GEOG 1200 Lecture Notes PDF

Week 1 - Thinking Like a Human Geographer Lecture 2 - September 11, 2024 What is human geography? - Human geographers ask questions about spatial variation: where are things, and how and why are things different from place to place - Geographers refer to a spatial expression. Geographers...

Week 1 - Thinking Like a Human Geographer Lecture 2 - September 11, 2024 What is human geography? - Human geographers ask questions about spatial variation: where are things, and how and why are things different from place to place - Geographers refer to a spatial expression. Geographers are interested in the variation of spatial expressions from place to place - Just like in the physical environment, there is also variations in the places that humans create - Economic, social, cultural and political relationships, processes and activities happen in particular places and across interconnected spaces Why does place matter? - Depending on where you live, this will affect the life you have - Different ways of life associated with different class (different services, lifestyles - Manifested in space very differently but very closely - Geographical uneven development - Basis of identity - Forms of shelter vary from place to place - Water sources vary from place to place - Tourist destination in canada, clean, fresh, pristine water - Acquiring goods varies from place to place - Shopping malls, market, landfill - Areas of the world where people acquire goods from landfills - Place is a unique collection of human and physical features on the earths surface, including environmental conditions, physical and human landscapes, cultural practices, social life and economic activities - Place specificness is what makes geography so interesting - All different cities share the form of a homing environment - Different cities contributes to unique characteristics and certain feel that we attach meanings to Lecture 3 - September 13, 2024 Sense of Place - The unique qualities and distinctive features of a place that give place a certain feel and contributes the meanings we attach to it. - Placelessness - Places lose their uniqueness to the point where one place looks like the next - Ubiquitous landscapes - Places that seem detached from the local environment and say nothing about the specificity particular locality - Maps - Maps are representation of the earth that use lines and symbols to convey information about spatial relationships  - They affect how we understand the world and how we explain the world to others - Different layers of data and putting them together to generate spaces - Topographic maps: very common, indicate landscapes on the planet (buildings, highways, etc) - Contour line: closer the contour lines, steeper the elevation, vise versa - Can get a sense of physical environment - Thematic: - choropleth maps: average values within an area - isopleths: indicates areas with similar precipitation - Proportional maps: use symbols in proportion to the frequency of the occurrence - Map projections: systematic renderings of the globe, representing 3d shapes on 2d spaces - A science of converting the spherical surface of the earth onto a flat plane - Cartography: art and science of graphically representing a geographic area of the globe on a flat surface - Impossible to represent a sphere on a flat piece of paper, especially without some distortion (distance, direction, shape, area) - A map is a 2d representation of a 3d reality, cannot flatten earth surface without distorting geometrical properties (area, shape, distance, direction) - Equidistant map preserving distance - Conformal maps preserve compass direction - Azimuthal preserve compass direction - Equal-area / equivalent preserve proportions - Overlapping projections show the discrepancies, doesn't mean either are inaccurate - Cartogram: space being transformed, used deliberately to distort inorder to emphasize variations - With technology we can sat the relative distance changes - Location - Absolute location: the measure(lat/long) or representation of a single position - Site: the specific characteristics/attributes of a place(both natural and human-made) - Situation: the location of a place in relation to its surroundings/ other places. - Distance - Absolute distance: the physical separation between two points in the earth's surface measured by an accepted standard unit, such as kms - Relative distance: the transformation of linear measurements into alternative units that are more meaningful for understanding spatial relationships (cost, travel time) - Friction of distance: the inhibiting or deterring effects of distance on human activity; it is a reflection of the time and cost in overcoming distance: an increase in time and cost with increasing distance - The effects of changing transportation technologies, “shrinking” the world Week 2 - The Changing Global Context Lecture 4 - September 16, 2024 - The more we know how the world went historically down, the greater insight we can gain with respect to how the world is interdependent - A long term big picture look at changing geographies over time emphasize the evolving interdependance among places and regions around the world - Important trends that human geography can help us to understand - Globalization - Urbanization - Human-induces environmental change - Social inequality - Before technology was a thing, there was people who lived off the land - Depending on the region - Not being sedentary - always moving from one place to the next - nomadic movement - Agriculture replaces hunting and gathering - Key player in agriculture was domestication in plants and animals - Domestication means that the reproductive success of the plant depends on human intervention - Domestication of animals means that animals became more mandible to human