World Geography

Political, Urban and Economic Geography

Governmental units of the world can be described in either political or geographic terms. Generally, we use the political term state to describe an independent unit that occupies a specific territory and has full control of its internal and external affairs.

Nation refers to a group of people with a common culture living in a territory and having a strong sense of unity.

All countries must choose a type of government. In a Democracy, citizens hold political power either directly or through elected representatives.

In a Monarchy, a ruling family holds political power and may or may not share the power with citizen bodies.

In a Dictatorship, an individual or group holds complete political power.

Communism is a system in which nearly all political power and means of production are held by the government.

Three geographic characteristics are important in describing a country: size, shape, and relative location.

Boundaries or borders set the limits of the territory controlled by a state. A natural boundary is based on physical features of the land, such as rivers, lakes, or mountain chains.

An artificial boundary is a straight line generally following latitude or longitude lines.

The three most common local units of government are cities, towns, and villages.

Today, almost half of the population of the world lives in cities. The built-up area around the central city may include suburbs, which are political units touching the borders of the central city or touching other suburbs that touch the city.

Smaller cities or towns with open land between them and the central city are called exurbs.

The city, its suburbs, and exurbs, link together economically to form a functional area called a metropolitan area.

The dramatic rise in the number of cities and the changes in lifestyle that result are called urbanization.

Around the world, cities have certain geographic characteristics in common. Many cities are found in places that allow for good transportation, such as places on a river, lake or coast.

Urban geographers also study land use in cities. Basic land use patterns found in all cities are: residential, areas used for single-family housing and apartment buildings; industrial, areas reserved for manufacturing of goods; and commercial, areas used for private business and the buying and selling of retail products.

The core of a city is almost always based on commercial activity. This area of the city is called the central business district. (CBD)

The city is the center of a variety of functions. Five of these functions are: shopping, entertainment, government services, educational, and cultural activities.

An economy consists of the of the production and exchange of goods and services among a group of people.

In a traditional economy, people trade goods and services without exchanging money.

In a command economy, the production of goods and services is determined by a central government, which usually owns the means of production.

In a market economy, the production of goods and services is determined by the demand from consumers.

No matter how small or large a business is, it operates at one of four levels of economic activity. Primary activies involve gathering raw materials such as timber for immediate use or to use in the making of a final product; secondary activities involve adding value to materials by changing their form; tertiary activities furnish personal or professional services; quaternary activities provide information, management, and research services by highly trained persons.

When geographers study the economy of a country, they look closely at the location, quality, and quantity of its natural resources. They divide natural resources into three basic types. Renewable resources can be replaced through natural process, nonrenewable resources cannot be replaced once they have been removed from the ground and inexhaustible energy resources are used for producing power that are unlimited in quantity.

A nation's infrastructure consists of the basic support systems needed to keep and economy going.

Geographers use a variety of standards to make comparisons among economies. One is per capita income, the average amount of money earned by each person in a political unit.

A commonly used statistic to measure the economy of a country is the gross national product (GNP), the total of all goods and services produced by a country over a year or some other specified period of time.

The value of goods and services produced within a country in a period of time is referred as the gross domestic product. (GDP)