Chapter 1

1. Globalization refers to worldwide processes that make the world, its economic system, and its society more uniform, more integrated, and more interdependent. Globalization is the process of the economy becoming more world wide in scope and is a useful way to explain why the movement of people, goods and ideas within and among world realms are becoming more important to not only economic systems, but also cultural, political, and environmental systems. There are three important dimensions of globalization that are occurring at an ever increasing rate in the world today: (1) globalization of culture, (2) globalization of economy, and (3) globalization of environmental change.

2. Culture is the total learned way of life of a society that includes but is not limited to beliefs, social forms, material traits, religion, and food. With the globalization of culture, four processes can be identified: (1) the increasing level of shared beliefs, social forms, and material traits worldwide, (2) societies are displaying fewer cultural differences than in the past, (3) globalization of cultural preference is being created by improved telecommunications worldwide, and (4) the penetration of global culture is occurring at different places and at different rates, and therefore not all peoples share the same access to this globalization. The globalization of consumption is a key factor in the corruption of customary traditional cultural preferences as more and more people prefer western material products.

3. The world economy is at work in creating a global cultural uniformity, also called the globalization of the economy. Companies, societies, and individuals that were once affected by events and economic activity elsewhere now share a singular economic world with other companies. The fate of many workers and companies is now tied to international political and social change. The globalization of the economy has meant that national and state borders and differences between financial markets has become much less important because of a number of trends including: (1) the globalization of finance, (2) the increasing importance of transnational companies, (3) global foreign investment from core regions like North America, Western Europe, and East Asia, (4) global specialization in the location of production, (5) globalization of the tertiary sector of the economy, (6) the globalization of the office function, and (7) global tourism.

4. Foreign Direct Investment indicates investment by foreigners on wholly owned factories that are operated by the foreign owner of the multinational corporation. The globalization of service provision (the tertiary sector) and consumption is taking a growing share of international investment.

5. The changing world and its turn towards the global era has been the product of many factors including: the growth of the East Asian economy, the collapse of communism, a reduction in government intervention in many countries, and the rise of many Asian countries, specifically China, in the world economy.

6. Although world development implies progress towards desirable goals and improving the quality of peoples lives, there are serious consequences to increased world development. Two serious issues that will require immediate attention is the challenge to economic expansion posed by the environmental constraints of energy supplies, resources, and pollution, and the enormous and explosive issues of disparities in the distribution of wealth between rich and poor countries, city and rural areas, wealthy and poor people, and men and women.

7. The current world economic conditions are that economic growth is up and the world GDP growth is at 3.5%. Economic recovery in industrial countries is underway and developing countries have strong economic growth. Therefore the future holds good prospects for further world economic development.

8. The basic problem of economic geography deals with scarcity in space and methods to overcome it so that a fair distribution of resources can occur. Scarcity is not prevalent in the developed countries, but the scarcity of food and shelter is a major problem in the developing world. Four basic questions of economic geography arise for each country: (1) what should be produced with the level of resources available, and at what level of production, (2) how, or with what combination of techniques, labor and capital and other inputs, should the output be produced, (3) where should the output be produced, and (4) who, or which groups in society should receive what share of the goods? The answers to these questions will vary by the type of economic system a country operates under. For economic geography the question of most interest is question No. 3, although a shift in the field has started to emphasize the need to address question Nos. 2 and 4.

9. The factors of production, which are basic to all the economic geographies of the world’s countries, include land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurial skills. Generally speaking, the lack of two or more factors of production can relegate a country to great levels of depravation, but the right mix of the factors of production can produce a viable economy .

10. Each country dictates the amount of individual freedom, the amount of social control, and the process of distribution when creating its economy. These choices are based on political, cultural, and economic philosophies which are put together to create each country’s economies. Different kinds of political economies include: pure capitalism, the command economy of Marxism, mixed political economy, and the traditional economy of developing countries.

11. The production possibilities curve shows various combinations of goods and services that can be produced given the level of employment, resources, and technology available. For a economy operating on its curve, of more of one good can be produced only by producing less of another good. This suggests that societies face trade-offs in deciding what to produce.

12. Economic geography is concerned with the spatial organization and distribution of economic activity, the use of the world’s resources, and the distribution and expansion of the world economy. As a distinct field, economic geography has been affected by three major themes of geography. They are: (1) human-environment relations, (2) areal differentiation, (3) spatial organization.

13. Location theory, which is still the center of economic geography research, attempts to explain and predict geographic decisions that result from aggregates of individual decision making. The main aim of location theorists is to integrate the spatial dimension into classical economic theory. The origins of location theory stems from the work of Johann Heinrich von Thunen on agricultural location in the 1820’s, and subsequent contributions to industrial and settlement theory by Alfred Weber and Walter Christaller.

Chapter 2

1. Population distribution refers to the arrangement , spread, and density of people. On a macroscale, we examine broad geographical areas such continents, countries, and regions. On a microscale, we look at smaller areas, such as population variations within cities and counties. The cartogram shows the area of each country in proportion to its population.

2. Population varies greatly among continents and countries. However, countries vary greatly in size, therefore population totals tell us nothing about crowding. Population is often related to the size of the land area. This ratio is called population density - the average number of people per unit area, usually per square mile or kilometer. Some of the countries with the largest populations have relatively low population densities while some small countries are the most crowded on earth. Singapore and Bangladesh each have over 2000 people per square mile. Population density, while useful, can conceal much variation within a country. Within the United States there are densely populated and sparsely populated areas.

3. A factor influencing population distribution is the physical environment. People concentrate along the edges of continents at low elevations and at humid mid-latitude tropical climates. Lands that are extremely dry, or are in remote locations of some mountain ranges and river basins, such as the Congo and Amazon basin, are sparsely settled. Population distributions are also influenced by the organization of economic systems, cultural traits, social and political policy, and social disasters such as war. These factors need to considered with reference to historical circumstance. The Industrial Revolution in the 19th-century made British coal sites centers of population concentration and economic growth.

4. Modern urban growth is the result of agricultural, industrial, and transportation revolutions of the late 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. The Industrial Revolution spurred the mass movement of surplus populations away from the countryside and into the emerging factory cities of Europe. The Transportation Revolution permitted the cheap and fast movement of goods required by an expanding urban population.

5. Urban growth is the increase in the size of city populations. Urbanization refers to the process through which the proportion of population living in cities increases. Urban growth and urbanization occur simultaneously in most countries, although their rates vary. World urbanization has increased dramatically over the last century, from about 5% of the population living in cities in 1800 to about 43% by 1997. However, levels of urbanization vary worldwide. The degree of urbanization in a country usually corresponds to its level of economic development. In general, developed countries have the highest urbanization and income levels. In the developing world urbanization is not being accompanied by a rapid increase in prosperity. Rather, high urban growth rates are causing congestion, slums, employment problems and deteriorating services. Another feature of urbanization in the developing world is the primate city - a city that has a large part of a nation’s population living in it and is typically the center of finance, industry, and commerce.

6. Population growth over time and space is described by the demographic transition. Four stages of population growth are experienced as they countries from primitive to modern industrial societies. In Stage One, both high crude birth rates and high crude death rates occur in the early stages of development, resulting in a low rate of natural increase. In Stage Two, declining crude death rates, with continually high crude birth rates, results in increasing population growth. Stage Three is characterized by crude death rates which remain low, and falling crude birth rates, which results in rapid but declining population growth. In Stage Four both crude death rates and birth rates are low, resulting in a lower natural increase. Natural annual increase in world population is the rate of growth of a population for a particular year. Much of the world’s population growth is occurring in the developing world. In 1996 Africa was growing at 3% per year. A 3% growth rate indicates a total population doubling time for a country of 23 years. A 2% growth rate will result in a doubling time of 35 years.

7. The demographic equation shows population at some future time equal to the population at present, plus births, minus deaths, plus in-migration, minus out-migration over the period of interest. World infant mortality rates averaged 75 per thousand for 1997. The United States, for example averaged 7 deaths per thousand live births. Life expectancy for babies born in 1997 was a world average of 64 years. It ranges from the high 70s in northwestern European nations, to low 30s in some Central African nations.

8. Migration is a purposeful movement involving a change of permanent residence. Most people move for economic reasons. They move to take better paying jobs or search for jobs in new areas. Cultural pressures and political conditions are other reasons. The causes of migration are sometimes divided into push factors and pull factors. Push factors include widespread unemployment, population pressure, shortage of land, famine, or war. Pull factors might be cheap or free land, the attraction of a developing world primate city, or a booming economy in a neighbor country. Migrations can be voluntary or involuntary.