control - Effect to domestication gives rise to a sedentary human civilization - We have people remaining in one place permanently - Big change from hunting and gathering → agriculture - Physical and population growth - Domestication changed the way humans had lived - Staying in one spot means you're gonna build permanent dwellings - Specialization of crops - what crops worked in what area vice versa - People became dependent - routine and schedule becomes imbedded - Vulnerable to the weather - dependant on good weather for a good crop - Need for intense physical labour - Agricultural revolution led to subsistence farming - A lot of farmers engage in this farming - Means growing only enough food to survive - support yourself and family - Meant for local consumption as opposed to trade - When people stay in one place, they begin to create surplus of food - Not all humans of sedentary community have to grow food - can be shared - Not everyone had to engage, led to a mini system - Specialization of non-agriculture activities - became a reciprocal societies - Developments that marked the first revolution took place in the fertile crescent - Through this region flows two major rivers - source of life - Water sources were always help to have water nearby to grow plants, crops - euphrates and tigris river  - Nile valley, fertile crescent - Fertile crescent is called that because crops grew there best - Soil was fertile, nutrients, - First category: old world - Includes fertile crescent in middle east - South asia - indus and ganges river - another agricultural hearth - China along the yellow river - Water source is part of the story - New world agricultural hearths: - Mesoamerica - South america along the western slopes of the andes - Early empires theres new crafts and hobbies - Growing specialization - Always have the mini system - trading with one another - Better known empires: egypt, greece, rome, china, indus valley, mesopotamia, inca, aztec, - Agriculture gave influence to where civilization happened - With growth of early empires we start to see urbanization - Cities becoming essential for administration - power, control, tracking, taxing - Military, transportation, entertainment - Infrastructure is very elaborate - Paved streets, piped water, sewage system - Culture and tech - There was a trade route - Exchange of silk, spices, porcelain, etc - World became interconnected through trade - With new techniques, ship building and navigation - More places throughout the world become interconnected - Many places became accessible by water Lecture 5 - September 18, 2024 - Age of european discovery - More places are accessible by water, ships, waterways - Colonialism and the capitalist economy - Indigenous were inferior - European justification was to civilize because they were more powerful, intellectual, and wealthier - Exercised power over these people - Involves power and control, but aLso extracting resources on the new territory - trees, fish, animal furs, gold, mineral - The resources then were shipped back to europe - Economic exploitation of the colonizing states resulted in colonialism playing a significant role in developing and spreading the capitalist economy - Close connection between colonialism, capatilizing states, and economics  - Import of the raw materials were processed, the second chain - Took wood and turned it into furniture and made it valuable - Then turned it back and sold it back to the colonies - The industrial revolution - The industrial revolution was a period in history defined as a process of change from an agrarian to industrial economy - Described as a process of change where society moves from an agrarian society (based on agriculture) to industrial, linking back to processing - Began with a series of inventions - machines! Brought new uses to already known sources - Improve efficiency of coal - With the manufacturing practices, abled them to produce new types and new production of goods - Steam engine was a major development - led to development of locomotive and establishment of railroad systems - More places could be connected - All roads lead back to europe - capital flows - Lasting impacts of colonization - Spread of global economy resulted in not spreading equally everywhere - Not everyone everywhere benefited equally from these global dependencies that started to emerge - There was a concentration of power in europe and north america - Colonialism benefited the colonizers - Spacial legacy is one of global inequality, related to underdevelopment and dependency in the global south on the global north - Leads to the core periphery - Lasting impacts of colonization - Complete control over the lands that they conquered - Not everyone around the globe was affected in the same way - Since the 17th century, there's an argument that you can divide the world system that can be characterized - Highly structured relationship - interdependencies and how places came to be connected - Core regions (colonizers) - Dominsate trade - High productivity - Perioheral regions (colonized) - Dependant & disadvantageous trade - Undeveloped economy - Semi-periphera; regions - Exploitative & exploited - Core regions start to dominate trade and control economy - Weaker regions are less politically and less economically successful - Political economy  - Political economy is a stream of thought that sees uneven development is a product of capitalism - Heavy stream of economic geography - We need to understand how one state is is connected to the world's economy - Relied on economic perspective to try to make sense - World systems theory (wallerstein) - Tried to explain the phenomenon of unevenness based on observations - Core - core processes generate wealth, high per capita incomes, regions of trade, higher levels of tech, education, productivity - Periphery - incorporating lower levels of education, loerr skilled jobs, lower salary, less technology. - Dependant on the core regions - Semi-periphery - both core and periphery are playing out, places are being exploited, exploited & exploiters - Some states benefit in a greater way because they have a better position in the economy - The way that things are set up, it benefits the core at the expense of the periphery - The core are the regions of wealth - Inequality can be mapped and has spatial expression - *Not all places are equally wealthy in the capitalist world = uneven geographical development* ON MIDTERM - Uneven economic development - Core regions have a higher GDP (gross domestic product) than peripheral regions - Countries with higher GDP are close together - concentration - Colonization of Africa - “Scramble for africa”(1880-1914) - In 1880, less than 10% of the continet had been claimed - By 1914, over 90% of the continent was claimed - De-colonization of africa - Decolonization: a process by which colonies become independant of the colonizing country - Is when colonies become politically independant states - Docolonization happened from 1945-1960 - Couintry borders imposed by europeans are not ideal: ethnic groups are forced together and others are seperated - Neo-colonialism - Decolonization set up a system of politically independant states but maintaines an interdeoendant global economy - Development is tied to colonial and neo-colonial relationships - Neo-colonialism: “economic and political strategies nu which powerful states in core economies indirectly maintain or extemd their influence over other areas or people”  - Neo-colonialism might be in the form of institutional development (formation of governments), debt, trade, military involvement and even culture - Foreign debt: - In the 1980s and 1990s, structural adjustment loans from the world bank and international monetary fund were lent to newly independant states for development projects - Strings attaches: - Economic reform; privatization, opening border to foerign trade, reducing tariffs, ecouraging foreign investment - The cost of repaying the debt( with interst) exceeds country revenues - Uneven development - Disparities in global economic development have largely resulted from historically derived power-relations that have become entrenched in the global economic system - Contemparary interconnection - Key points on globalization - A high degree of connectivity between different parts of the world - People, capital, goods, servoces and information circulate globally - Increased mobility Week 3 - Population and Migration Lecture 7 - September 23, 2024 - Population - The sum total of all of the individuals who live in the same geographical area - Can apply to any scale - any unit of analysis eg. city, province, country, continent - Demography - The study if population - Several characteristics that we can study - Size, age, gender, distribution, density, growth,related socio-economic characteristics - Current world population: 8.1B - Population change - Another way we can approach studying the population - The graph is showing us that since the 1950s the world's population has more than doubled - fastest the population has grown throughout the entirety of human existence - Population is expected to reach 9B by 2045 - Measuring population - Population distribution is one way to measure population and is commonly visually represented through a dot map - Each dot represents a certain amount of people - Population of canada - 40M  - Canada's population is extremely unevenly distributed throughout the country - the majority is near the states down south and it gets pretty sparse up north. - Majority of the country is inhospitable - States is more hospitable physical environments - Cluster of lights on the US/CA border - ⅔ people in canada live within 210 kms of the border - US pop. - 345M - Countries with the largest population 2023 - India - 1.428B - China - 1.425B - US - 340M - Can take these number, place on a map and visually see where the world is most concentrated - Measuring population - Pop. density - A measure of total population in relation to total land area. It is the number of people located in a particular territorial unit - For every square Km, there's approx. 4.35 people living in that Km2 - Pop. density in Canada - Considered a low population density - The darker the country, the higher the density - Megalopolis - Washington D.C., baltimore, philadelphia, new york city, boston - Large stretches of certain sections that have grown into one another - Cities of this region have merged into one large urban area - Accounting for about 20% of the US population - Population composition - We can describe characteristics of a population - This tells us those characteristics - It's important to know because then that pop. will have different issues - Countries with high pop. of elderly people will develop in an increase in demand of medical services - Population pyramid - indicated the age and the sex of a population - The bares indicate the number of people within those age groups - With each passing year, the age group gets bumped up - overtime, we get the age category moving p through the pyramid until it gets to the point there's no one left in that age category Lecture 8 - September 25, 2024 - Pyramids indicate a variety of different things - Growth rates, birth rates, mortality rates, life expectancy - As we get to the older age group, we can see that females live longer - Changing population - Population changes overtime - Two reasons why population size might change over time: - Natural increase - Immigration - Rate of Natural Increase (RNI) - An indicator of population change is calculated by subtracting the deaths from the births for the total population