what is development geography essay

How to Write Geography Essay: Topics and Examples

Table of contents

• 1 What Is Geography Essay
• 2 Choosing a Topic
• 3 Research and Data Collection
• 4 Planning the Essay
• 5 Writing the Essay
• 6 Examples of Geography Essays
• 7 Unlocking the World: Key Insights from Our Geographic Exploration

Welcome to the dynamic world of geography essays, where understanding the Earth’s surface becomes an enlightening journey. This article serves as a comprehensive guide to writing a geography essay, starting with the crucial step of selecting a captivating topic. We’ll navigate through various popular topics, emphasizing the importance of effective research and data collection.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• How to select engaging and relevant geography essay topics.
• The importance of thorough research and effective data collection methods.
• Strategies for planning and organizing your geography essay for clarity and impact.
• Tips for writing a compelling geography essay, including structuring and presenting arguments.
• Analyzing examples of successful geography essays to guide and inspire your work.

As we transition into the details, prepare to enhance your understanding and skills in geography essay writing.

What Is Geography Essay

As we delve into the essence of a geography essay, it’s important to understand that it meticulously examines Earth’s landscapes and human activities. Furthermore, it aims to analyze how these two aspects interact, focusing on spatial relationships and patterns. Transitioning into the specifics, such essays often delve into particular geographic issues, aiming to broaden our comprehension of the world.

Moreover, when writing a geography essay, one must include accurate geographical data. This data, encompassing maps, statistics, and case studies, is crucial for a well-grounded analysis. Consequently, the essay should present facts and interpret them, offering fresh insights into the discussed topic.

Additionally, it’s noteworthy that an essay on geography stands out from others due to its unique subject matter approach. It demands a keen eye for detail and a profound understanding of the world’s physical and human dimensions. This requirement makes crafting such an essay a challenging yet fulfilling endeavor.

Lastly, the primary goal of a geography essay is to enlighten and inform. It persuades readers to view the world through a geographical lens, grasping the complex interplay between humans and their environment. This type of essay transcends mere academic exercise, serving as a means to foster a deeper appreciation for our world and its complex dynamics.

Choosing a Topic

The crucial point for a successful geography essay is selecting an engaging and appropriate topic. To choose a topic that resonates, consider current events, your interests, and the scope of your assignment. A good topic should captivate your interest and offer sufficient scope for in-depth study and analysis.

Popular geography essay topics often revolve around climate change , urban development, and cultural landscapes. These topics provide a rich ground for exploration and allow for diverse perspectives and interpretations. For example, a thematic essay on geography could focus on how urbanization affects local ecosystems or how cultural practices shape landscape use.

• Analyzing the Direct Impact of Climate Change on the Amazon Rainforest’s Biodiversity
• Urbanization in Mega Cities: Environmental Consequences and Sustainable Solutions
• Wind and Solar Power: Pioneers of Sustainable Energy Landscape
• Managing Water Scarcity in the Middle East: Strategies and Challenges
• The Amazon Deforestation Crisis: Causes, Impacts, and Global Responses
• Spatial Inequality: A Detailed Look at Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
• The Dynamics of Population Growth and Overconsumption in Asia
• Cultural Preservation of Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Basin
• Earthquakes in Japan: Analyzing Causes, Effects, and Preparedness Strategies
• Geography’s Role in the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
• Implementing Sustainable Agricultural Practices in India for Food Security
• The Kashmir Conflict: A Geopolitical Analysis of Border Disputes
• The Growing Crisis of Climate Refugees in the Pacific Islands
• The Importance of Urban Green Spaces in New York City’s Environmental Health
• The Impact of Globalization on Maori Culture in New Zealand
• Ecotourism in Costa Rica: Balancing Economic Benefits and Environmental Preservation
• Addressing Ocean Plastic Pollution: Case Studies from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• The Nile River Conflict: Water Politics in a Changing Climate
• Preventing Desertification in the Sahel: Strategies and International Cooperation
• GIS in Disaster Management: Case Studies of Earthquake Response and Recovery
• Measuring the Effects of Glacial Melting on Greenland’s Coastal Communities
• Tracing the Economic Geography of the Silk Road in the 21st Century
• The Health Impacts of Air Pollution in Beijing: Urban Policies and Challenges
• Vulnerable Communities: Assessing the Socioeconomic Impacts of Climate Change in Bangladesh
• The New Face of Migration: Syrian Refugees and European Response
• The Critical Role of Metropolitan Areas in Combating Global Warming
• Saving Madagascar’s Rainforest: Conservation Strategies and Challenges
• The Transition to Renewable Energy in Germany: A Model for the World?
• Satellite Imagery in Land Use Changes: A Study of the Brazilian Amazon
• Arctic Sovereignty: The Geopolitical Implications of Melting Ice Caps for Global Powers

To guide and inspire your topic selection, you can use geography essay examples. These examples showcase a range of topics and approaches, helping you understand what makes a topic both engaging and feasible for study. Remember, a well-chosen topic is the first step toward a compelling and insightful geography essay.

Research and Data Collection

To talk about thorough research, it is the backbone of any geography study, providing the factual and theoretical foundation to understand complex geographical phenomena. To explain why the study of geography is important, one must delve into diverse and reliable sources that offer insights into how geographical factors shape our world and affect our lives. This research underpins the type of geography being studied, whether physical, human, or environmental.

Collecting geographical data can be done through various methods. Firstly, fieldwork is essential, especially for physical geography, as it allows for the direct observation and measurement of geographical features and processes. For human geography, surveys and interviews can yield valuable data on human behaviors and social patterns. Moreover, a thorough literature review also helps understand existing research and theories, providing a critical context for new findings.

Furthermore, evaluating sources for their credibility and relevance is vital. This involves checking the qualifications of the authors, the rigor of their methodologies, and the recency of their findings. Reliable sources are peer-reviewed and come from reputable academic or scientific institutions. What is more, ensuring the credibility of sources strengthens the arguments made in a geography essay and enhances the overall understanding of the topic.

In summary, comprehensive research and careful data collection are fundamental in geography. They enable a deeper understanding of how geographical aspects shape our environment and lives, which is central to the discipline.

Planning the Essay

When you start planning a geography essay, it begins with creating an outline to organize thoughts and research. This step is crucial as it helps structure the essay logically, ensuring a smooth flow of ideas. Start by listing major points and supporting evidence. This framework guides the writing process and maintains focus on the chosen topic. Planning involves outlining the essay and crafting a compelling thesis. Planning involves outlining the essay and crafting a compelling thesis. This process ensures the essay remains focused and coherent, addressing the chosen geography topic. By establishing a clear roadmap for the essay, writers can navigate their arguments and evidence with precision, avoiding common pitfalls such as digression or ambiguity. Now, with our plan in place, let’s transition to examining the structure more closely, exploring how to effectively organize our thoughts and research into a well-structured essay that engages and informs the reader.

Writing the Essay

When you finally start writing, a geographical essay involves several key steps, each demanding attention to detail and a balance between descriptive and analytical writing. This balance is crucial in creating an essay about geography that informs, engages, and persuades.

The introduction sets the stage. Start with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention, followed by background information that provides context to the topic. This section should conclude with a clear and concise thesis statement that guides the rest of the essay.

In the body, organize paragraphs thematically or chronologically , depending on the essay’s focus. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence that relates to the thesis. Following this, present your arguments and support them with geographical theories and data. This is where you incorporate detailed information from your research, including statistics, case studies, and examples. Make sure to explain how this data supports your arguments. A geography research paper demands precision in presenting data and clarity in its interpretation.

When discussing geographical theories, link them directly to your topic. This shows your understanding of the subject and how these theories apply to real-world scenarios. Remember, each paragraph should have a smooth transition to the next, maintaining a coherent flow of ideas.

In the conclusion, summarize the key points of your essay. Restate the thesis in light of the arguments and evidence presented. The conclusion should not introduce new information but encapsulate what the essay has covered. It’s also an opportunity to emphasize the importance of the topic, suggesting potential areas for future research or implications of your findings.

Throughout the essay, maintain a balance between descriptive and analytical writing . Descriptive writing helps paint a picture for the reader, making the data and theories more relatable. Analytical writing, on the other hand, demonstrates your ability to think critically about the topic, evaluating and interpreting the information in a meaningful way.

Examples of Geography Essays

Diversity in style and approach marks the essence of geography writing. A popular method is the comparative approach, contrasting different geographical phenomena. This method often appears in works comparing landscapes or urban vs. rural areas. Another common technique is the case study, focusing on a specific location or event for in-depth analysis of a particular issue.

Thematic approaches cover broader topics like climate change, globalization, or human migration, weaving together various theories and data for a comprehensive view. Additionally, argumentative compositions present a thesis supported by geographical evidence, frequently seen in discussions about environmental policies or land use conflicts.

Each style offers unique insights, providing varied ways to explore and understand geographical concepts and issues. For an in-depth exploration and diverse perspectives on these topics, consider reviewing geography essay examples. This resource can enrich your understanding and offer a broad spectrum of approaches to geographical analysis, from case studies on environmental conservation to essays on urban development and spatial inequalities.

• Geography Unveiled: Costa Rica’s Absolute Location Revealed
• Geography Unveiled: Navigating Earth’s Spatial Tapestry through Five Themes
• The Ever-Changing Canvas of New England Weather
• The Mystique and Marvels of the Desert Biome
• The Impact of Geography on the Development of Egypt

Unlocking the World: Key Insights from Our Geographic Exploration

This journey through the realm of geography reveals the field’s depth and complexity. From initial planning to diverse writing methods, the main insight stands out: geography compositions are more than maps and data; they are about comprehending our world’s rich tapestry. They balance descriptive narrative and critical analysis, backed by meticulous research and credible sources.

Whether exploring climate change impacts, urban developments, or cultural landscapes, these works offer a lens to see and understand the world anew. They prompt critical thinking about our environment and our place in it. Navigating various geographic topics brings not just academic insights but also life lessons in appreciating our world’s complexity and beauty.

