Topics:
- Defining Geography. What is Geography/Geographic?
- Questions Geographers ask
- Themes and Concerns in Geography
- Urban geography
- Some Greatest hits
Readings:
-
"Cities" ,
Chapter 9 in Getis and Getis, The United States and Canada (1995).
-
If you want more, look for: Paul Knox Urbanization (1994).
A Definition of Geography?
Greek -- Earth writing. Writing about, i.e. describing, the earth.
"Geography is an integrative discipline that brings together
the physical and human dimensions of the world in the study of
people, places, and environments. Its subject matter is the
Earth's surface and the processes that shape it,
the relationships between people and environments,
and the connections between people and places."
-Geography for Life: National Geography Standards 1994, p 18.
Geographic Questions
- Where? (and Where else?)
- Why there? (and not elsewhere?)
- What Associations?
- What Consequences?
- What's this place like?
Themes and considerations
- People & Environment (nee Man-Land Relations)
- Place / Region (Areal Differentiation)
- Character of places
- Comparison of places
- Relationships among places (-> connections & flows)
- Environment / Ecology
- Space (location, distance, effects)
- Location (absolute v relative , "site" and "situation"
- Oraganization - systems of parts, interdependence, hierarchy
nodal v. uniform regions.
- Behavioral --- activites, choices,
Urban Geography
... studying the geography of cities.
Cities are
... marked by density of people and built environment.
... simultaneously the products and the shapers of economic, social apolitical, cultural, and technological change."
Urbanization as a process of Interaction between People
and the Environment that results in cities.
- Urban Systems
- Land Use Patterns
- Information Fields / Flows
- Built Environments
- Social Interactions / Ways of Life
Why cities locate where they do.
- Physical factors
- shelter (from prevailing weather)
- access to drinking water
- freedom from floods
- defensive positions
- Resources at the site
- minerals (mining and logging towns)
- energy (water power)
- agricultural hinterlands
- Transportation junctions
- river junctions
- bridging points / fords
- break-of-bulk points
- often junction of transportation systems
- edge between terrains / regions
- land / water junctions (harbors)
- Accident / Chance
Some Greatest Hits:
