Key Themes in Human Geography

Lecture 4
Human environmental interactions, Place, Spatial interaction and Maps
Introduction
All places have physical and cultural attributes that
distinguish them from other places and give them
character, potential and meaning.

Geographers are concerned with identifying and

analysing the details of those attributes.

Interested in the interrelationships between the

physical and cultural components in the area:
human-environment interface.
 Physical characteristics

• Physical characteristics refers to natural aspects of a locale

such as:
• Climate and soil,
• the presence or absence of water and
• its mineral deposits as well as its landforms.
• These natural landscape attributes provide the setting within
which human action occurs.
• Some instance reference is made to “death of geography” due
to the increasing interconnectivity of the an ever globalizing
world.
• BUT… Physical env presents advantages and drawbacks with
which humans must deal…
 Physical Characteristics
• Important: They help shape –but do not dictate- how people live.
Carl Sauer (1879-1975) rejected the idea of environmental
determinism.
• The resource base for example, is physically determined, but how
resources are perceived and utilised is, to some extent, culturally
conditioned.
Virtually every human activity leaves its imprint on an area’s soil, water,
vegetation, animal life, other resources and the atmosphere.

When we introduce the notion of “resource use” by humans we need to

consider the idea of a cultural landscape.

In fact, the impact of human activities on the natural landscape has been so
profound (universal and protracted) that purely natural landscapes no
longer exists.
 Cultural landscape
• The visible expression of human activity is called:
cultural landscape.
• It too exists at different scales and levels of visibility.
• Human Geography might thus be concerned with the
human characteristics of places,
• BUT we are aware that the physical content of these
places matter!
• And that it is important to understand the physical activity
patterns of people and their interconnections with the
environments they occupy.
Natural landscape provide
opportunities and restriction on the
nature of activities that can take
place. At the same time human
activities leaves an imprint on the
natural landscape.
Have we considered
our impact on the
natural landscape?
Changing attributes of Places
• Place refers to the attributes and values we individually
associate with a location
• Observations regarding place
1. Places have location, direction, distance regarding other places
2. A Place has size (scale is important)
3. A place has physical structure AND cultural content
4. The attributes of place change over time
5. The elements of places interrelate with other places
6. The content of places is structured and explainable
7. Places may be generalized into regions of similarities and
differences
Changing Attributes of Place
• Physical environment seems eternal and
unchanging, but of cause, it is not!
• Physical environment is not constant and
unchanging
• Geological context change is pronounced.
• Geologic changes takes long but the forces that
give shape to the land are timeless and
relentless.
Changing Attributes of Place
• Landscape changes since last Glacial Period
• Natural
• Reduction in the extent of ice
• Moderating of climatic conditions

• Human induced changes

• Initially limited to regional influences by use of e.g. fire
• Impact accelerated with the “dawn of civilization”
• Increasing population and advent of industrialisation
lead to even more rapid alterations
• Built landscape increasingly replaced natural landscape
Changing Attributes of Place

• Characteristics of places today are

the results of changing conditions in
the past
• To understand the nature and
development of places we need to
view present places as the result of
past physical and cultural
operations
1800
Activity Slide: From the images provided, which one
represents “visible expression of human activity”

A B
Interrelations Between Places
• Places interact with other places in structured
comprehensible ways
• Leads to the concept of Spatial Interaction.

• Tobler’s first law of Geography = everything is

related to everything else, but relationships are
stronger when items are near one another.
 Interrelations Between Places
• Interaction between places diminishes in intensity
and frequency with increasing distance (absolute
AND relative)
• Leads to concept of distance decay
• Think about it, what influences your decision about
where you go to buy fast food?
 Interrelations Between Places

• Additional important concepts:

• Accessibility : How easy or difficult it

is to overcome the “friction of
distance”?
• How easy or difficult it is to overcome
the barrier of the time and space
separating places?
• Accessibility therefore suggests the
idea of:

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

 Interrelations Between Places

• Additional important concepts:

• Connectivity: Implying all the tangible and intangible

ways in which places are linked.
• Street and road systems, telephone poles, Wifi, tv
broadcasts, pipelines.
• Where routes are fixed and flow is channelized it
creates networks: patterns of routes connecting
places.
Activity: A distance decay curve

How would you

interpret this figure?
Convenience store
versus superstore?
What about distance
decay in the time of
COVID-19?
Interrelations Between Places
• Additional important concepts:

• Spatial diffusion: The process of dispersion of an

idea or an item from a centre of origin to more
distant points.