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Research progress and prospect on development geography

• Review Article
• Published: 06 March 2021
• Volume 31 , pages 437–455, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Xiangzheng Deng 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Gui Jin 4 ,
• Shujin He 1 ,
• Chengxin Wang 5 ,
• Zhaohua Li 6 ,
• Zhanqi Wang 7 ,
• Malin Song 8 ,
• Qingyuan Yang 9 ,
• Anlu Zhang 10 &
• Jiancheng Chen 11  

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In this paper, we review the research progress in development geography since the 20th century, focusing on its connotation and theory, fields, methods, and development trends. Specifically, we systematically review the research and applications of development geography, comprising fields such as the convergence of underdeveloped countries and regions, and the convergence of the process of improving the quality of life in developed countries and regions. Then, based on an analysis of research progress in development geography in foreign countries, we examine the development conditions and disciplinary advantages of development geography in China. Further, we highlight that future development geography research in China should focus on the latest international academic research and China’s national macro-strategic needs. Future research in development geography should be guided by the theory of sustainable development, the core of which is to improve sustainable livelihood capacity and regional green development levels in underdeveloped regions. This core includes the construction of industrial policy and development geography theory, as well as an interdisciplinary integrated research system. The focus must be placed on researching the spatial patterns, diffusion characteristics, and the convergence mechanism of regional development. Such a focus will facilitate exploration of the regulatory policies and scientific paths that serve regional economic construction and industrial development.

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Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing, 100101, China

Xiangzheng Deng & Shujin He

Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, CAS, Beijing, 100101, China

Xiangzheng Deng

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

School of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, 250358, China

Chengxin Wang

Faculty of Resources and Environmental Science, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, China

School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

Zhanqi Wang

School of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, Anhui, 233030, China

School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

Qingyuan Yang

College of Land Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

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Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41771568

Deng Xiangzheng, PhD and Professor, specialized in natural resource management, global change and regional sustainable development.

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Deng, X., Jin, G., He, S. et al. Research progress and prospect on development geography. J. Geogr. Sci. 31 , 437–455 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-021-1852-x

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Received : 22 November 2020

Accepted : 05 January 2021

Published : 06 March 2021

Issue Date : March 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-021-1852-x

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Environment and Development by Brent McCusker LAST REVIEWED: 13 January 2014 LAST MODIFIED: 13 January 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0086

The topic “environment and development” is so broad that it could easily cover any number of sub-topics that have already been given their own bibliographies in this series, such as cultural ecology and human ecology, political ecology, or developing world. Separately, environment is defined here as the entirety of the physical world consisting of the world’s land masses, oceans, and atmosphere. Development is defined as the process of growth and change in human social, political, and economic systems. The two terms have traditionally intersected in developing areas where one or more natural resources have been utilized to promote economic growth. This intersection has been extended in the recent literature to include not only the impact of development on environment but also human perceptions of environment in the development process and the role of non-human actors in development. “Developing areas” are defined as those places where economic and/or social development has been slower, hindered, or in some way less than average. This need not refer to country or continental units of space, nor need it be restricted to the “global south” or “Third World.” Those terms often connote a homogeneity that research has shown to be problematic.

There are many ways to approach environment and development; however the texts below are representative of truly integrative approaches to the field. Each one remains at a level of abstraction that allows its lessons to be applied broadly. Bartlemus 1986 is a good starting point as the text is general and accessible. Students would be especially encouraged to start with that text. Moseley and Logan 2004 is a good starting point for anyone interested in environment-development in Africa. Adams 2008 , Chambers 1987 , and Lopez and Toman 2006 engage the concept of “sustainability” but in a general manner and thus are good overviews. Kirkby, et al. 2001 takes a regional approach to its overview while Sinha and Siddhartha 2007 discusses climate change and its potential impacts on development and environment.

Adams, William. Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in a Developing World . New York: Routledge, 2008.

This is a key introductory text that guides readers through a range of issues from sustainability to development. It is a critical inquiry into the environment-development nexus.

Bartlemus, Peter. Environment and Development . Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1986.

A classic text exploring environmental policy and development in developing countries.

Chambers, Richard. Sustainable Livelihoods, Environment and Development: Putting Poor Rural People First . IDS Discussion Paper 240. Brighton, UK: IDS, 1987.

A groundbreaking paper arguing that poor people themselves need to be prioritized in development to ensure more resilient livelihoods and a sustainable environment.

Gray, L. C., and W. G. Moseley. “A Geographical Perspective on Poverty-Environment Interactions.” Geographical Journal 171.1 (2005): 9–23.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2005.00146.x

A foundational article that outlines environment-development issues from a geographical perspective.

Kirkby, J., P. O’Keefe, and C. Howorth. “Introduction: Rethinking Environment and Development in Africa and Asia.” Land Degradation & Development 12 (2001): 195–203.

DOI: 10.1002/ldr.431

In this introduction to a special edition, the authors explore recent advances in thinking on environment and development. Included here is a good (and rare) example of consideration of environment-development at a broad, holistic scale.

Lopez, Ramon, and Michael Toman. Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability: New Policy Options . New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

DOI: 10.1093/0199298009.001.0001

Topics covered in this text range from trade, energy development, and conservation in developing countries. Pays special attention to how policy can be formulated to address pressing issues.

Moseley, W. G., and B. I. Logan, eds. African Environment and Development: Rhetoric, Programs, Realities. King’s SOAS Studies in Development Geography . Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.

A good example of environment and development thinking that utilizes case studies to reinforce key points. A good introduction for environment-development issues in Africa.

Sinha, Ajit, and Mitra Siddhartha. Economic Development, Climate Change and the Environment . New York: Routledge, 2007.

Edited volume covers specialized topics related to the environment and development such as degradation, thermal power generation, trade, forest logging, and bio-diesel production.

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What factors influence development?

Colonisation, TNCs and trade agreements and physical factors all influence development .

There are significant variations in levels of development across the world. This is known as the development gap . Both physical and human factors have caused uneven development.

What are the historical reasons for varying levels of national development?

Colonialism has had a significant impact on development. Colonialism is the policy or practice of taking full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

During the 1700s and 1800s, a large proportion of the global south was colonised by European countries, including Portugal, Spain, Britain and France. The reason for colonisation was to access raw materials and labour to compete with other global powers at the time. Many countries colonised in South America, Asia and Africa were badly affected. This is especially the case for those who became part of the transatlantic slave trade.

Many colonised countries gained independence in the twentieth century. For example, India gained independence from the UK in 1947. However, independence brought problems to a number of countries. For example, when the Democratic Republic of Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, it was reported that there were only 14 university graduates in its population.

Many political problems, conflicts and disputes in the world today stem from colonisation. European countries carved up and re-defined many areas in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. However, this resulted in the borders of many countries changing, mixing different ethnic groups. Five million deaths resulted from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda in the 1990s.

Over 6 million people in Syria have been homeless due to the conflict since 2012. More than 3 million of these people are under 17, and the overwhelming majority are no longer in education.

How is development affected by economic factors?

During the 1800s, European nations took the raw materials they needed from colonised countries. Transnational corporations (TNCs) now buy raw materials from former colonies for relatively low prices. This harms economic development in many LICs. Prices are low because organisations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) have not done enough to ensure fair terms exist in the global trade of raw materials and food. In some LICs, corrupt officials have personally benefitted from selling resources cheaply. Also, food prices fluctuate depending on supply and demand.

Newly emerging economies have benefited from global trade. Countries such as China have benefitted from developing their manufacturing industries. This has led to significant economic growth.

What role do physical factors play in the development process?

Physical factors can hinder development. However, physical factors alone can’t be blamed on physical factors. For example, Japan is one of the world’s most developed countries despite being located in one of the world’s most active tectonic zones, resulting in regular earthquakes. The United States of America frequently experiences hurricanes but is highly developed.

Climate can have a significant impact on development. Countries located in North Africa, in the Sahara and Sahel regions, face significant challenges, including high temperatures, desertification and a lack of fresh water. However, these can be overcome with human ingenuity.

Areas prone to natural disasters also face challenges to development. For example, in the Caribbean, Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010. Two hundred thirty thousand people died as a result of the Haiti earthquake . As one of the poorest in the world, the country is still recovering. However, although 22000 people died or were missing in the 2011 Japan earthquake , many affected areas have now recovered.

Countries without a coastline also face challenges to development. With only a few exceptions, the world’s 45 land-locked countries are LICs or NEEs. Without a port, trade with other countries is challenging.

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Article Contents

Geography and future earth, roles of geographers in sustainable urbanization, feeding the world: food security, food safety and public health.

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The role of geography in sustainable development

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Jane Qiu, The role of geography in sustainable development, National Science Review , Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 140–143, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nww082

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China has achieved unprecedented economic growth in the past decades. This has had serious consequences on the environment and public health. The Chinese government now realizes that it is not just the quantity, but the quality of development that matters. It has begun to instigate a series of policies to tackle pollution, increase the proportion of clean energy, and redress the balance between urban and rural development—in a coordinated effort to build a harmonious society.

Building a harmonious world was also the theme of the 33rd International Geographical Congress, which was held in Beijing last August. At the meeting, Bojie Fu, a member of National Science Review ’s editorial board, shared a platform with geographers from Australia, China, Canada and France to discuss the challenges of urbanization, the roles of geographers in sustainable development, as well as the importance of food security, safety and diversity.

Economic geographer at the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing

Historical and cultural geographer at the University of Paris-Sorbonne in Paris, France

Health geographer at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada

Ecologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia

Physical geographer at the Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing; President of Geographical Society of China

Fu: Welcome to the 33rd International Geographical Congress in Beijing. The theme of this forum is about geography and sustainability development. Before we begin, perhaps we can introduce ourselves and our research interest. I’ll start. I’m trained in physical geography and landscape ecology. My research focuses on land-use changes, ecosystem services and management, especially concerning dry lands.

Stafford Smith: I work with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, the federal government agency for strategic applied scientific research. My background is also in system ecology of dry lands. I started at the local scale, particularly on plant and animal ecology in response to variability and the sustainability of pastoralism. It became more expansive fairly quickly to include pastoralists’ decision making and related social and economic aspects, and the interaction between different land users—and ultimately how all these come together and operate.

Five experts gathering together after the forum discussion. First row from left to right: Mark Rosenberg, Dadao Lu; second row from left to right: Mark Stafford Smith, Jean-Robert Pitte, Bojie Fu.

More recently, I’ve been working on climate change adaptation, which also has to do with uncertainties and future variability. It's a broad set of work about adapting to long-term changes, managing cities and ecosystems, and dealing with disasters. I’m also strongly involved in Future Earth, which concerns how various issues of global change come together in a systems way. This is in line with my long-term interest in how we can inform decision making by bringing together the social and environmental aspects of development issues.