over a particular period of time - Calculated by crude birth rate - crude death rate - Crude birth rate is the number of live births per 1000 in a given year - Crude death rate is the number of deaths per 1000 in a given year - Fertility rate - The average number of births per woman of childbearing years, usually between 15 and 49 - Replacement level: the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself; requires an average of 2.1 children per woman - Canada has a low fertility rate - Fertility rates have declined, and has fallen below a replacement level of 2.1 - Declining fertility rates - Women start to become part of the labour force, less dedicated to staying at home mom, pursuing higher education with more opportunities, marrying later in life - Health and population dynamics - Mortality rates (# of deaths in a year per 1000 people), especially of infants , is a measure of a country's overall health of a society - Babies are dying at an increased rate, they are also entering at an increased rate - Inability of hospital to treat babies, does not have the resources - Pattern between infant and world mortality rate are very similar - Life expectancy: the average number of years a person may be expected to live - Also has a spatial expression - Lower life expectancy in the global south - Disease: can reshape population - Pop. pyramid doesn't always convey the full story - Because of the high mortality rate in africa, theres an increase in orphan children - Population and Government - Government can play a role in managing populations - Some governments seek to reduce the rate of natural increase and put strict population policies in place - Chinas one-child population reduced the population and can see it on the pyramid - Some governments can influence the growth rate by expanding  - Money can be the incentive to have more children - Migration - Migration is about the movement of people, but more than that migration is when the movement of people results in a permanent relocation of that individual or that group of people - Can take place on a number of different scales, from neighbourhoods to movement across international borders, LARGE SCALE MOVEMENTS - Emigration vs immigration - Emigration is when a person leaves one location to go to another - E for exiting, migrating out - Immigration is when a person is entering into a new country - I for into, migrating in - A person is both an emigrant and immigrant depending on where they’re coming from Lecture 9 - September 27, 2024 - Migration - Net migration is a way of adding people to the population - Total population increase is the sum of natural increase and the net migration - Migrants are persons born in a country other than that in which they live - The statue of liberty symbolizes the openness to newcomer - freedoms, opportunities - There are many different types of migrants: - Temporary foreign workers: - Individuals who are permitted to work in a country that do not have permanent residence - They have fewer rights and often face challenges - deportation, contract not renewed, breaking the rules allows the employer to say byebye - Usually they have to obtain visas and it specifies that they can only work for one employer and do one specific job. This provides employers for a reliable work source - Working conditions are a lot better, and there are more opportunities to work than in their countries - They earn income and send it back home - money doesn't stay in the location in which they work - A remittance is money sent back home by migrant workers. - Countries receiving the highest levels of remittances are generally low and middle income countries - Refugees: - A person who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion  - Seeking safety from their own country; could be war, someone in power, etc. - There are regulations around the movement around refugees; this law says that these refugees have rights. - They might have to move from their homes but that doesn’t make them any less human - Thousands of people fleeing from crisis by walking often on the news - Reasons for migration: - Forced migration: - when authority or power is used to force people to move - involuntary movement, not their choice - Slavery was one of the biggest forced migration; africans getting sold to north and south america - Atlantic slave trade : 1701 - 1810 - Repatriation: - When refugees return to their home country - Form of counter migration - Voluntary Migration: - When people move based on their own decision - Push factors that influence migration - Push factors are the conditions and perceptions that help the migrant decide to leave a place - Unemployment, cost of living, weather, safety, etc - Political Circumstances: - Civil war between the northern largely arab and muslim population and the southern mostly black african Christian population displaced more than 5 million people in sudan - Armed conflict and war - Hostilities between hutu and tutsi ethnic groups in rwanda led to the exodus of more than 1 million refugees into neighbouring countries - 1990s - Environmental conditions: - The movement of hundreds of thousands of irish citizens to north america was, in part, due to a failed potato crop and ensuing famine - 1840s - The volcanic eruptions of montserrat triggered migration flows off the small caribbean island - 1995 - Culture and traditions: - The partition of british india into a mainly a hindu state and pakistan into a muslim state influenced the migration of millions - 1947  - Pull factors are the circumstances that attract migrants to certain locations. They are usually positive conditions and perceptions that attract people to new locations - Demand for work: - Women from the philippines in child care and domestic work - Family and friends: - Kinship links lead to chain