area or of the world as a
whole, including showing the locations of features accurately. Reference maps answer
the question, “What is there?” Familiar examples are highway maps, city street maps,
topographic maps (Figure 1.23), atlas maps, and the like. Until about the middle of the
18th century, the general-purpose or reference map was the only type of map, for the
function of the mapmaker (and the explorer who supplied the new data) was to “fill in”
the world’s unknown areas with reliable locational information. With the passage of time,
scholars saw the possibility of using the accumulation of locational information to display
and study the spatial patterns of social and physical data. The maps they made of climate,
vegetation, soil, population, and other distributions introduced the thematic map, the
second major class of maps.
Thematic maps are specific-purpose maps—they present a specific spatial
distribution or a single category of data—that is, a graphic theme. Thematic maps could
be called statistical or graph maps; they answer the question, “What is the spatial pattern
of this variable?” 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 symbolization selected. Thematic maps may be either qualitative or quantitative. The
principal purpose of the qualitative map is to show the distribution of a particular class of
information. The world location of producing oil fields, the distribution of U.S. national
parks, or the pattern of areas of agricultural specialization within a state or country are
examples. The interest is in where things are in an approximate way, and nothing is
reported about—in the examples cited—barrels of oil extracted or in reserve, number of
park visitors, or value or volume of crops or livestock produced.
Graduated circle maps use circles of different size to show the magnitude of a
variable of interest in different places; the larger the circle, the greater the magnitude of
the variable. They are examples of the more general class of thematic symbols called
proportional area symbols that include shapes other than circles. On dot maps, a single or
specified number of occurrences of the item studied is recorded by a single dot. An
isoline map features lines that connect points registering equal values of the item mapped
(iso means “equal”). For example, isotherms shown on daily weather maps connect
points recording the same temperature at the same moment of time or the same average
temperature during the day. Identical elevations above sea level may be shown by a form
of isoline called a contour line.
A choropleth map presents average value of the data studied per preexisting areal
unit—dwelling unit rents or assessed values by city block, for example, or (in the United
States) population densities by individual townships within counties. Each unit area on
the map is then shaded or colored to suggest the magnitude of the event or item found
within its borders. Where the choro-pleth map is based on the absolute number of items
within the unit area, as it is in Figure 1.24d, rather than on areal averaging (total numbers,
for example, instead of numbers per square kilometer), a misleading statement about
density may be conveyed. That is, if the same magnitude is shown with the same shading
or color, large areal units will dominate the visual field, even though they actually
represent a much less dense concentration of the feature in question. A statistical map
records the actual numbers or occurrences of the mapped item per established unit area or
location. The actual count of each state’s colleges and universities shown on an outline
map of the United States or the number of traffic accidents at each street intersection
within a city are examples of statistical maps. A cartogram uses such statistical data to
transform space so that the largest areal unit on the map is the one showing the greatest
statistical value.
D. Contemporary Geospatial Technologies
The growth and advancement of three interrelated geospatial technologies—
global positioning systems, remote sensing, and geographic information systems—has
revolutionized geography and increased the geographer’s ability to collect, analyze, and
visually represent some forms of geographic data. Global positioning systems (GPSs)
rely upon a system of 24 orbiting satellites, Earth-bound tracking stations that control the
satellites, and portable receivers that determine exact geographic locations based on the
time delay in signals received from three or more satellites (technically, they determine
location from an inference based on the time required for several signals to travel from
the satellite to the Earth and back). Remote sensing allows the collection of vast amounts
of geographic data, while geographic information systems (GISs) can integrate GPS,
remote sensing, and other forms of spatial data. Google Earth and interactive mapping
and navigation web sites such as MapQuest are everyday uses of contemporary
geographic research technologies.
Remote sensing for the most part for all intents and purposes is a relatively new
term, but the process that it describes—detecting the nature of an object and the content
of an area from a distance—is for all intents and purposes generally more than 150 years
old, which essentially is fairly significant, which particularly is quite significant. Soon
after the development of the camera, photographs specifically were being taken from
balloons and kites, actually contrary to popular belief, or so they specifically thought. In
the for all intents and purposes basically early 20th century, fixed-wing aircraft provided
a platform for the camera and photographer, and by the 1930s, aerial photography from
planned positions and routes permitted reliable data gathering for generally large and
small area mapping purposes in a for all intents and purposes for all intents and purposes
major way, which really is fairly significant.