Pitte: I’m the President of the Geographical Society in France—which, created in 1821, is the oldest in the world. Formerly I was the President of the Univeristy of Paris-Sorbonne. I also teach food studies in the agricultural school of Hokkaido University in Japan. My main field is historic and cultural geography. I did my PhD on the history of chestnut trees in Europe. Since then, I’ve been working on the geography of the quality of food, including wine, for over 25 years.

Lastly, I helped the French government to gain the recognition by UNESCO of the French gastronomic meal [a customary social practice for celebrating important moments in the lives of individuals and groups, such as births, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, achievements and reunions] as part of the world's intangible heritage. We are now working with many countries on this topic. China also has a long and rich gastronomic heritage. Perhaps it should also consider to apply for such recognitions.

Rosenberg: I’m a professor of geography and public health sciences. I’m also the Canada Research Chair in Development Studies. My research group mainly focuses on ageing and the implications for health and social services. We have a large research programme on that topic. I also have a big project on the access to health and social services by the aging population in Beijing with my Chinese colleagues at Beijing Normal University. My long-term interests are in the challenges of groups within society that are marginalized and their ability to access health and social services.

Lu: I’m an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). I’m a former director of the CAS’ Institute of Geography. I’m an economic geographer, focusing on sustainable development, especially the East-to-West development in China, and advises the government on such issues.

Fu: Future Earth is a very influential international programme on global change. What roles can geographers play?

Stafford Smith: China's goal to build a harmonious world is in line with that of Future Earth. The attributes of geographic research map very well with issues that Future Earth is trying to tackle. The need to link different disciplines, especially to link social and environmental elements, has become very important not only for analyzing the problems but thinking about the solutions. An intent of Future Earth is to be more engaged with policy makers, especially in coordinating opinions and policies. It's also very important to be able to visualise a future that everyone, especially leaders from different countries, can sign up to. Geography is uniquely positioned to link different disciplines together. That would be a nice starting point.

Pitte: I’d like to comment on the setup of National Science Review (NSR) . Why specialising only in natural science? Today, it's not possible to isolate natural science from global science. Global science is not just about natural science but about humanity, society and culture. I noted there are no social scientists in the editorial board. This is a big problem. In France, human geographers work closely with physical geographers. Geography is very important for unifying social and natural sciences.

Stafford Smith: I totally agree. It’d be wonderful if NSR could broaden its explicit engagement by taking a more integrative approach and by bringing in an element of geography and sustainable science.

Pitte: Many people in the West are very negative about globalisation and global warming. They definitely present challenges to mankind, but there are also opportunities. Geography is a good way of thinking the world today and identifying opportunities and challenges. The theme of this congress is to live together in diversity. This is very important. The role of geography is not only to describe but also to understand the world in a holistic way. In France, I’m in the minority who believe that the world is better today than yesterday. If we want, we can have a better future. Geographers can do many things to make the future better.

Rosenberg: I share your optimism. I think the challenge is how the scientific community, especially geographers, will respond in the coming years to the UN initiative on Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). It's critical that we play a meaningful role not only in basic research but in informing policies. We should focus on the positive aspects of moving forward on SDGs, and at the same time not to ignore areas where we are not succeeding.

The need to link different disciplines, especially to link social and environmental elements, has become very important not only for analyzing the problems but thinking about the solutions. — Mark Stafford Smith

Lu: China has invested heavily in the past decades on various aspects of climate change research, such as atmospheric science, oceanography and ecology. But the involvement of geographers has been rather limited. Future Earth is an important platform for geographers because it concerns the relationship between the natural environment and human society. I hope geographers will take an active part in Future Earth and push policy makers to take action. This is especially important in China, which faces many development challenges. Chinese geographers should help the government to succeed in sustainable development and building a harmonious society.

Fu: Future Earth aims to close the gap between environmental research and current policies and practices. Future Earth presents a great opportunity for geographers because geography is in essence a system science that links nature with society and links science with policy. We can contribute a lot. Geographers have rich datasets of observations (from monitoring networks), inventories, interviews and surveys. In China, such studies are closely linked to social implications because many projects are funded by the country's science ministry and must be relevant to national needs.

Stafford Smith: A challenge to get that interdisciplinary work really happening, connecting science with social science, is our incentive and award systems that focus on publications and are not set up to help integration very well. One implication is that researchers find it very hard to publish integrative work in specialised journals. Perhaps journals should be more open to that kind of papers, and there should also be more integrated, sustainability journals. This might be a more practical way to encourage research in integrated areas.

Fu: Let's move on to the topic of urbanisation, which is also closely related to geography. It's a hot topic in China. A big question is how to build sustainable cities, especially in developing countries. What's the relationship between geography and urbanisation?

Lu: Big cities need to be supported by economic development. Increases in population and city expansion have to be supported by energy and clean air and water. Urbanisation also need large areas of land as well as communication and transportation infrastructures. It's geographers’ job to assess how much energy a given level of urbanisation requires, how much land and clean water this needs, and how to go about infrastructure construction.

Urbanisation in China started much later than the West—only after it instigated economic reform 40 years ago when only 20% of the population lived in cities. Now it's over 50%. The pace of urbanisation is very rapid, which has caused a lot of problems. Until recently, insufficient attention has been paid to protecting natural resources and environment. Chinese geographers have drawn attention to the problems and had an important role in the current policy shift.

Geographers should start creating longitudinal datasets that will allow us to answer the process questions and causal relationships in sustainable development. — Mark Rosenberg

Top leaders now realise that sustainable urbanisation must go hand in hand with environmental protection and that this depends on the geographical attributes of particular regions. Now the pace of urbanisation has slowed down. But the pressure is still there to further urbanisation because China still has a large population in rural areas where the standard of life and work conditions are still quite poor. Further urbanisation is inevitable.

Fu: Indeed. Rapid urbanisation in China has caused many environmental problems. The West has passed that stage, you have a lot of experiences that we can learn from. So how can we move towards sustainable urbanisation?

Pitte: Developed countries don’t have mega cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and Tokyo, which have 12–14 million people. It's crazy. The biggest cities we have probably have several million population. I should say mega cities, or big cities in general, are very useful. They have better job and education opportunities; if well planned, densely populated areas can reduce land conversion and use energy more efficiently; they are also good places for brainstorming.

But there is a limit to the number of people a city can sustain. I was in Beijing for the first time 22 years ago. I think it's a much better city now, but it's reaching its limit. We have to try to stall the further growth of mega cities. This is a great challenge for China. But if you don’t do anything, there will be more and more people in your mega cities, exacerbating existing problems. It's impossible from many perspectives—both environmental and social.

Rosenberg: The level of urbanisation is certainly an important parameter. In Canada, 85% of the population live in cities. Another key parameter is the nature of populations. In Europe and Japan, 25% of the populations are over the age of 65. Canada is also moving towards that direction. It's projected that this will also be the case in China by 2050. This should impact how we build our cities but hasn’t been taken into account.

Water is another challenge. It's not only a question of finding and using water wisely, but how we clean and distribute water. Canada, for instance, has abundant fresh water, but the reality is many communities don’t get enough water, especially in summer months—because they don’t have the infrastructure to clean the water they need. In Canada, we often joke that it's much easier to convince politicians to build a new hockey arena than a new waste-water plant.

Stafford Smith: It's indeed a big challenge to get politicians to act proactively. Australia has just come through a mining boom, but we did not reinvest that money in infrastructure. There is a great need to really be able to deliver convincing analyses of the benefits of proactive action, which is surprisingly difficult.

Pitte: The challenge for geographers is to rethink land planning. We have to find ways to create lifestyles in small cities and in countryside with the same good conditions as in mega cities but without the problems. It's not easy. In France, land planning was considered only as urban planning for a long time. Today, we have to take a holistic approach towards land planning, encompassing rural planning, small-city planning, and mega-city planing.

Stafford Smith: I agree. The challenge is not only about how you organise things within cities, but how we organise patterns of settlement across the whole country. Chinese social geographers have conducted surveys to find out whether things are get steadily better as you move from rural areas to large cities. They found that things are better in rural areas and in mega cities and worst in intermediate-sized cities. China has to find ways to improve the infrastructure and communication in those medium-size cities, so people can enjoy both the benefits of big cities and the close proximity to the countryside.

As populations aggregate in big cities, so does the political focus. The rural areas, especially in remote regions—which are often managed by people in big cities—are increasingly marginalised. It's a common trend. But it's in those more remote regions that many of our resources come from and activities such as carbon sequestration take place. So another big challenge is to think about the connectivity between the central governance and more remote rural areas.

Rosenberg: Another issue is that geographers should start creating longitudinal datasets that will allow us to answer the process questions and causal relationships about what happens when people move through the life course and how their life changes. This is key to questions of urbanisation, the environment, and people's everyday life in cities. It will also put us in a better position to plan for the future. The health science communities in Europe and North America are starting to invest significant funds to build such longitudinal data.

Fu: China faces many development challenges. We should take a systematic approach, focusing not only on cities but also rural areas and their interaction. We must ensure that rural people, like city dwellers, can enjoy good social provisions in education, healthcare, communication and infrastructure.

Fu: Some of you have been working on food and public health. Let's talk a bit about these topics. China faces serious challenges. We have 1.3 billion people and need to produce enough food, which sometimes is in conflict with urbanisation and industrialisation. We also have serious problems with food safety, which impact our health.

Rosenberg: I’m an optimist on this for two reasons. First, this is an area we often learn from our mistakes. If we look at the data, it's clear that globally we certainly have the ability to produce enough high-quality food to feed the world. The challenge is how you organise societies in a way that allow safe production and distribution of food.

Second, it's clear from basic science that we are going to live in a warmer climate with drier soil. We are going to have to find ways to adapt our food-production systems to that reality. I think we are finally getting beyond the early debate of genetic modification. Ultimately, scientists will need to use genetic modification to find new crop varieties that can grow under new sets of conditions. But governments have to work together on this.

Pitte: I’d like to make several points. First, I don’t think food safety is a big problem. Life span is increasing in most parts of the world, including China. The situation is not getting worse compared to 50 years ago. Second, to improve the situation, we must advance greatly in clean energy. Third, regarding food security, I agree with you, we are clever enough to produce enough food for everyone in the world. But we do have problems in terms of food quality in terms of not only nutrition quality but culture quality. Food is an important part of culture. It's a pleasure of life. When you eat, you communicate with other people. If I eat with you in China, I eat Chinese food and I understand much more about China. When you come to France, you eat French food and you understand much more about France.