migration which is when migrants move to another place based on already established networks - Government and migration - Undocumented people are people here that are not legal and don't have a visa - Deportation: migrants who are illegally in a country can be deported - Border walls are a great physical example of how people in one country try to control the movement of other people Week 4 - Humans and the Environment Lecture 10 - September 30, 2024 - Environment, Economy, Society - These three realms are very closely connected - Economy is part of human society that exists within a broader context of the earth environments - without a healthy environment, our societies cant function, nor can the economy - Economy actually depends on environment - Economic system as it stands has had impacts on the environment - Geographers are interested in spatial expressions, and they often come in the form of environmental impacts - With these impacts come resource degradation and depletion - The environment: - The environment represents the natural world, including native animals and plants, mineral deposits, soil, water, and air - It is all the external factors surrounding and affecting bith living and nonliving things - The air, water, minerals, organisms - All other external factors that surround our environment - Both living and nonliving things - Think of it as the surroundings in which the organisms live - The conditions that surround us - Society - Society represents people - Is a group of humans that are coexisting together in a place - We can relate to one another in certain means; politics, constitution, - You have a social relationship with everyone you meet, applies to every aspect of you life  - Rules with respect to how these relationships are ordered - Societies do have a spatial expression - Economy - Is a system that organizes the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services - System that connects what is produced to those who consume it - Different economies are covered by different laws and rules - In the end, the goal however it might be governed, they're both connecting the consumer in some way, and the government is playing a role - Environment is providing ecological services; fresh air, water, raw material,, pollination, vegetation, crops, animals, - Society can regulate an economy and if they so choose, they can regulate the economy so that it can protect the economy and save human lives - All societies develop economic activities and they've had quite an impact on the environment - Environmental impacts of economic activity - Smog is a mix between smoke and fog, around many city skylines you see this brown haze around it and it is from all the pollution created within the city. Mostly composed of ground level ozone formed when emissions from vehicles and industry react with sunlight and heat in the atmosphere - The atmosphere: a unique mix of gases that envelops the earth - It is a unique composition of gases that other plants and organisms need to survive - Doesn’t exist elsewhere - The goldilocks effect is when its not too cold, not too hot, but just right - Regulates climate system so there can be human life - Greenhouse gases - Play a role in the warming of the earth - Enter into the atmosphere through several natural processes - Water vapour: evaporation & transpiration - CO2: humans & animals breathing, volcanoes; forest fires - Methane: decay from organic matter - Nitrous oxide: naturally occurring chemical reactions in soil - Ozone: naturally occurring chemical reactions in the atmosphere - The greenhouse effect - A naturally occurring process that warms the earth by preventing the loss of heat into space - Greenhouse gases absorb incoming solar radiation, slows the loss of heat into space and increases earths temperature - We cannot take humans out of the equation, atmosphere has been subject to human induced influences that has affected the atmosphere - Natural and human has resulted in the atmosphere becoming a dumping ground for pollutants, especially CO2  - Very high amount of emissions that enter human atmosphere by human influence; especially CO2 - Combustion of fossil fuels (industry and transportation) - Land Use change (clearing forests/deforestation - major source) - Deforestation takes away the trees to clean the air, while also putting more pollutants in the air - Since the 1800, we've started to see increase in greenhouse gases, and we can toe it back to industrial revolution - CO2 in the atmosphere is very closely related to industrial but also related to increased temperatures - Melting polar ice caps are being linked to increased temperatures - Sea levels are also rising, and because of the melting ice caps and raising temperatures - With sea levels rising it is going to create problems for flooding, which is going to affect coastal cities - The top 5 countries in terms of population living in vulnerable coastal locations together account for almost half of the worlds population - Bangladesh, china, vietnam, india and indonesia - Count for almost half the population - Climate change , particularly extremes, such as warmer sea water, add power to typhoons - Another extreme is having NO water, and leads to drought - Forest fires can ignite naturally - Once these gases are emitted into the atmosphere, they circulate and have an impact on the entire atmosphere, not limited to where the gases are emitted - The emissions from specific sources have longstanding impacts everywhere – both locally and globally. - The responsibility for emissions, however, has been uneven and in fact creates an uneven geography of emissions. - Europe and north america were major centers of industrial development, deforestation and urbanizations, they are historical industrial emissions - In more recent years there has been a