9. Classical labor migration theory states that workers will move from low wage areas to high wage areas, causing the price of labor to fall in the high wage area while increasing wages in the low wage area. This flow of labor will continue until wages in the two regions converge to similar level. In reality wage differentials between regions continue to exist due to social factors that inhibit migration. These factors mean that migrants are more likely to be young adults than any other group. Migration is also controlled through regulation by governments.

10. Until 1900 Northern and Western Europe were the principal source of immigration to the United States. From 1900 to 1930’s, Southern and Eastern Europe comprised the greatest proportion of immigrants to the United States. Europe continued to supply the United States with the greatest proportion of immigrants until 1960, but from 1960 to 1980 Latin America replaced Europe as the most important source of immigration. Asia became the largest source of immigration to the United States by 1990.

11. The age structure of a country is examined through the construction of population pyramids. They measure vertically the age of the population by five year age groups, the base representing the youngest group. Population pyramids are compared by expressing male and female age groups as percentages of total population. The shape of the pyramid reflects long-term trends in fertility and mortality, and short term effects of baby booms, migrations, wars, and epidemics.

12. Demographic characteristics are those qualities of humans that we often label as human capital. They include educational attainment, labor force participation, occupation, and income. These so-called achieved characteristics are often compounded by the existence of ascribed characteristics with which we are born and which may affect our ability to achieve our desired level of living. These include race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and interrelationships among them.

13. Target marketing is a micro-geographic GIS system that uses consumer as well as census data to accurately classify every household in the United States into one of 50 unique market segments, each consisting of households that are demographically similar and share common interests, consumption patterns, and financial behavior. Target marketing gives flexibility in consumer segmentation strategies by assigning specific market segments to one of nine groups, each containing segments with similar characteristics or habits. Marketers are then able to simultaneously target many segments that will respond alike to product, service, or market efforts. Target marketing software can answer questions in the following areas: retail, restaurants, real estate, banking, insurance, investments, cable TV, utilities, consumer goods, and non-profit organizations.

14. The entrance of the baby boom generation into the workforce brought new social and technological ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. As a result industries and companies were forced to restructure and make large investments to train the huge influx of new workers. Low productivity while the baby boomers went through their initial, less productive job years and expensive new technologies meant high rates of inflation during the 1970s as companies raised prices to pay for the changes taking place. The effect of those technological investments is now being felt, resulting in high productivity and low inflation. As baby boomers begin to enter their most important spending years, some economists believe the economy is now in the initial stages of the biggest boom in history.

15. New technologies, products, and markets move through a life cycle called an ‘S’ curve, or a logistic growth curve. A new product will take many years and a difficult trial period before it is accepted. The first third of the curve is adaptation by 0.1% to 10% of the population. Once accepted, use quickly spreads into the mainstream and its growth of use by 10% population to 90% of the population takes only as long as the initial growth to 10%.

16. The customized/flexible economy is the specialized economy of today, the rough opposite of the standardized economy of yesterday. Instead of the assembly-line Fordist approach, the flexible economy represents individuals working in small, self-managing teams focused on a particular need or problem solution of a market or customer, and they get to know that market or customers need better than large organizations of the past.

17. Due to the demographics in the firm, a geographical shift of the population is occurring from the urban area as the workforce begins moving to the exurbs, or outer suburbs, and back to smaller towns and communities. The migration to the exurbs is being propelled by: (1) retirees, (2) those seeking relief from the high cost suburbs, and (3) those desiring a greater community or native lifestyle.

Chapter 3

1. Popular perception appreciates the need to reduce population growth but overlooks the need to limit economic growth that massively exploits resources. A maximum growth economy assumes a world that can tolerate rampant waste, unlimited pollution, and indestructible ecosystems. Even by conservative estimates, a middle-class "basket of goods" requires six times as much in resources as a basket of essential or basic goods.

2. Carrying capacity refers to the population that can be supported by available resources. Population growth and increasing use of resources in traditional ways cannot continue indefinitely. If present trends in population growth and depletion continue, the world could be eventually bought into a stationary state known as carrying capacity.

3. Resources include all the materials in the environment that may someday be used under specialized technical and socio-economic conditions. Reserves are quantities of resources that are known and available for economic exploitation with current technologies and with current prices. Projected reserves represent estimates of the quantities likely to be added to the reserves because of the discovery and changes in prices and technology projected to occur within a specified period of time, for example, fifty years.

4. Non-renewable resources consist of finite masses of materials such as fossil fuels and metals which cannot be used without depletion. Renewable resources are those resources capable of yielding output indefinitely without impairing their productivity. They include soil, vegetation, air, and water. The tragedy of the commons refers to the way public resources are ruined by the isolated actions of individuals.

5. Average daily calorie consumption is 3,300 in developed countries and 2,100 in developing countries. Some countries in South America, South Asia, and many countries in Africa receive less than 90% of the daily caloric requirements of 2400 calories per day needed to sustain body and life. Averages must be adjusted according to age, gender, body size, and region of the world. Hunger in the Third World can be attributed to poor tropical soils, frequency of droughts, the impact of storms, and so on. Hunger is overwhelmingly a problem attributed to human endeavor, however. Africa is the only region where per capita food resources are actually declining steadily. a high proportion of the population is chronically malnourished. The pace of Third World urbanization has contributed heavily to the food problem. Other human factors include maldistribution of the food resources, civil unrest, government policy and debt. Environmental decline, such as overuse of land and deforestation have lowered the agricultural productivity of the land.

6. Expanding cultivated areas and raising productivity of existing cropland are two methods of increasing food production. A third is the identification of new food sources. There are three main ways to identify new food sources: (1) cultivate the oceans, or aquaculture; (2) develop high protein cereal crops; and (3) increase the acceptability of and profitability of infrequently used present foods.

7. A mineral is a naturally occurring inorganic substance in the earth’s crust. The richest deposits are unevenly deposited and are being depleted. Only Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United States, and the former Soviet Union are significant producers of at least six strategic minerals vital to modern technology. The United States is running short of domestic sources of strategic minerals. Possible solutions to shortages include new sources such as the oceans, improved mineral extraction techniques, and recycling of minerals. The best solution to mineral supply problems, however, probably lies in transmaterialization, or the substitution of currently use minerals for new minerals or materials.

8. Commercial energy, which accounts for more than 80% of human energy use is the lifeblood of the modern economy. Oil is the single biggest item in international trade, accounting for about 25% of the volume of world trade. Over 65% of the world’s oil resources are located in the Middle East. Other large reserves are found in Latin America, primarily in Mexico and Venezuela, and in the former Soviet Union and Africa. The US leads the world in total energy use, but on a per capita basis other nations are also leaders.

9. Energy consumption is expected to rise significantly over the next few decades, especially due to the growing industrialization of developing countries. Most of the future energy production to meet this demand will come from fossil energy sources - oil, natural gas, and coal. These resources are non-renewable and although there is little short-term concern over supplies, over the long-term these resources are finite and production will eventually peak and decline. As the age of cheap fossil fuels come to an end societies will have to conserve energy and find alternatives to fossil fuels, especially alternatives that minimize environmental damage. Alternative options include nuclear energy, geothermal power, hydropower, solar energy, wind power, and biomass.

10. Environmental problems, caused mainly by economic activity, may be divided into four overlapping categories: pollution, wildlife and habitat preservation, nonrenewable natural resources, and environmental equity.

Chapter 4

1. Transportation determines the utility or worth of goods. In today’s world, almost nothing is consumed where it is produced; therefore, without transportation services, most goods would be worthless. Transport costs, then, are not a constraint on productivity; rather transport increases productivity of an economy, because it promotes specialization of location.

2. Transportation costs can be categorized as either terminal costs or line-haul costs. Terminal costs are fixed costs and are incurred regardless of distance involved. Line-haul costs are variable costs that are strictly a function of distance. Competitive differences in transport media account for variations in terminal and line-haul costs. Line-haul costs are curvilinear, increasing with distance but at a decreasing rate. Transportation charges are often based on a zonal rate system, where locations are grouped into areas and a single rate is charged for all locations within the same zone. Step freight rates render ease of billing, but give advantages to cities located near the end of a freight zone.

3. Specific transportation rates are determined by two sets of factors. One set of factors pertains to the nature of the commodity and include: (1) loading and packaging costs, (2) susceptibility to loss or damage, (3) shipment size, (4) regularity of movement, (5) special equipment and services, and (6) elasticity of demand. The elasticity of demand is the degree of responsiveness of a good or service to changes in its price. The second set of factors relates to the characteristics of carriers and routes and include: (1) carrier competition, (2) route demand, and (3) backhauling. In the international arena, transport rates are affected by the nature of the regime governing the transport mode. For example, shipping is characterized by market-orientated principles while aviation is based on government intervention and regulation.