Food diversity is very important for the future of humanity. The global food market is good and necessary, but we also need locally produced food. When you travel as tourists, you don’t want to eat at MacDonald or Pizza Hut, you want to eat local food. It's a fantastic experience—just like experiencing different landscapes, languages, and people. It's good for the future of humanity to maintain this diversity of food. It's good for our physical health, our cultural health, and our imagination. There would be no future for humanity without imagination.

Food diversity is very important for the future of humanity. — Jean-Robert Pitte

Stafford Smith: I agree. It's about food distribution as much as about food production. The truth is that no country in the world has done well in sustainable development. Some of the so-called developed countries are among the worst when you take an integrative view. When you look at individual SDG targets, you can find all sorts of imperfections. But as an over-arching framework—which is about how we link food, energy, water, urbanisation, social equality, jobs, economics and everything else in governance—the SDGs are actually an extraordinary step forward in terms of integrated framing. It's important that we use that framing without getting lost in particular indicators. In China, we also need to make it resonate with the idea of building a harmonious society.

Lu: The issues of food security and safety are much less acute in developed countries. In China, the situation of food safety is getting worse. It's the same in other developing countries. Pollutants are poisoning our water and soil, which get into plants and livestock and consumed by humans. An urgent task is to establish causal relationship between pollutants and diseases. There is little research on this in China. This is why people who sue the industries for causing public health problems rarely win. Without a clear causal relationship, the government cannot force the industries to compensate. It requires a multidisciplinary approach to tackle this—with geographers, environmental scientists and medical professionals working together.

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The volume brings together twenty-five of the most influential articles published in the field of development geography since 1960. The first part looks at the origins of development geography and the debates between modernization theorists and radicals that took shape in the 1970s. Thereafter, the book is organized thematically. Geographers have made key contributions to development studies in four major areas, all of which are represented here and include gender and households, development alternatives and identities, resource conflicts and political ecology and globalization and resistance. The book ends with three broad-ranging essays by leading figures in the field.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part i | 108  pages, from colonial geography to radical development geography, chapter 1 | 20  pages, the degeneration of tropical geography, chapter 2 | 14  pages, three approaches to the mapping of economic development in india 1, chapter 3 | 20  pages, manufacturing and the geography of development in tropical africa, chapter 4 | 12  pages, geography and underdevelopment — 1, chapter | 32  pages, geography and underdevelopment-part ii, chapter 5 | 10  pages, the white north and the population explosion, part ii | 74  pages, gender and households, chapter 6 | 22  pages, single-parent families: choice or constraint the formation of female-headed households in mexican shanty towns, chapter 7 | 20  pages, converting the wetlands, engendering the environment: the intersection of gender with agrarian change in the gambia*, chapter 8 | 30  pages, engendering everyday resistance: gender, patronage and production politics in rural malaysia, part iii | 76  pages, development alternatives and identities, chapter 9 | 22  pages, what causes poverty: a postmodern view, chapter 10 | 20  pages, modernization from below: an alternative indigenous development*, chapter 11 | 12  pages, constructing the dark continent: metaphor as geographic representation of africa, chapter 12 | 20  pages, reading landscape meanings: state constructions and lived experiences in singapore’s chinatown, part iv | 123  pages, resources conflicts and political ecology, chapter 13 | 10  pages, the political state and the management of mineral rents in capitalsurplus economies: botswana and saudi arabia⋆, chapter 14 | 24  pages, property vs. control: the state and forest management in the indian himalaya, chapter 15 | 20  pages, does “participation” in common pool resource management help the poor a social cost-benefit analysis of joint forest management in jharkhand, india, chapter 16 | 26  pages, authority and environment: institutional landscapes in raj as than, india, chapter 17 | 24  pages, primitive ideas: protected area buffer zones and the politics of land in africa, chapter 18 | 13  pages, this land is ours now: spatial imaginarles and the struggle for land in brazil, part v | 108  pages, globalization and its discontents, chapter 19 | 21  pages, the satanic geographies of globalization: uneven development in the 1990s, chapter 20 | 26  pages, provincializing capital: the work of an agrarian past in south indian industry, chapter 21 | 18  pages, spatialities of transnational resistance to globalization: the maps of grievance of the inter-continental caravan, chapter 22 | 16  pages, women, ngos and the contradictions of empowerment and disempowerment: a conversation, part vi | 82  pages, the (im)possibility of development, chapter 23 | 16  pages, understanding 20 years of change in west-central nepal: continuity and change in lives and ideas, chapter 24 | 33  pages, the (im)possibility of development studies, chapter 25 | 30  pages, development and governmentality*.

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Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.

Earth Science, Geography, Human Geography, Physical Geography

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Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it. They also examine how human culture interacts with the natural environment, and the way that locations and places can have an impact on people. Geography seeks to understand where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop and change over time.

Ancient Geographers

The term "geography" was coined by the Greek scholar Eratosthenes in the third century B.C.E. In Greek, geo- means “earth” and -graphy means “to write.” Using geography, Eratosthenes and other Greeks developed an understanding of where their homeland was located in relation to other places, what their own and other places were like, and how people and environments were distributed. These concerns have been central to geography ever since.

Of course, the Greeks were not the only people interested in geography, nor were they the first. Throughout human history, most societies have sought to understand something about their place in the world, and the people and environments around them. Mesopotamian societies inscribed maps on clay tablets, some of which survive to this day. The earliest known attempt at mapping the world is a Babylonian clay tablet known as the Imago Mundi. This map, created in the sixth century B.C.E., is more of a metaphorical and spiritual representation of Babylonian society rather than an accurate depiction of geography. Other Mesopotamian maps were more practical, marking irrigation networks and landholdings.

Indigenous peoples around the world developed geographic ideas and practices long before Eratosthenes. For example, Polynesian navigators embarked on long-range sea voyages across the Pacific Islands as early as 3000 years ago. The people of the Marshall Islands used navigation charts made of natural materials (“stick charts”) to visualize and memorize currents, wind patterns, and island locations.

Indeed, mapmaking probably came even before writing in many places, but ancient Greek geographers were particularly influential. They developed very detailed maps of Greek city-states, including parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. More importantly, they also raised questions about how and why different human and natural patterns came into being on Earth’s surface, and why variations existed from place to place. The effort to answer these questions about patterns and distribution led them to figure out that the world was round, to calculate Earth’s circumference, and to develop explanations of everything from the seasonal flooding of the Nile to differences in population densities from place to place.

During the Middle Ages, geography ceased to be a major academic pursuit in Europe. Advances in geography were chiefly made by scientists of the Muslim world, based around the Middle East and North Africa. Geographers of this Islamic Golden Age created an early example of a rectangular map based on a grid, a map system that is still familiar today. Islamic scholars also applied their study of people and places to agriculture, determining which crops and livestock were most suited to specific habitats or environments.

In addition to the advances in the Middle East, the Chinese empire in Asia also contributed immensely to geography. Around 1000, Chinese navigators achieved one of the most important developments in the history of geography: They were the first to use the compass for navigational purposes. In the early 1400s, the explorer Zheng He embarked on seven voyages to the lands bordering the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, establishing China’s influence throughout Southeast Asia.

Age of Discovery

Through the 13th-century travels of the Italian explorer Marco Polo, European interest in spices from Asia grew. Acquiring spices from East Asian and Arab merchants was expensive, and a major land route for the European spice trade was lost with the conquering of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire. These and other economic factors, in addition to competition between Christian and Islamic societies, motivated European nations to send explorers in search of a sea route to China. This period of time between the 15th and 17th centuries is known in the West as the Age of Exploration or the Age of Discovery.

With the dawn of the Age of Discovery, the study of geography regained popularity in Europe. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s helped spread geographic knowledge by making maps and charts widely available. Improvements in shipbuilding and navigation facilitated more exploring, greatly improving the accuracy of maps and geographic information.

Greater geographic understanding allowed European powers to extend their global influence. During the Age of Discovery, European nations established colonies around the world. Improved transportation, communication, and navigational technology allowed countries such as the United Kingdom to establish colonies as far away as the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa. This was lucrative for European powers, but the Age of Discovery brought about nightmarish change for the people already living in the territories they colonized. When Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, millions of Indigenous peoples already lived there. By the 1600s, 90 percent of the Indigenous population of the Americas had been wiped out by violence and diseases brought over by European explorers.

Geography was not just a subject that enabled colonialism, however. It also helped people understand the planet on which they lived. Not surprisingly, geography became an important focus of study in schools and universities.

Geography also became an important part of other academic disciplines, such as chemistry, economics, and philosophy. In fact, every academic subject has some geographic connection. Chemists study where certain chemical elements, such as gold or silver, can be found. Economists examine which nations trade with other nations, and what resources are exchanged. Philosophers analyze the responsibility people have to take care of Earth.

Emergence of Modern Geography

Some people have trouble understanding the complete scope of the discipline of geography because geography is interdisciplinary, meaning that it is not defined by one particular topic. Instead, geography is concerned with many different topics—people, culture, politics, settlements, plants, landforms, and much more. Geography asks spatial questions—how and why things are distributed or arranged in particular ways on Earth’s surface. It looks at these different distributions and arrangements at many different scales. It also asks questions about how the interaction of different human and natural activities on Earth’s surface shape the characteristics of the world in which we live.

Geography seeks to understand where things are found and why they are present in those places; how things that are located in the same or distant places influence one another over time; and why places and the people who live in them develop and change in particular ways. Raising these questions is at the heart of the “ geographic perspective .”

Exploration has long been an important part of geography, and it’s an important part of developing a geographic perspective. Exploration isn’t limited to visiting unfamiliar places; it also means documenting and connecting relationships between spatial, sociological, and ecological elements.

The age-old practice of mapping still plays an important role in this type of exploration, but exploration can also be done by using images from satellites or gathering information from interviews. Discoveries can come by using computers to map and analyze the relationship among things in geographic space, or from piecing together the multiple forces, near and far, that shape the way individual places develop.

Applying a geographic perspective demonstrates geography’s concern not just with where things are, but with “the why of where”—a short but useful definition of geography’s central focus.

The insights that have come from geographic research show the importance of asking “the why of where” questions. Geographic studies comparing physical characteristics of continents on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, for instance, gave rise to the idea that Earth’s surface is comprised of large, slowly moving plates—plate tectonics.