• Globalization: Increasing interconnection and its

consequences.

• Geography recognizes that spatial interaction

is a fundamental organising principle of
human life
Structured Content of Places
• Starting point of geographic inquiry: How things are distributed
in an area
• The content of an area is comprehensibly arranged or
structured
 Structured Content of Places
• Spatial Distribution
• Density
• Quantity of something within an area
• A statement of fact but not necessarily useful in itself.
• Dispersion (opposite concentration)
• Statement regarding the spread of a phenomenon over an
area
• [clustered/agglomerated] vs. [dispersed or scattered]
• Scale dependant
• Pattern
• Geometric arrangement of objects within an area
• Similar to dispersion but emphasis is on design rather than
spacing
 1 km

Density: 12 houses/km2 Density: 12 houses/km2

Dispersion: Dispersed Dispersion: Clustered

Density: 12/km2

1 km
Dispersion: Clustered
Linear Pattern

Density: 12/km2 Density: 12/km2 Density: 12/km2

Dispersion: Clustered Dispersion: Dispersed Dispersion: Dispersed
Centralised Pattern Random Pattern Regular Pattern
Activity Slide
• Assume that the block portrayed in the figure below represents km2
and that each dot in the figure represents 1000 people.

• Can you calculate the population density for the figure below?
Spatial Association
• Two distributions of
features often spatially
corresponds with each
other.
• That is, places where
one feature is found are
more likely (or less likely)
where a different type of
feature is found.
• Sales of alcoholic
beverages and catholic
residents.
 Place Similarity and Regions
• Two important geographical ideas
1. No two places on the Earth can be exactly the same
2. Physical and cultural content of an area show patterns of spatial
similarity
• The second idea allows us to recognize and define regions
• Fundamentally it is a spatial generalization tool
• They are not given by nature but devised by man to bring order to
spatial diversity and complexity
• Types of Regions
• Administrative
• Functional
• Perceptual
• Thematic
Activity Slide :Regions
• Use the information provided in supplied reading to summarize key
distinctive characteristics of the different regions.
• Use pages 17-19 in Reading 1 supplied on ClickUp.
Type of Region Key characteristics

Administrative region

Thematic region

Percpetual/Venecular

Functional
Maps
• The Map Scale (Self study)
• The Globe Grid (Self Study)
• How maps show data
1. General purpose, reference location maps
2. Thematic Maps
1. Qualitative maps
2. Quantitative maps
1. Graduated circle maps
2. Isometric maps
3. Dot maps
4. Isopleth maps
5. Chloropleth maps
3. Statistical Maps
4. Cartogram
General Purpose Maps
• To simply show, without analysis or
interpretation, a variety of natural or
human made features

http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~niel
senw/images/africa_pol_2003.jpg
Qualitative Thematic Map
• To show the
distribution of a
particular class
of information

http://www.wildcard.co.za/userdocs/image/SANParks%20map/sanparks-
map123.jpg
Quantitative Thematic Map (Chloropleth)

Botkin, D.N. & Keller, E.A., 2011: Environmental Science: Earth as a

Living Planet Eight Edition, John Wiley & Sons Inc, New Jersey

• Quantitative thematic: Shows • Chloropleth: The average value

the spatial characteristic of of the data studied per pre-
numerical data existing areal unit
Quantitative Thematic Map (Isopleth)
• Calculation refers to an areal statistic

Botkin, D.N. & Keller, E.A., 2011: Environmental Science: Earth as a

Living Planet Eight Edition, John Wiley & Sons Inc, New Jersey
Quantitative Thematic Map (Isometric Maps)

• Features lines that connect points registering equal

values
Quantitative Thematic Map (Dot Maps)
• A single or specified number of
occurrences of the item studied is
recorded by a single dot
• Does not just record data but suggest
their spatial pattern

Greiner, A.L., 2011: Visualizing Human Geography, Wiley, New Jersey

Quantitative Thematic Map (Graduated Circle
Maps)
• Uses circles of different sizes to show
the frequency of occurrence of a topic
in different places

Greiner, A.L., 2011: Visualizing Human Geography, Wiley, New Jersey

Statistical Maps

Botkin, D.N. & Keller, E.A., 2011: Environmental Science: Earth as a

Living Planet Eight Edition, John Wiley & Sons Inc, New Jersey

• Records the actual numbers or occurences of the mapped item per

established unit area or location
Cartogram

www.worldmapper.org

• Uses statistical data to transform territorial space so that the largest areal unit
on the map is the one showing the greatest statistical value