4. Transportation costs are of crucial importance for industries that are raw material seekers and market seekers, but they are of little importance for industries dealing in materials and final products that are of very high value in relation to their weight. Reductions in transport costs have encouraged the decentralization of manufacturing in industrialized countries, and the locating of manufacturing processes to less developed countries with a free-market ideology and an abundance of weakly unionized, low wage labor.

5. Movement of goods, people, and information are organized into networks. Geographers reduce networks to the level of graphs to uncover their basic spatial structure. A network idealized as a graph consists of two elements of geographic structure: (1) a set of vertices or nodes that may represent towns, railroads stations, or airports; and (2) a set of edges , lines or links that may represent highways, railroads or air routes. The connectivity of a network is measured by the beta index which expresses the ratio between the number of edges and the number of vertices. A large beta value indicates a well connected network The accessibility index measures the shortest paths from each vertex to every other vertex. The dispersion index computes the accessibility of a network as a whole. Network density is a measure of the total number of route miles per unit area.

6. The branching network is the shortest total interpoint connections, the circuit network gives the shortest connection between points, the hierarchy network gives the shortest connection between a central point and all other points, Paul Revere’s Ride shows the shortest path between a beginning point and all other points, while the traveling salesman network is the shortest route around a set of points with the origin and the destination being the same point.

7. Historically, the development of transportation networks has reflected and induced settlement, industrialization, and urbanization. One model has been defined in terms of penetration from the coast to the interior. An idealized sequence of transportation development includes (1) scattered ports, (2) penetration lines, (3) development of feeders, (4) beginnings of interconnection, (5) complete interconnection, (6) emergence of high priority routes. Rimmer’s model of transportation development between developed and less developed countries included four stages: (1) a pre-contact stage, (2) colonialism stage, (3) high colonialism (4) neo-colonial stage.

8. Spatial interaction is the movement of goods, people, and ideas between areas, countries, cities, and even places within cities. Distance decay describes the reduction in the flow or movement, between places with increasing distance between them. A gravity model can be used to predict flows between two points for commodities, people, information, and even television messages. The law of retail gravitation uses the gravity model concept to identify the breaking point between two cities.

9. Transport improvements have resulted in cost-space and time-space convergence - the progressive reduction in cost of travel and travel time between places. Transport development contributed to the growth of cities and change patterns of urban accessibility. North American cities show time space convergence in five eras: (1) walking, horsecar era, (2) electric street car era, (3) recreational automobile era, (4) freeway era, and (5) edge city era......[outer bolt way????].

10. Regulation of transportation was national policy into the 1970s. The purpose was to ensure quality, protect companies and customers, and establish safety standards. In the 1970s a move towards deregulation and privatization began. In the airline industry the goal was to make companies more competitive, offer fare reductions, become more efficient, continue to serve pre-existing networks, and to free the airline industry of financial distress. The result has been a hub and spoke network from major US airports.

11. Personal mobility in the United States is at its highest point in history with individuals making more and longer trips and owning more vehicles. Three factors account for this major increase in personal mobility: (1) the overall increase in the performance of the national economy, (2) increasing growth of cities and their spread over surrounding countryside, (3) more women owning their own vehicles, entering the work force, and having increased travel demands.

12. Because of increased mobility, new concerns about rising level of air pollution, congestion on the freeways, and the movement of goods are being posed. Two techniques to address these concerns are transit orientated development (TOD) and intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS). TOD attempts to reduce automobile use and distance of travel demand through mixed land use planning. IVHS uses computer technology in cars and within highway systems to improve travel efficiency. Automatic vehicle identification (AVI) is another system designed to reduce congestion. Regional transport has also been emphasized including: high speed trains and magnetic levitation, and supersonic aircraft. GIS software has also been used to help plan traffic flows whether it be on the local, regional, or international scale.

13. As modernization of transportation has integrated the economic world, equally important are the technical developments in communication. Today, the international telecommunications network based on fiber optics and digital technology has increased the productivity of business, as well as making it feasible to perform service tasks at a much wider range of locations than in the past. Therefore, the "wired home" can now become the workplace, and the "global office" a reality.

14. Firms are starting to use computers to revolutionize the world economy. Production is being concentrated in flexible factories that produce small runs of niche products, using compact, efficient teams that require little or no inventory. Communication possibilities are being expanded through the use of fiber-optic and satellite systems.

15. The manner in which we work and live in the new century will be determined by a vast web of electronic networks called the information superhighway. This system delivers large amounts of services to our homes, offices, and factories through the medium of phone calls, TV programs, text and music. The largest of these networks is the internet. In 1997 it had over 50 million users. This information superhighway is having and will continue to have a significant impact on world culture and the global economy.