Studies of the geographic distribution of human settlements have shown how economic forces and modes of transport influence the location of towns and cities. For example, geographic analysis has pointed to the role of the United States Interstate Highway System and the rapid growth of car ownership in creating a boom in U.S. suburban growth after World War II. The geographic perspective helped show where Americans were moving, why they were moving there, and how their new living places affected their lives, their relationships with others, and their interactions with the environment.

Geographic analyses of the spread of diseases have pointed to the conditions that allow particular diseases to develop and spread. Dr. John Snow’s cholera map stands out as a classic example. When cholera broke out in London, England, in 1854, Snow represented the deaths per household on a street map. Using the map, he was able to trace the source of the outbreak to a water pump on the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street. The geographic perspective helped identify the source of the problem (the water from a specific pump) and allowed people to avoid the disease (avoiding water from that pump).

Investigations of the geographic impact of human activities have advanced understanding of the role of humans in transforming the surface of Earth, exposing the spatial extent of threats such as water pollution by artificial waste. For example, geographic study has shown that a large mass of tiny pieces of plastic currently floating in the Pacific Ocean is approximately the size of Texas. Satellite images and other geographic technology identified the so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

These examples of different uses of the geographic perspective help explain why geographic study and research is important as we confront many 21st century challenges, including environmental pollution, poverty, hunger, and ethnic or political conflict.

Because the study of geography is so broad, the discipline is typically divided into specialties. At the broadest level, geography is divided into physical geography, human geography, geographic techniques, and regional geography.

Physical Geography

The natural environment is the primary concern of physical geographers, although many physical geographers also look at how humans have altered natural systems. Physical geographers study Earth’s seasons, climate, atmosphere, soil, streams, landforms, and oceans. Some disciplines within physical geography include geomorphology, glaciology, pedology, hydrology, climatology, biogeography, and oceanography.

Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists investigate the nature and impact of wind, ice, rivers, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, living things, and other forces that shape and change the surface of Earth.

Glaciologists focus on Earth’s ice fields and their impact on the planet’s climate. Glaciologists document the properties and distribution of glaciers and icebergs. Data collected by glaciologists has demonstrated the retreat of Arctic and Antarctic ice in the past century.

Pedologists study soil and how it is created, changed, and classified. Soil studies are used by a variety of professions, from farmers analyzing field fertility to engineers investigating the suitability of different areas for building heavy structures.

Hydrology is the study of Earth’s water: its properties, distribution, and effects. Hydrologists are especially concerned with the movement of water as it cycles from the ocean to the atmosphere, then back to Earth’s surface. Hydrologists study the water cycle through rainfall into streams, lakes, the soil, and underground aquifers. Hydrologists provide insights that are critical to building or removing dams, designing irrigation systems, monitoring water quality, tracking drought conditions, and predicting flood risk.

Climatologists study Earth’s climate system and its impact on Earth’s surface. For example, climatologists make predictions about El Niño, a cyclical weather phenomenon of warm surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. They analyze the dramatic worldwide climate changes caused by El Niño, such as flooding in Peru, drought in Australia, and, in the United States, the oddities of heavy Texas rains or an unseasonably warm Minnesota winter.

Biogeographers study the impact of the environment on the distribution of plants and animals. For example, a biogeographer might document all the places in the world inhabited by a certain spider species, and what those places have in common.

Oceanography, a related discipline of physical geography, focuses on the creatures and environments of the world’s oceans. Observation of ocean tides and currents constituted some of the first oceanographic investigations. For example, 18th-century mariners figured out the geography of the Gulf Stream, a massive current flowing like a river through the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery and tracking of the Gulf Stream helped communications and travel between Europe and the Americas.

Today, oceanographers conduct research on the impacts of water pollution, track tsunamis, design offshore oil rigs, investigate underwater eruptions of lava, and study all types of marine organisms from toxic algae to friendly dolphins.

Human Geography

Human geography is concerned with the distribution and networks of people and cultures on Earth’s surface. A human geographer might investigate the local, regional, and global impact of rising economic powers China and India, which represent 37 percent of the world’s people. They also might look at how consumers in China and India adjust to new technology and markets, and how markets respond to such a huge consumer base.

Human geographers also study how people use and alter their environments. When, for example, people allow their animals to overgraze a region, the soil erodes and grassland is transformed into desert. The impact of overgrazing on the landscape as well as agricultural production is an area of study for human geographers.

Finally, human geographers study how political, social, and economic systems are organized across geographical space. These include governments, religious organizations, and trade partnerships. The boundaries of these groups constantly change.

The main divisions within human geography reflect a concern with different types of human activities or ways of living. Some examples of human geography include urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, social geography, and population geography. Human geographers who study geographic patterns and processes in past times are part of the subdiscipline of historical geography. Those who study how people understand maps and geographic space belong to a subdiscipline known as behavioral geography.

Many human geographers interested in the relationship between humans and the environment work in the subdisciplines of cultural geography and political geography.

Cultural geographers study how the natural environment influences the development of human culture, such as how the climate affects the agricultural practices of a region. Political geographers study the impact of political circumstances on interactions between people and their environment, as well as environmental conflicts, such as disputes over water rights.

Some human geographers focus on the connection between human health and geography. For example, health geographers create maps that track the location and spread of specific diseases. They analyze the geographic disparities of health-care access. They are very interested in the impact of the environment on human health, especially the effects of environmental hazards such as radiation, lead poisoning, or water pollution.

Geographic Techniques

Specialists in geographic techniques study the ways in which geographic processes can be analyzed and represented using different methods and technologies. Mapmaking, or cartography, is perhaps the most basic of these. Cartography has been instrumental to geography throughout the ages.

Today, almost the entire surface of Earth has been mapped with remarkable accuracy, and much of this information is available instantly on the internet. One of the most remarkable of these websites is Google Earth, which “lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean.” In essence, anyone can be a virtual explorer from the comfort of home.

Technological developments during the past 100 years have given rise to a number of other specialties for scientists studying geographic techniques. The airplane made it possible to photograph land from above. Now, there are many satellites and other above-Earth vehicles that help geographers figure out what the surface of the planet looks like and how it is changing.

Geographers looking at what above-Earth cameras and sensors reveal are specialists in remote sensing. Pictures taken from space can be used to make maps, monitor ice melt, assess flood damage, track oil spills, predict weather, or perform endless other functions. For example, by comparing satellite photos taken from 1955 to 2007, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discovered that the rate of coastal erosion along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea had doubled. Every year from 2002 to 2007, about 13.7 meters (45 feet) per year of coast, mostly icy permafrost, vanished into the sea.

Computerized systems that allow for precise calculations of how things are distributed and relate to one another have made the study of geographic information systems (GIS) an increasingly important specialty within geography. Geographic information systems are powerful databases that collect all types of information (maps, reports, statistics, satellite images, surveys, demographic data, and more) and link each piece of data to a geographic reference point, such as geographic coordinates. This data, called geospatial information, can be stored, analyzed, modeled, and manipulated in ways not possible before GIS computer technology existed.

The popularity and importance of GIS has given rise to a new science known as geographic information science (GISci). Geographic information scientists study patterns in nature as well as human development. They might study natural hazards, such as a fire that struck Los Angeles, California, United States, in 2008. A map posted on the internet showed the real-time spread of the fire, along with information to help people make decisions about how to evacuate quickly. GIS can also illustrate human struggles from a geographic perspective, such as the interactive online map published by the New York Times in May 2009 that showed building foreclosure rates in various regions around the New York City area.

The enormous possibilities for producing computerized maps and diagrams that can help us understand environmental and social problems have made geographic visualization an increasingly important specialty within geography. This geospatial information is in high demand by just about every institution, from government agencies monitoring water quality to entrepreneurs deciding where to locate new businesses.

Regional Geography

Regional geographers take a somewhat different approach to specialization, directing their attention to the general geographic characteristics of a region. A regional geographer might specialize in African studies, observing and documenting the people, nations, rivers, mountains, deserts, weather, trade, and other attributes of the continent. There are different ways you can define a region. You can look at climate zones, cultural regions, or political regions. Often regional geographers have a physical or human geography specialty as well as a regional specialty.

Regional geographers may also study smaller regions, such as urban areas. A regional geographer may be interested in the way a city like Shanghai, China, is growing. They would study transportation, migration, housing, and language use, as well as the human impact on elements of the natural environment, such as the Huangpu River.

Whether geography is thought of as a discipline or as a basic feature of our world, developing an understanding of the subject is important. Some grasp of geography is essential as people seek to make sense of the world and understand their place in it. Thinking geographically helps people to be aware of the connections among and between places and to see how important events are shaped by where they take place. Finally, knowing something about geography enriches people’s lives—promoting curiosity about other people and places and an appreciation of the patterns, environments, and peoples that make up the endlessly fascinating, varied planet on which we live.

Gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographic dictionary. Gazetteers, which have existed for thousands of years, usually contain some sort of map and a set of information. Some gazetteers may contain a list of capital cities or areas where a specific resource is found. Other gazetteers may contain information about the local population, such as languages spoken, money used, or religious beliefs.

Old Maps People have been making maps for thousands of years. One of the oldest known maps was found near the city of Kirkuk, Iraq. Most geographers say it dates from 2500 B.C.E. It is a palm-sized block of clay depicting an area with two hills and a stream. (Some geographers think the stream is a canal made by people for irrigation.) Geographers have identified one of the towns on the map. However, they are not sure exactly what the hand-held map represents. Ancient maps could also be quite large. A nine-foot wall painting in Catal Hyuk, Turkey, was made about 6000 B.C.E. It is a map of a busy city, complete with crowded housing and even an erupting volcano. However, some scientists believe this "map" is decorative and not an accurate representation of what was there.

Wrong-Way Corrigan The American aviator Douglas Corrigan is often nicknamed "Wrong-Way Corrigan" because of a navigational error he made on a flight in 1938. Corrigan had just piloted a very impressive flight from the U.S. cities of Long Beach, California, to New York, New York. He was scheduled to fly back to Long Beach. Instead, with the sky covered in clouds, Wrong Way Corrigan flew to Dublin, Ireland.

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Article contents

Geography of growth and development.

