The Big Questions in Geography

1. The Big Questions in Geography 10 questions in hopes of stimulating a dialogue for future geographers

2. 1. What makes Places and Landscapes different from one another and why is this important? • Before humans • Nature of uneven economic development • Nature of spatial distributions, patterns, and associations • Interaction between physical and human environments • Variability and uniformity • Effects of scale • Explaining the nature of variability is one goal Next

3. Regional

4. City

5. 2. Is there a deeply held human need to organize space? • Creating arbitrary borders, boundaries, and districts • city-states begat nation-states • Land and oceans carved into non-equal units • Land partitioning affects environmental quality • Effect of globalization on construction of space • Intellectual space and cyberspace

7. World Maritime Claims

8. 3. How do we delineate space? • Criteria used • Boundaries without respect to ethnic cultures in post colonial Africa and central Europe • Complexities of multicultural populations • Political v. natural • Economic efficiency • Compatibility • Congressional districts • Population census • http://www2.uiuc.edu/ro/observer/archive/vol11/issue5/gerry.html

9. Pre WWI

10. Post WWI

14. 4. Why do people, resources and ideas move? • The diffusion of culture • Western—emphasis on materialism and individualism • Digital space • Historical patterns of settlements in relation with resources • OPEC-retain its global power?

15. 5. How has the Earth been transformed by human action? • Less than 5% of the earth is “natural” landscape • The 1993 Flood

17. 6. What role will virtual systems play in learning about the world? • Information technology • Decreasing the geographic distance • Computers—if _____ then ______ • Studying complex phenomena • The Great Equalizer or next rust belt? • Map of the haves and have-nots

20. 7. How do we measure the unmeasurable? • Go beyond the petty tyrannies of nation-states • Still protect national security • Still protect individuals right to privacy • Acxiom • ChoicePoint • NAACP v. Harris- challenging the conduct of state and local officials in the 2000 Florida elections • Constructed realities • Public policy • Aggregate: level of detail of the geographic units

21. 8. What role has geography played in civilization and can play in predicting the future? • Migration—redistribution of people in space • Push and pulls • Untapped resources • Environmental change • Invasion and succession • Prediction • Environments • Population characteristics • Customs, beliefs, values

22. 9. How & why do sustainability and vulnerability change with place and time? • Sustainability science • Integration of many different social and natural science perspectives • Suburban sprawl • Environmental insecurity of nations • Armed conflicts • Mass migrations • Contagious diseases • Ability to recover from natural or social forces

23. 10. What is the nature of spatial thinking, reasoning and abilities? • Geographic knowledge is the product of spatial thinking • Scale changes • Representations among many spatial dimensions • Effect of distance, density and direction

24. Conclusion • American Declaration of Independence • Spatial constraints • Looking globally • Future needs • Cities of the future? • Terms: scale, nation-states, gerrymander, density, spatial,