Chapter 5

1. Economic geographers are concerned with problems of agricultural development and change, as well as with patterns of rural land use. Where was agriculture discovered? How did it diffuse? How did farmer so often fail to prevent environmental problems? Of special interest is the decision-making environment of the land users and land managers.

2. It is thought that agriculture first emerged in the Fertile Cresent of the Middle East nearly 10,000 years ago. Evidence also suggests that domestication began early in parts of Central America and Southeast Asia.

3. The emergence and spread of agriculture has meant that little if any land can still be considered natural or untouched. Boserup proposed a five stage model of agricultural systems based on frequency of land use that describes how as agriculture intensifies, environmental alteration increases. Stage 1, forest-fallow cultivation, involves relatively long periods, up to 20 years, of fallow between periods cultivation. As the stages progress periods of fallow decline until they become extremely short or non-existent in the final stage.

4. An interesting aspect of rural land-use patterns is the uniformity of decisions farmers make about land-use within an area or region. Land-use patterns are determined by at least four groups of variables: (1) site characteristics, (2) cultural preference and perception, (3) systems of production, and (4) relative location.

5. Agriculture is carried out according to three systems of production: (1) peasant, (2) capitalistic, (3) socialist Subsistence agriculture or peasant agriculture is associated with underdeveloped countries and is labor intensive. Most of the farmers of the world including peoples of Latin America, Africa, and Asia practice subsistence agriculture. Subsistence agriculture has these characteristics: (1) the majority of workers are engaged in agriculture, (2) agricultural practices and methods are primitive, (3) agricultural produce is harvested on farms and used for direct consumption. Subsistence agriculture can be divided into three categories: (1) shifting cultivation in the tropics, (2) pastoral nomadism in arid regions, (3) intensive subsistence agriculture in Asia and in Central and South America.

6. Intensive subsistence agriculture is characterized by several features: (1) most of the work is done by hand, (2) plots are extremely small, (3) physiological density is very high, and (4) principal regions that are rural valleys and irrigated fields and low lying moist regions in the middle latitudes. Intensive subsistence agriculture is practices by more farmers than any other types of agriculture.

7. Agriculture in the United States epitomizes the commercial system. Modern American farming is quick to respond to developments, such as new production techniques. Farmers with sizable investments of money, materials, and energy can create drastic land use patterns. Agribusiness is large scale farming using vertical integration of production, processing, and marketing.

8. The characteristics of commercial agriculture include: (1) the consumption of agricultural production off the farm , in cities, (2) less than 2% of the population engaged in agriculture, (3) heavy use of machinery, fertilizers, and high yielding seeds, (4) extremely large farms, (5) agribusiness that stretches from the farm to the table.

9. Commercial agriculture can be divided into mixed crop and livestock farming, grain farming, milk production , cattle ranching, Mediterranean cropping, and horticulture and fruit farming.

10. During the last 100 years, American farm production has burgeoned remarkably. Demand for food has increased, but not as much as supply. The result has been falling prices and reduced farm incomes, leading to a closing of many farms in America. Farm subsidy programs have been in place since as early as the 1930s in an attempt to support farm incomes. It appears that these subsidies have not benefited small family farms, but may have even continued to force small farmers off the land.

11. The socialist mode of production was found in the former Soviet Union. The land was organized into collective farms and state-owned enterprises. The government provided food at a price and quantity well below the market equilibrium price. Subsequently, massive food shortages developed. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union prices have increased, substantially reducing food shortages.

12. The law of diminishing returns refers to the situation that confronts farmers in the short run. As successive units of a variable input are applied to a fixed input total product output passes through three stages. First there is production at an increasing rate, then production increases at a decreasing rate, and third, production itself declines. The boundary between stages one and two is termed the extensive margin of cultivation, and the boundary between stages two and three is termed the intensive margin of cultivation. This leaves stage two as the zone of rational production.

12. Von Thumen’s model provides an alternative view of economic rent. Holding land quality constant he demonstrates that rent is the price of accessibility to the market. In other words, rents decline with the distance from market center. Geographers often use the term location rent as opposed to economic rent to express the concept of decline in rent with an increase in distance from the market. When the rent gradient is located around the market town it becomes a rent cone, the base of which indicates the extensive margin of cultivation for a single crop grown at a single intensity. Separation between more intensive and less intensive systems illustrates the principle of highest and best use. According to this principle, land is used for the purpose that earns the highest location rent for the owner, but not necessarily the highest wage for the worker.