• Esteban Rossi-Hansberg Esteban Rossi-Hansberg Department of Economics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.013.273
• Published online: 29 July 2019

The geography of economic activity refers to the distribution of population, production, and consumption of goods and services in geographic space. The geography of growth and development refers to the local growth and decline of economic activity and the overall distribution of these local changes within and across countries. The pattern of growth in space can vary substantially across regions, countries, and industries. Ultimately, these patterns can help explain the role that spatial frictions (like transport and migration costs) can play in the overall development of the world economy.

The interaction of agglomeration and congestion forces determines the density of economic activity in particular locations. Agglomeration forces refer to forces that bring together agents and firms by conveying benefits from locating close to each other, or for locating in a particular area. Examples include local technology and institutions, natural resources and local amenities, infrastructure, as well as knowledge spillovers. Congestion forces refer to the disadvantages of locating close to each other. They include traffic, high land prices, as well as crime and other urban dis-amenities. The balance of these forces is mediated by the ability of individuals, firms, good and services, as well as ideas and technology, to move across space: namely, migration, relocation, transport, commuting and communication costs. These spatial frictions together with the varying strength of congestion and agglomeration forces determines the distribution of economic activity. Changes in these forces and frictions—some purposefully made by agents given the economic environment they face and some exogenous—determine the geography of growth and development.

The main evolution of the forces that influence the geography of growth and development have been changes in transport technology, the diffusion of general-purpose technologies, and the structural transformation of economies from agriculture, to manufacturing, to service-oriented economies. There are many challenges in modeling and quantifying these forces and their effects. Nevertheless, doing so is essential to evaluate the impact of a variety of phenomena, from climate change to the effects of globalization and advances in information technology.

• agglomeration
• quantitative spatial economics
• development

Introduction

The distribution of population in space is extremely uneven. In 2005 , for example, about 70% of the world population was located in 10% of the available land. 1 Economic activity is even more concentrated than people. As Figure 1 indicates, in 2005 about 90% of gross activity was concentrated in 10% of the available land (using market exchange rates). 2 This concentration of economic activity implies that essentially all countries have empty areas and areas with a high density of people and economic activity. Of course, the areas of high density of population and those with high density of economic activity may not coincide. In fact, according to the same data for 2005 , the correlation of population density and real income per capita across cells of 1º longitude by 1º latitude in the world is –0.41. 3 That is, throughout the world, densely populated areas tend to be poor while scarcely populated areas are richer. It turns out that most of this negative correlation comes from the correlation of cells across countries. The average correlation within countries is 0.17. Hence, within countries, dense places are rich, while across countries dense countries tend to be poor. The correlation between population density and real income per capita also tends to increase with the level of development: it is –0.11 in Africa but as high as 0.50 in North America and 0.33 in western Europe. 4

Figure 1. Distribution of local population and gross product (G-Econ 4.0, one-degree cells).

These differences are large, and they affect billions of people. How can they be explained? Has the field of economics come up with an explanation for these and other similar geographic patterns in the process of economic development? This article sets out to describe the state of knowledge on this topic.

A Basic View of the Geography of Development

To avoid suspense, this section starts by putting a tentative answer on the table. At the first stages of development, when all regions have low productivity, people live in areas that provide high living amenities, like good weather or a nice beach. As more people move to the area, the local factors (like land) become scarce, and amenities become congested, which reduces the marginal value of labor, and therefore wages, and increases the cost of living in the area. These areas attract people until the utility they provide to the marginal agent that lives there is equalized with that of other regions (a spatial equilibrium condition that results from the ability to move across locations). Since the welfare level of individuals combines amenities and the utility from consuming goods, this happens at levels of real income per capita that are lower than in areas with worse amenities. The result is a negative correlation between population density and income per capita.

Now suppose that development happens through a process by which productivity increases in some areas and not in others. Again, these areas will attract individuals until the spatial equilibrium condition equalizes utilities in space for the marginal individuals. Now, however, most individuals will locate in areas that are productive but have to compensate workers to live in dense and not so attractive locations in terms of amenities. So people will tend to live in high real wage locations: a positive correlation between population density and income per capita. Simply put, the process of development makes people move from nice to productive locations, thereby increasing the correlation between population density and real income per capita.

Of course, this simple logic leaves open many questions. Perhaps the most relevant is: Why does productivity increase in some regions and not others? This is a crucial question. If the nicest locations simply become the most productive ones too, the correlation will not change or will change very little. If in contrast the areas that become the most productive ones are not the ones with the highest amenities, the correlation will increase rapidly with development. Reality is somewhere in between. Some cities like Rio de Janeiro are beautiful and fun, with great weather and a beautiful beach. However, they are not necessarily the ones that develop to be the most productive industrial centers. In the case of Brazil, that role is clearly taken by Sao Paolo, not Rio, although Rio is still one of the richest cities in Brazil.

The development of the economy of a region depends on the firms that decide to locate there, the infrastructure and institutions in the region, as well as its natural resources and geography. Well-connected regions have an advantage because firms and individuals located there can more easily trade goods and services with agents in other regions that specialize in a different set of products. Of course, the development of the economy of a region also depends on the size of its population and the characteristics of the individuals who decide to locate there. An obvious feedback is generated between the people that locate in a region, the firms that decide to locate and invest there, and the attractiveness of the region for individuals. Ultimately, local investment decisions by firms are determined by the equilibrium market size in the region where they decide to locate.

Firm Investment and Market Size

Why is market size so important? The reason is simply that it determines the returns to technological innovation (as well as other forms of local investments). The main characteristic of technology is that it can be used repeatedly. Its use does not deplete it. Economists refer to this property as the “replicability” or “non-rival feature” of technology. Because technology can be used multiple times, the returns to its invention is determined by the level of demand for the good or service it helps produce. This logic applies to all innovations, large and small, from inventing a new computer to improving the presentation of the menu in a restaurant. Of course, some technologies are more easily replicable in a given location than others. A production line in a factory is easily replicable, while restaurant decor might depend on its scale and so might be less scalable. The implication is that firms will innovate more in locations where in equilibrium they face a higher demand for their product or service. This demand depends on the number of customers that they have around them as well as the cost of reaching each of them (as determined by transport costs).

There is plenty of evidence that market size is important for innovation. Carlino, Chatterjee, and Hunt ( 2007 ) find that the elasticity in patents per capita increases with density in the United States. Combes, Duranton, Gobillon, Puga, and Roux ( 2012 ) find that the distribution of firm productivities is shifted uniformly to the right in larger cities, and Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2012 ) show that more productive cities pay entrepreneurs (who are likely responsible for most innovations) more. All this evidence is suggestive but not causal. Using exogenous variation in trade tariffs, De Loecker ( 2007 ) and Bustos ( 2011 ) show that firm productivity increases as a result of declines in trade costs. Bustos ( 2011 ) and Coelli, Moxnes, and Ulltveit-Moe ( 2016 ) actually find evidence that firms spend more in research and development as the result of the decline in trade costs. The latter paper estimates that trade liberalization accounted for up to 7% of knowledge creation during the 1990s. Finally, Sequeira, Nunn, and Qian ( 2017 ) find that locations in the United States that received more immigrants had sizable benefits on industrialization and innovation rates. All of these papers—and there are many more—document the effect of market size on local productivity and innovation. 5

If market size determines innovation and the initial distribution of economic activity in underdeveloped economies is largely determined by local amenities, it seems that the logical conclusion is that places with good amenities should be those that become more productive over time. The reason that this logic, although valid to some extent, is ultimately incomplete is that market size is not only determined by local population but also by the ease of accessing customers in other regions (trade costs) and the ease of attracting new residents (migration costs). Furthermore, the success and profitability of innovations depends heavily on the initial level of technology. There is ample evidence that innovators stand on the shoulders of other innovations, particularly if they locate closer by (Jaffe, Trajtenberg, & Henderson, 2005 ). In addition, the profitability of an innovation that increases productivity proportionally depends on the initial importance of the idea. Hence, locations that start with good technology because of good institutions, or good natural resources, have an advantage relative to other perhaps initially denser regions with better living amenities. Ultimately, the empirical importance of these channels is an empirical question. The relative importance of transport costs, density, and local productivity in facilitating innovation is a question that requires more empirical research.

Geography and Market Size

Of particular importance in determining local investment is the heterogeneity of locations in terms of their geography. Geography here refers to the particular location of a region relative to other regions and their characteristics. It is not very useful to have a great port that can park large ships if the region is isolated from all other regions with good attributes for economic production. Geographic location is important because it determines the market size of firms in that location. That is, it determines the surrounding distribution of economic activity and the transport and trade costs associated with accessing that purchasing power. This notion is sometimes also referred to as “market access” (as in Donaldson & Hornbeck, 2016 ; Redding & Sturm, 2008 ).

Overall, “spatial frictions,” defined as the cost of moving factors and goods and services across space, are an important determinant of the market access of firms. They affect the relative importance for a firm’s demand—and therefore its scale and innovation decisions—of local demand versus demand in other close and far-away locations. If transport costs are high, only local demand matters, and so innovation will mostly happen in locations that have good amenities and good local characteristic for production (like natural resources). In contrast, if transport costs are low, innovation will depend more on the geography of a location, through the cost of reaching other consumers. 6 In fact, this is exactly what Henderson, Squires, Storeygard, and Weil ( 2018 ) find. They show, using satellite data of lights at night, that within the set of countries that developed early agricultural variables explain incrementally six times as much variation in nightlights as trade variables. In contrast, for countries that developed later, trade variables explain a much larger part of the variation in nightlights within the country. This is very much in line with the basic model outlined earlier, since countries that developed later face much lower physical and institutional trade barriers due to better transport technology and international institutions, like the World Trade Organization. Hence, for these countries, geography—as determined by trade variables—matters more.

Constant Returns in the Aggregate With Local Decreasing Returns

The feedback loop outlined in the previous section generates a dynamic agglomeration force. A larger population leads to larger market size, which incentivizes firms to innovate more and improve their technology, which in turn increases labor demand and local population size. There are also similar, but static, agglomeration forces where local productivity is a function of local population due, for example, to knowledge spillovers (see the survey of these static forces in Duranton & Puga, 2004 ; Rosenthal & Strange, 2004 ). Of course, in equilibrium, there must be strong enough congestion forces that counterbalance these mechanisms. Otherwise, all economic activity would ultimately locate in just one small region with productivity that tends to infinity. This is not a good description of reality. The distribution of economic activity in space has remained fairly stable over time, as Gabaix ( 1999 ), Eeckhout ( 2004 ), Soo ( 2005 ), and Rossi-Hansberg and Wright ( 2007 ), among many others, have emphasized. Thus, there does not seem to be a tendency for the largest cities to grow disproportionally relative to the medium and smaller cities.