shift from europe over to countries in the developing world and economies Lecture 11 - October 2, 2024 - Emission regulation - Earth summit, rio de janeiro, 1992 - United nations framework convention on climate change is established - Meeting of world leaders to rethink economic growth with environmental protection in mind - Kyoto protocol:  - Countries that signed were required to reduce their collective emissions to 1990 levels - First period of the commitment was 2008-2012, and 2012 onwards - As of september 2011, 191 states have signed - There is a geography of emission regulation - Putting limits on the amount of greenhouse gases makes it very difficult for countries to develop economically - Reliance on coal technology but also accessibility to coal - There are commitments during a certain time period, but we also have a lack of commitments - canada withdrew from the protocol and the united states never signed - Why? Because neither of these countries can meet the requirements of the protocol without going into economic recession - Paris agreement, 2015 - Goal was for all countries to come together and reduce temperature - Addresses emissions between 2020 and 2030 - Agreed to keeping global temperature warming to below 2 degrees celsius - Assistance provided to developing countries - Oil spills - A consequence of economic activity being based on fossil fuels - Activity was banned by canadian government for offshore oil development - In 1972 si when the moratorium was out in place by BC government - only validated by spill on exxon valdez - 1988: tanker exclusion zone - series of events and regulations. Agreement of canada and the united states and it restricted tankers from these regions - Moratorium is now law, so it is against the law to go through this water with tankers - 2017: bill C-48 introduced - 2018:bill c-48 passed - Bitumen needs to be intensely refined to be used - Oil is an important part of canada's economy - Deep ocean drilling rigs off the coast of NFLD - Hibernia - 1997 - Terra nova - 2002 - White rose - 2005 - Hebron - 2017 - There are environmental controversies, one of them is that there are large bodies of water around mining sites - Tailings: non-useful materials removed after the recoverable materials have been extracted - Tailings pond is where the mining sites store the waste  - Once the process is undergone, the water is severely degraded - Athabasca river has been contaminated, aquatic damage, due to permeating tailings ponds - Nuclear energy: - Bruce nuclear power plant - 1 ton of natural uranium mined from northern saskatchewan produces the electricity equivalent to 15000 tons of coal - Emits one sixth the amount of CO2 than coal - Deforestation - The removal of trees and clearing of land for other purposes - ON MIDTERM: brazil, sub-saharan africa, indonesia, myanmar - Clear cutting: when all the trees in one large continuous area are indiscriminately cut at the same time; EVERYTHING is taken down - Drivers: - Revenues from export - Paying debt - Agriculture; turned into pasture land, cash cropping - Lack of regulations and law enforcement, meaning theres a lot of illegal activity - Trees are a renewable resources, however we are harvesting our trees at a much faster rate than which we are replacing them - Open-pit mining - Copper mine, utah - Reduces the potential of using the land for other purposes - Canada also has open-pit minds - Ekati diamond mine, NWT; one of the most lucrative diamond mines - 1991: diamonds discovered in Canada - 2007: Diamond production valued at $1.4 Billion - Diavik Diamond mine, NWT, 2013 - Hydraulic Fracturing: Fracking - Fracking is a technology used to mine natural gas trapped in rock formations - Impacts: - Human resettlement - Habitat destruction - Migration barriers - Less productive wetlands - Decrease in biodiversity - Loss of agricultural land - Mega projects - Mega projects changes the landscapes significantly - Dam in china looks very different from 1987 to 2006, water is flooding because of the dam - Largest dam ever built  - Largest dam that has displaced the most people - Habitat destruction; fish cannot migrate, how does it affect the wetlands down stream - Decrease biodiversity; take away the habitat you take away the wildlife - Loss of agroccultural land - Marine pollution - Several garbage patches they settle in the ocean - Natural gathering points where rotating currents, winds, and other ocean features converge - “Great pacific garbage patch” - Manila bay in the philippines on june 8, 2013 - How can we explain why humans have had such an impact on the environment? - Economic growth, consumption and resources - The environment provides resources for the economy - Suggests that economic growth is growing at the expense of the environment - We need the environment for resources; food, clothing, shelter. We consume goods in our everyday life - Consumption patterns have a significant impact on the environment, and we can measure it using the ecological footprint - Population growth - The population is not slowing down, and it is expected to increase - As the population grows, there is going to be increased demand for resources. There is increased competition between everyone of getting their fair share of resources - Defining natural resources - Components of nature that we find useful - A benefit to us - We can typically classify them into renewable and non-renewable resources - Renewable resources - These are replaced by environmental processes and as long as theyre not being used more quickly than being replaced, they can continue to meet the needs for human demand - Non-renewable resources - Resources that are finite or are replaced at very slow rates - Often in the recovery in the non-renewable resources where we get environmental damage - Natural capital - Resources