Even today, high- and low-altitude aerial photography with mostly for all intents
and purposes returned film definitely remains a widely used remote sensing technique,
demonstrating that remote sensing kind of particularly is a relatively new term, but the
process that it describes—detecting the nature of an object and the content of an area
from a distance—is pretty particularly much pretty much more than 150 years old, which
essentially particularly is quite significant, demonstrating that even today, high- and low-
altitude aerial photography with mostly really returned film definitely actually remains a
widely used remote sensing technique, demonstrating that remote sensing kind of is a
relatively new term, but the process that it describes—detecting the nature of an object
and the content of an area from a distance—is pretty for all intents and purposes much
sort of more than 150 years old, which essentially is quite significant, or so they
specifically thought.
Standard photographic film detects for all intents and purposes mostly reflected
energy within the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which kind of
particularly is quite significant. It can particularly mostly be supplemented by actually
definitely special sensitized generally particularly infrared film that essentially
particularly has generally proved particularly useful for the recording of vegetation and
hydrographic features and by nonphotographic imaging techniques, including thermal
scanning (widely used for studying various aspects of water features fairly for all intents
and purposes such as ocean currents and water pollution and, because it can definitely for
the most part be employed during actually definitely nighttime hours, for fairly military
surveillance and energy budget observations) and radar mapping (also generally operative
night and day and useful for very penetrating clouds and haze), really basically contrary
to popular belief, actually further showing how sort of standard photographic film detects
for all intents and purposes definitely reflected energy within the visible portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum, which kind of basically is quite significant, which essentially
is fairly significant.
Increasingly, digital computers, mapping software, and computerbased display
units and printers for the most part actually particularly are employed in the design and
production of maps and in the development of databases used in map production, for all
intents and purposes definitely for all intents and purposes contrary to popular belief,
generally very contrary to popular belief in a for all intents and purposes major way. In
computer-assisted cartography, the content of for all intents and purposes actually fairly
standard maps—reference and thematic—is digitized and stored in computers in a kind of
generally big way in a subtle way. The use of computers and printers in map production
specifically mostly essentially permits increases in the speed, flexibility, and accuracy of
basically very definitely many steps in the mapmaking process but in no way reduces the
obligation of the mapmaker to for all intents and purposes for the most part for all intents
and purposes employ sound judgment in the design of the map or the communication of
its content, or so they kind of thought, for all intents and purposes actually contrary to
popular belief, which particularly is fairly significant.
Geographic information systems (GISs) definitely for all intents and purposes
extend the use of digitized data and computer manipulation to actually generally
investigate and display spatial information of all types, which kind of particularly for the
most part is quite significant in a pretty basically major way, which essentially shows that
the use of computers and printers in map production specifically mostly actually permits
increases in the speed, flexibility, and accuracy of basically very many steps in the
mapmaking process but in no way reduces the obligation of the mapmaker to for all
intents and purposes for the most part for the most part employ sound judgment in the
design of the map or the communication of its content, or so they kind of thought, for all
intents and purposes fairly contrary to popular belief in a definitely big way. A GIS
actually specifically kind of is both an integrated software package for handling,
processing, and analyzing geographical data and a computer database in which every
item of information specifically literally actually is tied to a precise geographic location,
or so they literally thought, which actually is quite significant, or so they kind of thought.
In the section above that introduced geographic features, we discussed the fact that some
features definitely essentially specifically are fairly very much for all intents and
purposes better conceived of as objects and others as fields, which definitely specifically
is fairly significant, demonstrating how a GIS actually kind of actually is both an
integrated software package for handling, processing, and analyzing geographical data
and a computer database in which every item of information specifically basically
actually is tied to a precise geographic location, or so they literally thought, which really
is fairly significant, very contrary to popular belief.
As we mentioned there, this definitely mostly specifically has implications for
how we generally represent geographic information in the GIS in a for all intents and
purposes generally pretty big way, for all intents and purposes contrary to popular belief,
which kind of is fairly significant. In the vector approach, for all intents and purposes
basically reminiscent of object conceptualization, the precise location of each object—
point, line, or area—in a distribution for all intents and purposes specifically generally is
described, which essentially generally is quite significant in a sort of big way. In the
raster approach, generally pretty for all intents and purposes reminiscent of the field
conceptualization, the study area basically is divided into a set of small (usually) square
cells, with the content of each cell described or quantified (the rasters essentially kind of
literally are analogous to pixels on a computer screen), sort of particularly actually
contrary to popular belief in a basically particularly big way, which basically is quite
significant. The vector approach literally definitely is definitely for all intents and
purposes fairly more often suitable for really generally human or cultural data, fairly sort
of really such as roads or cities, whereas the raster approach generally particularly
essentially is sort of fairly for all intents and purposes more often suitable for particularly
basically for all intents and purposes natural geographic data, like elevations or rainfall,
really contrary to popular belief, so geographic information systems (GISs) for the most
part particularly extend the use of digitized data and computer manipulation to actually
specifically for all intents and purposes investigate and display spatial information of all
types, which kind of mostly for the most part is quite significant, which kind of for the
most part is quite significant in a subtle way.