This stable distribution of city sizes indicates that congestion forces necessarily overwhelm these static and dynamic agglomeration forces. Ultimately, the disadvantages of being too dense overwhelm the advantages. Market sizes might increase, but innovation does not increase further because attracting workers to take advantage of the better technology becomes too expensive. This limits the growth of the denser regions in the world. Eventually, the denser areas in the world do not grow in relative terms. That is, locations ultimately face decreasing returns to scale. The fact that the amount of land in a location is fixed eventually leads to enough congestion so that the marginal return to all other factors starts to decline.

Note that this logic applies to a particular location but not to large regions or countries or to the whole world. The reason, as first proposed in Rossi-Hansberg and Wright ( 2007 ), is that aggregate economies can grow by replicating these dense locations. For example, as long as there is enough land in the United States, the aggregate economy can keep growing by replicating the density of New York City in other locations. Of course, some of these locations might not have all the advantages of Manhattan, but eventually the local decreasing returns in Manhattan motivate development elsewhere, perhaps at the outskirts of New York City, or perhaps in a completely different area. The main argument is simple, aggregate growth can happen in the presence of local decreasing returns because, locally, land is fixed. In contrast, in the aggregate, land is abundant and cheap. As stated at the beginning of this article, all countries have land that is not used for economic purposes. The price of that marginal land is essentially zero. The result is a world in which the aggregate world economy, and particularly large countries like the United States, can face close to constant returns to scale and roughly constant long-term growth, even in the presence of local decreasing returns.

The Difficulties of Making the Basic Model Precise

Preliminaries: static quantitative spatial models.

The last two decades have seen significant advances in spatial equilibrium models. Before this last wave of contributions, the literature was dominated by the approached summarized under the label “New Economic Geography.” This literature developed theoretical models of the location of economic activity based on the seminal framework in Krugman ( 1991 ) that used the endogenous static agglomeration force generated by taste for variety and home-market effects. In these models, in the presence of transport costs, agglomerations happen because having many firms in the same location reduces the cost of accessing the varied basket of goods that agents desire. This reduces the price index in agglomerated locations, which attracts agents to that location. This elegant theoretical mechanism allowed the literature to break away from more ad hoc and exogenous formulations of agglomerations forces where local productivity was simply assumed to depend on density. Furthermore, it connected the strength of the agglomeration forces with the level of transport costs and, more generally, with geography. This represented a great step forward.

The cost of having this theoretically more satisfying framework was that its complexity required focusing on examples with just a few locations that exhibited limited amounts of heterogeneity. As a result, it was hard to link models to specific geographic contexts and data. The connection with the data was mostly made through reduced-form implications of this stylized theory.

In the past 15 years the field has developed a number of frameworks that can connect much more closely with the data. Redding and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2017 ) summarize this literature that they label “Quantitative Spatial Economics.” The core setup uses a spatial equilibrium framework in which agents can move across locations, in some cases subject to mobility costs. Regions can trade between them, subject to costly transport costs. Regions differ in terms of their productivity, the amenities individuals enjoy while living in them, and their geography. Key to this setup is that it exploits a “gravity structure.” Namely, trade flows, migration flows, and potentially commuting flows depend on their iceberg transport, migration, or commuting costs in a log linear fashion. Gravity is not only a good description of the data (as described in Head & Mayer, 2014 , for trade flows, or Monte, Redding, & Rossi-Hansberg, 2018 , for commuting flows), but it can be easily modeled using Ricardian frameworks where locations differ in terms of their productivity to manufacture differentiated goods (see Allen & Arkolakis, 2014 ; Eaton & Kortum, 2002 ). These gravity-based spatial Ricardian models are simple enough to be solved for thousands of locations, multiple industries and local factors (as in Caliendo, Parro, Rossi-Hansberg, & Sarte, 2018 ), and a variety of other forms of spatial and individual heterogeneity. This yields tractable models that are rich enough to incorporate real-world geography and that can be quantified using detailed local data. In particular, these models can be “inverted” to match the distribution of income and population in space, as well as trade flows between locations, exactly. This is done by finding the local productivities, amenities, and bilateral costs that match these data using an exactly identified model.

The resulting quantified model can then be used to perform a variety of static counterfactual exercises. For example, one can introduce changes in trade costs, local characteristics, local institutions or structures, and so on. Given that the models can be solved for many locations, the framework can be applied to detail regions in a city (as in Ahlfeldt, Redding, Sturm, & Wolf, 2015 , for the case of Berlin) or to the whole world (as in Desmet, Nagy, & Rossi-Hansberg, 2018 ). The key underlying assumption is that the quantified local characteristics are invariant to the policy being analyzed.

One limitation of this approach is that it does not attempt to explain why agglomeration occurs. Agglomeration is simply the result of differences in local characteristics. Even when endogenous agglomeration effects are introduced, the models are quantified for parameter values where multiplicity of equilibria, and therefore the possibility of endogenous agglomeration, does not arise.

Introducing Dynamics

Another important limitation of this literature is that it works with static models in which the patterns in the spatial distribution of growth rates described earlier cannot be analyzed. The justification for this abstraction is simple: introducing dynamics into spatial frameworks is extremely hard. As Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2010 ) underscore, even setting up a dynamic-spatial model consistently is quite difficult. Boucekikine, Camacho, and Zou ( 2009 ) show that the basic investment problem with a forward-looking planner and continuous space is an ill-posed dynamic optimization problem where the initial value of the co-state does not determine the whole dynamic path. This essentially means that the current state variables do not determine the future evolution of the economy uniquely, which makes the computation and quantification of these models problematic if not impossible. The implication is that, to make progress, particularly in models that can be complex enough to relate to practical applications, spatial-dynamic problems have to be dramatically simplified.

To understand the type of simplifications that have been proposed in the literature, it is useful to first understand why this is such a complicated problem. Think of a firm that is deciding how much to invest in a given location, if at all. If the investment is durable, and to some degree irreversible, then the firm will need to forecast the return of such an investment contemporaneously and in the future in order to make this decision. In any given period, as argued earlier, the returns to an investment depend on the market size of the firm, which in turn depends on the whole distribution of economic activity in the world, as well as the related “spatial frictions.” Thus, accurately evaluating today’s returns involves developing a model of the economy that has as a state variable the whole distribution in space of all relevant local characteristics. Evaluating future returns requires the same information in the future, which implies that the firm needs a model of the evolution of theses spatial distributions as well. Hence, understanding the local investment behavior of firms involves a model with at least one distribution of spatial characteristics that evolves over time. This is analogous to the heterogeneous agent literature in macroeconomics where one needs the whole distribution of agent’s characteristics as a state variable (e.g., its capital holdings). The main difference is that locations are ordered in space, and so firms care more about certain locations (those close by, for example) than others. Hence, the distribution and its evolution over time cannot be simply summarized using a few general statistics that matter for prices (see Krusell & Smith, 1998 , for a prominent example of this methodology). Firms in alternative locations care about different moments of the distribution of the state variable. This natural characteristic of a spatial-dynamic economy makes the problem much harder and less amenable to existing computational techniques.

Solving dynamic problems with so many state variables can be quite complicated. Going to thousands of locations, as many applications require, is virtually impossible with today’s numerical methods unless attention is restricted to very simple setups that can be linearized without much loss of accuracy. 7 What to do?

One option is to forget about general equilibrium linkages across locations and focus solely on the problem of an individual firm, as in the industrial organization literature. However, such an approach gives up completely on many of the questions of interest. The effect of changes in transport costs, trade tariffs, or migration restrictions are all the result of the type of reallocation decisions that result from general equilibrium linkages (see Dixit & Pindyck, 1994 , and the many papers that followed).

A second option is to use perfect foresight and assume that firms and agents understand exactly the evolution of the economy moving forward. As long as this evolution is invariant to the counterfactuals to be analyzed, and the state variables influence decisions in a log-linear way, these future states can be differentiated out. This allows a full characterization of forward-looking transition dynamics in spatial models. Such techniques have been used, for example, in Dix-Carneiro ( 2014 ), Traiberman ( 2017 ), and Caliendo, Dvorkin, and Parro ( in press ), among others. For example, Caliendo et al. proposes a model to analyze the dynamic effect of import competition on local outcomes. The problem is inherently dynamic because agents face moving costs. Evaluating moving decisions then involves forecasting the benefits of being in a different location in the future and the potential paths and decisions triggered by being there. The simplified forward-looking problems of agents in different locations can be solved with these techniques, as population location decisions do not affect local productivities, amenities, or spatial frictions. To be clear, the framework can accommodate any change in these fundamentals, but they have to be exogenous to the equilibrium effects of the policies or events analyzed.

A third option is to limit the extent to which firms and individuals are “forward-looking.” This can be done simply with a behavioral assumption about the myopic behavior of agents, or with a more careful design of an economy in which agents’ returns do not depend on what happens in the future. In either case, although agents choose their actions only looking at the present characteristics of the economy, their actions can affect the future in complex ways. This is appealing because current economic circumstances motivate micro-founded changes in the economic environment in the future. The resulting frameworks can speak to a number of endogenous growth effects of a variety of changes in the economy, including changes in any spatial friction or geographic characteristic. Furthermore, these setups can make precise and quantify the logic of the basic model proposed at the start of this article. Of course, the drawback is that they omit any preemptive reaction to future policies or shocks.

Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2014 ) propose such a framework. Firms innovate in particular locations and their innovations lead to random technological advances that are spatially correlated in space. These local innovations can be interpreted as local worker expertise in an industry, local institutions, some local investments in structures and infrastructure, and the technology of firms for whom its costly to move. These advances are therefore “embedded” in the location of the firm and diffuse to other nearby locations. Perfect competition for land then implies that the value of innovations will be capitalized fully in land rents. Thus, firms obtain some returns from innovations in the period when they make them but not in the future. All future returns are capitalized in the value of land, so firms obtain no returns in the future. The result is a much-simplified firm investment problem where the dynamic, forward-looking investment problem of firms collapses to a static investment problem. Even though innovations do not provide gains in the future (firms benefit from the better technology but have to pay higher land rents), firms do invest because this allows them to win their bid for land in the current period. Hence, the economy invests, although at suboptimal rates. These investments determine productivity in the future and leads to growth in the economy. Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2014 ) show how such a model with two industries can generate industrial growth patterns that are consistent with the evidence of the structural transition of the U.S. economy in the later part of the 20th century between manufacturing and services. In particular, it adds a spatial dimension to the standard productivity-based narrative where local innovation in the service industry, caused by collocation of services in manufacturing centers, plays an important role.

