Human Geography

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Human Geography
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Geographical Perspective

• Understanding change over time is critically
  important
• Immanuel Kant argued we need disciplines focused
  on the perspectives of time

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Immanuel Kant and Geography

• I treat Geography not with the completeness
  and philosophical exactitude in each part, which
  is a matter for physics and natural history, but
  with the rational curiosity of a traveler who
  collates his collection of observations, and
  reflects on its design.

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Geographical Perspective

• Human geography melds many disciplines
• Offers insights into subject matter covered by
  other disciplines
• Seeks to understand changing spatial arrangements
  over time
• Sometimes described as the why of where
• During the 1980s, campaigns began to reintroduce
  geography into school systems
• National Geographic Society
• Led the campaign to encourage education in
  geography
• National Geographic Society introduced the Five
  Themes of geography

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Five Themes

• Location
• Human-environment interactions
• Regionled to regional science
• Place
• Movementmobility of people
• Left out landscape!
• The material character of a place
• This class revolves around each theme

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Five Themes

• Integration in place
• How and why people or things found in the same
  place influence each other
• Interdependencies between places
• Nature and significance of patterns and networks
  that tie places together
• Interdependencies among scales
• Tied to geographys spatial perspective

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Geographys Importance

• Allows unique insights by focusing on spatial
  organization and material character of Earths
  surface
• Examples where Geography helps
• Assess impacts of changing political boundaries
  on citizenship
• Assess where medical facilities should be located
  for given population (and in the future!)
• Develop land-use maps
• Can answer questions about what future actions
  may have on environment and humans

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Using Spatial Perspective

• Maps and geography are seen as synonymous
• Why?
• What is a map?
• Map making is as old as geography itself

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The First Map??
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Using Spatial Perspective

• Maps have been used many ways
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

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Using Spatial Perspective

• Geographers study BOTH the physical and human
  properties of places
• Earth's surface, elevation and relief,
  atmospheric conditions, etc.
• Settlement layouts, population patterns,
  transport networks, land use, etc.
• Geographers have a special interest in the
  quality of places
• Location plays a key role (remember absolute
  relative?)

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Maps and Regions

• Help define and delimit a region
• How do we delimit regions?
• Example...

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Maps and Regions

• All regions have area, location, and boundaries
• Formal regions are homogeneous in either physical
  or cultural characteristics
• Physical criteria, e.g., desert basins
• Cultural criteria, e.g., a region within which a
  certain language, say Basque, is spoken by about
  90 percent of the people
• Functional regions
• The product of interactions, and movement of
  various kinds
• Cities with surrounding areas of interaction
• A spatial system, its boundaries defined by the
  limits of that system

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Formal Region
Functional Regions
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Maps and Regions

• Perceptual regionsprimarily in the minds of
  people

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Maps and The Human Mind

• Our egocentric viewpoints
• Shaped by our cultural environment?
• Humans have a built-in cultural bias
• Examples Mexico and Egypt
• Mental maps
• The map a person carries in their mind
• Derived from visual observation of the real world
• Developed over years of seeing maps
• People use them everyday
• Vague mental maps can lead to major policy
  mistakes
• Berlin conference in 1884

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Maps and The Human Mind

• Environmental perception
• Generated from our mental map
• Perceptions of a place never visited may be quite
  different from reality

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Maps and The Human Mind

• Need more than absolute location
• Maps offer us a lot of information, but how can
  we understand the cultural (or physical?) without
  being there?
• The map is our window on the world
• If you could move to any place of your choice,...
  where would you like to live?

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Human Geography Terrorism
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Actual Tube Routes
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Nearby Attractions
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Non-executed Attacks
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Greater London
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Formal Region Cut-off
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Discussion Questions

• The editor of a city newspaper has appointed you
  to her staff, and your first job as a geographer
  is to draw a map of the region within which the
  paper sells (its market).
• How will you go about doing this?
• When you finish your map, you notice the region
  is sort of asymmetrical the paper sells 100
  miles north of the city, but only 60 miles to the
  south.
• What could explain this variable reach of the
  newspaper?

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Discussion Questions

• Imagine yourself living and working in a small,
  rural town. Your family owns and operates a
  small department store located at the busiest
  intersection in town, where the through-road
  crosses the main shopping street. Now the State
  Highway Department is building a four-lane
  highway that will bypass your town by six miles.
• How will this change your stores relative
  location?
• How will it affect your market?
• What might you and other shop owners do to
  counter the impact of the new highway?