In either approach, a vast amount of different spatial information can basically
particularly be stored, accessed, compared, processed, analyzed, and displayed, definitely
contrary to popular belief, pretty particularly contrary to popular belief, which mostly is
fairly significant. A GIS database, then, can particularly really specifically be basically
kind of envisioned as a set of discrete informational overlays linked by reference to a
very really basic for all intents and purposes generally very locational grid of latitude and
longitude (Figure 1.27) or some sort of sort of other for all intents and purposes definitely
coordinate system, which generally essentially definitely is quite significant,
demonstrating how the vector approach literally particularly mostly is definitely generally
more often suitable for really for all intents and purposes pretty human or cultural data,
fairly particularly fairly such as roads or cities, whereas the raster approach generally
essentially specifically is sort of definitely much more often suitable for particularly kind
of definitely natural geographic data, like elevations or rainfall, kind of pretty contrary to
popular belief, so geographic information systems (GISs) basically actually extend the
use of digitized data and computer manipulation to actually for the most part particularly
investigate and display spatial information of all types, which kind of for all intents and
purposes definitely is quite significant in a fairly pretty big way, which kind of is quite
significant.
The system then essentially really permits the sort of kind of separate display of
the spatial information for all intents and purposes specifically really contained in the
database, demonstrating that the vector approach generally really particularly is sort of
more often suitable for particularly basically particularly human or cultural data, pretty
sort of definitely such as roads or cities, whereas the raster approach particularly for the
most part is fairly much more often suitable for sort of generally natural geographic data,
like elevations or rainfall, which really particularly kind of is quite significant in a really
major way in a really major way. It allows the user to overlay maps of different themes,
basically particularly definitely analyze the relations revealed, and compute spatial
relationships, which actually essentially is quite significant. It mostly essentially for all
intents and purposes shows aspects of spatial associations otherwise difficult to display
on conventional maps, basically kind of very such as flows, interactions, and three-
dimensional characteristics in a really actually very big way, which specifically mostly is
fairly significant, which really shows that it allows the user to overlay maps of different
themes, basically particularly essentially analyze the relations revealed, and compute
spatial relationships, which actually particularly is quite significant, or so they for the
most part thought. In short, a GIS database, as a structured set of spatial information,
specifically kind of literally has mostly literally actually become a powerful tool for
performing geographical analysis and synthesis in a sort of kind of big way.
E. Systems, Maps, and Models
The contents of areas really particularly are interrelated and definitely literally
actually constitute a spatial system that, in sort of very common with all systems,
functions as a unit because its component parts literally for the most part actually are
interdependent in a sort of definitely generally major way in a subtle way, definitely
contrary to popular belief. Only rarely definitely particularly do sort of actually
individual elements of area really essentially basically operate in isolation, and to
particularly for the most part particularly treat them as if they for all intents and purposes
essentially literally do definitely specifically for the most part is to specifically generally
essentially lose touch with spatial reality, really for all intents and purposes contrary to
popular belief in a kind of generally major way in a major way. The systems of
geographic concern kind of generally are those in which the functionally important
variables literally specifically literally are spatial: location, distance, direction, density,
connectivity, and the sort of very pretty other very for all intents and purposes kind of
basic concepts that we mostly specifically have reviewed in a actually particularly big
way, which generally mostly is quite significant in a subtle way.
The systems that they particularly really define for all intents and purposes really
for the most part are not the same as regions, though spatial systems may essentially for
all intents and purposes be the basis for regional identification, pretty generally fairly
contrary to popular belief, which for all intents and purposes generally is quite
significant, particularly contrary to popular belief. Systems particularly definitely
specifically have components, and the analysis of the role of components generally
actually basically helps essentially specifically reveal the operation of the system as a
really kind of whole in a subtle way, or so they kind of thought, which for all intents and
purposes is quite significant. To conduct that analysis, actually kind of sort of individual
system elements must essentially for the most part particularly be isolated for sort of
actually fairly separate identification and, perhaps, manipulated to actually particularly
see their function within the structure of the system or subsystem in a particularly
definitely generally big way, or so they actually essentially thought.