13. Thunen effects at the local scale can be observed in the developing world. Forest zones surrounding Addis Ababa, Ethiopia follow von Thunen’s pattern, for example. Although the map of US agricultural regions, at the national level, does not exhibit classic rings, certain spatial regularities are apparent per the von Thunen model.

Chapter 6

1. The emergence of the industrial city, a product of capitalism, resulted in lower transportation and communication costs for entrepreneurs who needed to interact with one another; hence, most commercial and industrial enterprise is concentrated in and around the most accessible part of the city - the Central Business District (CBD).

2. Firms are attracted to cities and thus aid in city growth because of two opposing forces. These forces are scale economies and transportation costs. Two types of agglomeration economies account for city growth: localization economies refer to declining average costs for firms as the output of the industry of which they are part of increases. Urbanization economies is referred to declining average costs for cities as firms increase their levels of activity.

3. Classical location theory states that activity is located in cities according to the outcome of the competitive bidding process. People willing and able to pay the highest price for a particular site win the competition. Competitive bidding processes change according to effective demand, public tastes and standards, and land use regulation. The maximum rent that a particular user pays for the site is called the ceiling rent.

4. Residential location decisions are influenced by accessibility to employment and services, and general supply and demand factors, which influence bid prices. Key demand factors in the housing market are population; inflation-adjusted, or ‘real’ income per person or household; and home buyers expectations of the future change in home prices. Important supply factors are the availability of items needed in building new housing units (land, labor, and construction equipment and materials) and construction standards or building codes.

5. Firms locational decisions are based on the assumption that firms want to maximize profits. If intraurban accessibility is important to sales a firm should be willing to make higher bids that for locations that are central to all potential customers. Basic firms export what they produce to the surrounding areas; non basic firms sell goods or services to city residents and businesses. Revenues of nonbasic firms decline as the firms move away from downtown or from other central locations. Locations within the city has little effect on the revenues of basic firms, but more of an effect on some of their costs.

6. The concentric zone model of urban landuse emphasizes centripetal forces that focus economic activity on the CBD which was the dominant center of urban spatial organization in the industrialized city. Five zones from center to periphery include: (1) central business district, (2) zone of transition, (3) zone of independent working men’s homes, (4) the zone of better residences, and (5) the commuter zone.

7. According to the sector model a city grows outward from a central business district in a series of wedges or sectors, centered on routes of transportation. One wedge may include high-rent residential, another low-rent residential, and still another industrial.

8. The multiple nuclei model describes a model in which cities develop around a series of centroids. The land uses are identified in areas around various nucleations in downtown, but especially in the suburbs. No one city represents a pure form of any of the three models. Most cities have visible aspects of all three models and are therefore composite.

9. As a result of automobile based interurban dispersal, the city has evolved into a restructured form called multicentered metropolis. Classical models cannot accommodate this new reality easily. The rapid spread of urban North America owes much to the nature of the radial and circumferential freeway network, which resulted in near equal levels of convergence time across the metropolitan area, destroying the region wide advantage of the CBD. By the year 2000, trend projections indicate that the United States will consist of super urban regions: (1) BoWash, extending along the Atlantic Seaboard, (2) ChiPitts, stretching from Chicago to Pittsburgh, (3) SanSan, a belt from San Francisco to San Diego, and (4) JaMi, a strip from Jacksonville to Miami. In Canada, there is the Windsor-Quebec City axis, known as Main Street.

11. The trend towards single-family housing in the suburbs has been reinforced by: (1) low mortgage interest rates, (2) government loan guarantees, (3) property-tax reductions for owner-occupied homes, (4) cheap transportation, (5) massive highway subsidies, and (6) cheap land.

12. Intercity neighborhood redevelopment involves gentrification - property upgrading by high income settlers which frequently results in the displacement of low income residents.

13. The problem of the city are numerous, including: (1) urban sprawl, which has generated uneven development, pollution, and the irrational use of space and increasingly impinges on the life of urban residents, (2) fiscal crises which threaten to bankrupt cities while leaving the suburbs untouched, (3) jobs are moving out with modern technology and development, and so are shopping centers and entertainment, (4) increasing violence in the inner city. The need for the city, as far as the middle class is concerned, has diminished. Affordable housing is a major problem in today’s modern cities, and planned public housing projects have not solved big city problems. The inner city is home to the metropolitan disadvantaged and includes a few specialized services, where suburban and satellite cities house the affluent and support a range of services that were previously city-bound.