that are used to produce manufactured goods, but also to support economic activities - Might as well take a sustainable approach to continue revenue flow - Natures utility - The environment is understood as a source of:  - Income - Livelihoods - Material things - Economic activity - From a utilitarian POV, we have to use resources in a sustainable way to continue revenue - Ecological footprint - Brings together consumption and resources - Metaphor: used to represent the amount of land and the mount of resources we use to sustain a population - How much land/resources does the average person of a particular area need to support their consumption habits - On average: 2.6 hectares/yr - Countries with high rates of consumption have higher footprints because a greater amount of resources is needed to sustain the population - If everyone in the planet consumed at the rate of the US, we would need 5.1 earths - On average, at the current rate of consumption and resource use that the planet is currently undergoing, we need 1.8 earths to sustain the current rates of resource use - We are running into an unsustainable situation - Given that the earth has a finite amount of resources, it becomes a challenge to maintain economic growth, but also extend the economic developments to the rest of the earth - Sustainable development - There needs to be a negotiation between maintaining a healthy human society and health environment with growth and development - Sustainable development points to a middle road approach: it can be the outcome for responsible practices - We can use sustainable development to avoid environmental degradation and poverty and we can make an income - Natures non-monetary value - Environment has intrinsic value - It is needed to sustain human life - Trees provide us with oxygen, lungs of our earth - Conservation vs preservation - Conservation is the sustainable use and management of natural resources - Making sure trees aren't being used faster than they can be replaced - Development is necessary, but in a sustainable manner - Preservationists think areas of the earth should be untouched by humans - Ensures protection from any kind of damage or destruction  - Biodiversity should be preserved regardless of its usefulness to humans - Environmental ethics - A field that studies the non-monetary value of the physical environment - Land ethic: - Humans are citizens and protectors of the environment - Responsibility towards the environment means limits to individual freedoms Week 5 - Culture and Coded Spaces Power, cultural term - Religion has a recognizable distinctive impact - People are migrating and with them they are bringing aspects of their old home - This can connect to a sense of belonging - When a place is commodified, it means something can be purchased - It is the construction, marketing and selling of the place - People of the place are developing a market for the specific market - Process of transforming the element of place into something that can be purchased - Culture can be turned into product - Tourism is one way we can interpret place as being this experience to consume - Before the tourist can consume the experience, first it needs to be a commodity - Intimately connected to places - Place promotion is very connected to creating that meaning around the place that we are talking about - Images are critical in this process of destination creation - Unlike regular products, tourism cannot be tested ahead of time - This is why it is critical for destination advertisers to utilize attention grabbing images - Tourism is intangible - cant touch it, feel it - Images are more important than tangible resources all because perceptions, rather than reality are what motivate consumers to act or not to act - Destination advertisements - Gives us a feel of how places are constructed - Whole purpose is to drive the consumer to go and purchase the product - Imagined geographies - We can be influenced by TV, news sources - We can call this an imagined geography because places are imagined for is - After the Lord of the Rings, tourism in NZ spiked because that's where it was set - A great deal of tourism takes place in developing countries, and struggles there are not shown such as poverty, etc - Advertisements disconnect us from the realities of the destinations, from how that product was made in the first place  - An exclusion of certain types of images, they only convey one side of the story - Theming - The planned process of giving an identity to a place through physical design as well as through cultural narrative(stories), which are connected to a common theme or set of related themes - Rainforest cafe is not just a restaurant, it's an experience - Development of the landscape and architectural elements - Naming places, streets or public spaces can connect to a theme - Can see themes engulfing entire townships - Theme parks: major themed environments, self contained family oriented complexes - Exhibitions - Built attractions specifically for tourists - Disneyland - made up of smaller places disaggregated into theme - Inclusions of styles and mixes of retailing that relate to the theme - Las Vegas: postmodern city - Describing the emergence of a society in which we have popular culture and mass media dominating our sense of reality - A period of time where mass media did not dominate our sense of reality - There is no originality - LV is an imaginary city - Pastiche: covert and very conscious mixing of spaces and styles to produce a collage of otherwise incompatible genres - LV is a pastiche of places - Lots of styles are borrowed from other styles of architect - Many hotels are copies of many city scapes - Hyper-real: deliberate confusion between the real and the artificial - Simulacra: representation of originals that do not actually exist