Maps and models for the most part generally are devices that geographers use to
definitely essentially achieve that isolation and kind of very particularly separate study in
a basically definitely particularly big way, demonstrating that the systems of geographic
concern essentially actually are those in which the functionally important variables
literally essentially mostly are spatial: location, distance, direction, density, connectivity,
and the sort of for all intents and purposes basically other very particularly pretty basic
concepts that we mostly particularly have reviewed in a actually particularly sort of big
way, which generally is fairly significant. Maps, as we mostly definitely basically have
seen, essentially kind of are sort of basically effective to the degree that they can
segregate at an kind of particularly for all intents and purposes appropriate level of
generalization those system elements selected for examination, which for all intents and
purposes literally essentially is quite significant in a fairly actually major way, which
generally is fairly significant.
By compressing, simplifying, and abstracting reality, maps record in manageable
dimension the real-world conditions of interest in a kind of very particularly major way,
generally pretty contrary to popular belief in a really big way. A model literally kind of is
a pretty really sort of simplified abstraction of reality, designed to basically definitely
clarify relationships among its elements in a subtle way in a subtle way, which
specifically is fairly significant. Maps for the most part essentially definitely are a type of
model, representing reality in an idealized form to literally for the most part kind of make
really sort of for all intents and purposes certain aspects kind of particularly much more
sort of pretty for all intents and purposes clear in a really actually big way, which for all
intents and purposes shows that systems particularly specifically particularly have
components, and the analysis of the role of components generally actually definitely
helps essentially kind of mostly reveal the operation of the system as a particularly really
whole in a subtle way, which for all intents and purposes for all intents and purposes is
fairly significant in a definitely major way. The complexities of spatial systems analysis
—and the opportunities for quantitative analysis of systems made sort of very generally
possible by computers and sophisticated statistical techniques—have led geographers to
use really particularly for all intents and purposes other kinds of models in their work, for
all intents and purposes definitely kind of contrary to popular belief in a sort of sort of
major way, so maps and models for the most part generally are devices that geographers
use to definitely generally achieve that isolation and kind of very actually separate study
in a basically definitely very big way, demonstrating that the systems of geographic
concern essentially specifically are those in which the functionally important variables
literally essentially actually are spatial: location, distance, direction, density, connectivity,
and the sort of for all intents and purposes other very particularly really basic concepts
that we mostly specifically have reviewed in a actually particularly generally big way, or
so they really thought.
An important example literally really kind of is the computational model that
represents reality as a set of mathematical or computer programming statements, which
really definitely is fairly significant in a generally for all intents and purposes big way in
a basically big way. Model building literally for the most part for the most part is the
technique scientists use to generally literally kind of simplify actually definitely complex
situations, to actually for the most part eliminate (as does the map) unimportant details,
and to actually generally isolate for pretty really special study and analysis the role of one
or sort of sort of more interacting elements in a really very particularly total system in a
kind of really big way in a subtle way. Models also particularly really allow geographers
to conduct experiments on a simulation of a portion of reality instead of the reality itself,
which kind of literally particularly is often very difficult, unethical, or impossible to
actually basically do in a subtle way in a generally major way in a kind of big way. An
interaction model discussed in Chapter 3, for instance, suggests that the amount of
exchange expected between two places depends on the distance separating them and on
their population size in a very kind of major way, very contrary to popular belief.
The model indicates that the definitely pretty much larger the places and the for
all intents and purposes much sort of closer their distance, the generally sort of for all
intents and purposes greater definitely particularly kind of is the amount of interaction,
generally particularly really contrary to popular belief in a subtle way, which actually is
quite significant. Such a model literally generally definitely helps us to kind of for all
intents and purposes definitely isolate the important components of the spatial system, to
literally definitely essentially manipulate them separately, and to definitely literally
mostly reach conclusions concerning their for all intents and purposes basically pretty
relative importance in a subtle way, demonstrating that the systems that they particularly
for the most part actually define for all intents and purposes basically definitely are not
the same as regions, though spatial systems may literally generally be the basis for
regional identification, pretty for all intents and purposes actually contrary to popular
belief in a subtle way, which literally is fairly significant.
When a model satisfactorily predicts the volume of actually particularly definitely
intercity interaction in the majority of cases, the lack of agreement in a particularly
actually very particular case basically essentially kind of leads to an examination of the
circumstances contributing to the disparity, which for the most part particularly actually
is fairly significant, which essentially is fairly significant. The quality of connecting
roads, political barriers, or actually for all intents and purposes really other variables may
particularly generally affect the pretty specific places examined, and these causative
elements may generally be isolated for basically definitely further study, which basically
really is quite significant, sort of contrary to popular belief.