14. Local and regional planners increasingly support the notion of increasing the supply of housing in job-rich areas, and the quantity of jobs in housing rich areas. The concept is the jobs/housing balance. Most new employment opportunities matched to the work skills of inner city residents are created in the suburbs. This is known as the spatial mismatch theory. Thus the poor are faced with the problem of either finding work in a stagnating industrial area, the inner city, or commuting longer distances to keep up with the dispersing job market through reverse commuting.

Chapter 7

1. Locational patterns of cities include: (1) transportation cities aligned along transportation routes and at junctions of different types of transportation, (2) specialized function centers which develop around a localized physical resource, (3) a uniform pattern of centers, referred to as central places that exchange goods and services with their hinterland. Central-place theory emphasizes that cities perform extensive services for their hinterland. Business conducted totally within the hinterland is called settlement-forming trade. Activity that is directed to outside markets is called settlement-building trade. Business conducted with residents of the center is called settlement-serving trade.

2. Central places serve large areas around the city. These areas are called hinterlands, tributary areas, trade or market areas, or urban fields. Areas of dominant influence (ADI) also called daily urban systems, is that area that describes the extent of the social, economic, and cultural ties between a city and its tributary region. Newspaper circulation and commuting are conceptually good indicators. People in the tributary area look to the regional newspaper for information on sales and social events, or to the city as an employment location.

3. The law of retail gravitation can be used to provide estimates of trade boundaries. It is a type of gravitational model. Gravitational models are not as useful for understanding the processes underlying retail and social behavior, as they are for providing descriptions of the behavior of large populations.

4. Central-place theory attempts to answer four questions about cities in a regional economy: (1) How many cities will develop? (2) Why are some cities larger than others? (3) Where will the cities locate? (4) What will be the size of each cities trade area? The range of a good is the maximum distance that people are willing to travel to obtain the good at a market price. The minimum level of effective demand that will allow a firm to stay in business is called the threshold of a good.

5. Different goods have different thresholds. Inexpensive, frequently purchased, everyday necessities have low thresholds. Goods that are costly and purchased infrequently have higher thresholds. Items with low thresholds are called low-order goods, while goods with high thresholds are called higher-order goods.

6. It is possible to order centers and create a hierarchy of central places. The order of a center is determined by the highest order good offered by the center. A central place hierarchy can be regarded as a multiple system of nested centers and market areas. Low order centers and their market areas nest under the area of higher order centers. Evidence supports central place theory in the Upper Midwest of the United States where trade center types range from hamlets with only gasoline service stations and eating and drinking establishments through to metropolitan retail centers with a full range of services. As the hierarchical level increases, the number of trade centers decreases. The large centers are widely spaced while the hamlets are the most numerous.

7. We can obtain an urban size hierarchy by making centers according to the population sizes. The most well-known representation of this hierarchy is the rank/size rule. If all the settlements in an area are ranked in descending order of population size, the population of the r th city is 1 divided by r , the size of the largest cities population.

8. Space preference structures measure the trade-off between a journey’s distance to shop for goods and services, and the town size. The larger the town size, the greater the positive mental stimulus, while the increased distance to the town center is a negative mental stimulus. Rural residents receive a certain payoff to go a certain distance, and the payoff can be measured by town size as a surrogate for the market basket of shopping possibilities that exist there. A central place hierarchy of goods and services also exists inside the a city. This hierarchy is the retail hierarchy, and urban residents display a similar behavior to rural residents. Low order goods are obtained from the closest places, while higher order goods are obtained from higher order centers.

9. At the international level the new international division of labor is forging the cities of the world into a composite system. Industrial restructuring has contributed to major shifts in employment and trade. In the US, as international business activity has become much more important, international decision making has become concentrated in cities such as New York , Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, and cities that were important in the earlier national orientated phase of the economy have lost ground to these global cities. Along with other cities such as London, and Tokyo these world cities are control points for the world economy and decisions made in them have important implications for the whole globe.

10. An answer to the decline of many of America’s largest cities may be the linking of the parts and functions of a city through networked computers, creating what are known as smart cities. The communities that prosper into the next century will be those that use the potential of information technology to transform the way business, education, and government is conducted. These technologies offer opportunities to provide low cost, quality services to currently poorly served neighborhoods and areas.