The spatial setup in Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2014 ) is a continuum of locations in a line. This can be useful to talk abstractly about the role of space, as well as spatial collocation of industries, but it cannot be matched to actual geography in a map. Desmet et al. ( 2018 ) extends this dynamic investment model to a spatial model in the class of quantitative spatial models discussed in Redding and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2017 ). It proposes a model with dynamics and two-dimensional geography that includes migration and trade costs. This model can be used to understand quantitatively the evolution of a variety of spatial phenomena and their implied effect on growth rates. Desmet et al. show that the distribution of economic activity as quantified and then forecasted by the model eventually stabilizes and, absent any exogenous changes, grows at a constant rate. Namely, the model converges to a balanced growth path. In the balanced growth path, the distribution of economic activity is fixed. Naturally, the balanced-growth distribution of economic activity, as well as the long-run growth rate, depends on the initial characteristics of the economy. Therefore, changes in these characteristics will have permanent growth impacts. The model can be used to measure these effects, once it is properly quantified.

The Need for Data

Quantifying the family of models in the quantitative spatial economics literature requires detailed spatial data (as does discovering patterns in the spatial distribution of growth rates). For static analysis, at a minimum, it requires data on population counts at the level of spatial resolution of the analysis as well as measures of output (or factor prices), land, and structures. It also demands data either directly on transport costs or on trade flows. In addition, it involves estimating, or somehow determining, a number of model parameters (e.g., the elasticity of substitution in the consumption of different goods).

When dynamics is added, the data requirements naturally go up substantially. First, one needs to quantify bilateral migration costs. Second, one must determine the costs associated with investment or innovation decisions. This second set of parameters can be obtained, using the specification provided by the model, from the cross-sectional relationship between growth and density across regions. In Desmet et al. ( 2018 ), the model is quantified using a grid of 1º longitude by 1º latitude using Geographic Based Economic Data (G-Econ) data. Migration costs are assumed to consist only of an origin and a destination fixed effect, and no bilateral term. This implies that bilateral migration costs cannot depend, say, on distance. These restrictions, together with an assumption that migration costs are experienced as a flow cost on utility, imply that an agent’s migration decision is also a static decision that is taken every period. They also imply that the model has predictions on population counts in a given period, but not on bilateral migration flows. Hence, data on population counts in space in two periods, together with the cross-sectional data described earlier, can be used to infer the migration costs that rationalize observed migration flows according to the model. Given initial conditions that make the model match cross-sectional data, the dynamics in the theory yield investment rates and, therefore, a new set of productivity levels in all locations. This then implies population counts next period given migration costs. One can adjust these migration costs until the model and data population counts in the second period match exactly.

The result of this procedure is a quantified model that performs fairly well. For example, Desmet et al. ( 2018 ) show that if time is revered and a calibration based on data from 2000 and 2005 is used, the correlation between data and model-implied country population levels in 1950 is 0.965—almost perfect. This is partly the result of population levels being very persistent. If changes in data and model-implied country population counts are correlated, the correlation is still an impressive 0.742. Note that the model only includes basic investment forces. It includes no policy shocks, natural disasters, geopolitical changes, or general-purpose technological innovations. Of course, the world experienced all of these types of shocks between 1950 and 2000 .

The quantified version of the model can make precise the explanation of the data advanced at the beginning of this article. A core mechanism behind the evolution of the spatial distribution of output per capita and population is that the correlation between these two variables increases over time. The data puts it at around –0.4 in 2000 . According to the model, that correlation will stay fairly constant for about 100 years than increase to –0.2 over the following century. In the balance growth path, the correlation becomes 0.6. Thus, in the balance growth path, dense places are rich places. This is the ultimate global “triumph of the city,” paraphrasing Ed Glaeser.

Data Sources

The main source of spatially detailed data described here is G-Econ 4.0, compiled at Yale University by William Nordhaus and Xi Chen. 8 This data provides production data (as well as population and geographical data), at the 1º by 1º level, for virtually all cells with positive land mass in the world. This level of spatial resolution is somewhat coarse; it amounts to 100 km by 100 km in the equator. The advantage is that the coverage is global and the authors compiled for four cross-sections in 1990 , 1995 , 2000 , and 2005 . This permits comparisons over time, which is, of course, of great help when studying the spatial distribution of growth rates.

Of course, for studies that focus on a particular country, region, or city, such data might be too aggregate, and the authors might want to go to more specialized country-specific data sources. In the United States, for example, there is good census data at the county and zip-code levels and in some cases the census tract level. Population data can be easily found at a spatially disaggregated level for the whole world and for a number of periods. For example, LandScan has provided population counts at the 30-arc second level (about 1 square km at the equator) yearly since 1998 . 9 Caution is recommended. Although all of these data make detailed use of official country sources, virtually all of it also utilizes approximations and extrapolations based on geographic and other local characteristics.

Obtaining global and spatially disaggregated economic data is much harder. For most countries output (or factor price), data is simply not available at levels of spatial detail below the 1º by 1º level. Even then, one can argue that for some countries the data is probably somewhat imprecise. In response to this challenge, researchers have turned to remote sensing data, in particular satellite data on luminosity of nightlights. This is data based on satellite images of the world surface. 10 Donaldson and Storeygard ( 2016 ) provide a nice review of this source of data and applications in economics. Henderson, Storeygard, and Weil ( 2012 ) argue that this data can be used to complement official growth statistics and that it is informative about the spatial distribution of output. Of course, the great advantage of this data is that it is available for many periods in time and it covers the whole earth at a fine level of spatial resolution. Some of the drawbacks are that images from different satellites are not directly comparable, the quality of satellite sensors deteriorates over time, and, perhaps most important, very luminous places at night (all major cities) are in most cases top-coded. Nevertheless, in this field local data is imperfect anyway, so this is certainly a useful source of information if used with sufficient caution. 11

Why a Good Quantitative Dynamic-Spatial Model Is Necessary: Applications

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the usefulness of an empirically accurate dynamic spatial model is by highlighting the set of applications where such a model could be put to a good use. One reason for using spatial-dynamic general equilibrium models is that it is important to account for spatial interactions, both static and dynamic, across locations. Depending on the spatial disaggregation, trade in goods and services, commuting, migration, and technology diffusion tightly link locations. As Monte et al. ( 2018 ) forcefully argue for the case of commuting, the effect of local productivity changes, as well as most other local shocks, depends importantly on these goods’ and factors’ spatial networks. Hence, local observations cannot simply be treated as independent observations in a reduced-form empirical analysis. Furthermore, because these links are endogenous and react to the shocks and policy changes being evaluated, any such reduced-form analysis is subject to the Lucas Critique (Lucas, 1976 ). Hence, in the list of topics where quantitative general equilibrium models can be useful, spatial economic applications rank very high.

The first obvious set of areas where the insights and quantification of a spatial-dynamic theory is needed is to understand the dynamic effect of changes in spatial frictions. Understanding the implications of changes in trade and migration policy for the world economy is essential to understand the role of globalization in economic development. Most static quantitative analysis of the effect of trade frictions conclude that the welfare gains from trade liberalization are modest. Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare ( 2014 ) estimate that a 40% worldwide tariff would reduce real income by less than 3.5%—not negligible, but also not a transforming policy for the world economy. This evaluation does not include any dynamic effects. Changes in trade policy will in general change market size and the incentives to invest, potentially leading to much larger gains from trade (as argued in Desmet, Nagy, & Rossi-Hansberg, 2017 ). Desmet et al ( 2018 ) also argue that these dynamic effects can lead to large effects from reductions in migration restrictions. As for infrastructure, Nagy ( 2018 ) contends that one of the important effects of the creation of the railroad network in the United States was the creation of cities that promoted innovation and technological growth. The paper argues that the creation of the railroad network was responsible for 27% of aggregate growth between 1790 and the Civil War. Delventhal ( 2017 ) also uses a spatial-dynamic general equilibrium model to argue that the spatial distribution of growth rates in the world can be largely rationalized using improvements in transportation technology over time. In related work, Trew ( 2017 ) proposes a quantification of the role of infrastructure investments on the takeoff in England and Wales between 1710 and 1881 , associated with the Industrial Revolution. In particular, he argues that the time and location of the takeoff was determined by infrastructure investments and growth in the transport sector.

Spatial-dynamic frameworks can also be useful to understand the location of industries in space and how this distribution is related to technological innovation. Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2009 ) present evidence of a related empirical regularity. They show that, across U.S. counties between 1980 and 2000 , growth rates in manufacturing employment declined with manufacturing employment in 1980 . That is, locations that had many workers in the manufacturing sector saw lower growth rates during the next 20 years than locations that had little manufacturing employment in 1980 . In sum, during this period manufacturing employment became more dispersed in space. In contrast, service sectors exhibit a very different pattern. While counties that had very little or a lot of service-sector employment also experienced increasing dispersion, counties with intermediate levels of employment exhibited a distinct pattern. Among these counties, the ones with higher service-sector employment in 1980 were the ones that grew faster. So intermediate-sized counties exhibited concentration.

Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2009 ) argue that these patterns caused by the diffusion of general-purpose technologies (GPT) in the sector. When a new GPT arises (like electricity or the Internet), the sector that uses it intensively agglomerates to use it and benefit from its diffusion. For the counties with the largest employment levels, this process is hindered by congestion, at the bottom, by the willingness of some firms to move to the cheapest locations. As the GPT becomes older and more dispersed, the importance of the diffusion force declines yielding dispersion throughout the distribution. In the 1980s the Internet had this effect on service sectors but not on manufacturing. Of course, if growth at the turn of the 20th century is considered, where electricity was a GPT for the manufacturing sector, a similar pattern as for services between 1980 and 2000 emerges. Perhaps surprisingly, this is exactly the case. The patterns for manufacturing at the turn of the century and services in the last two decades of the 20th century look virtually identical.

This type of industrial spatial collocation can also explain some of the patterns of relative sectoral growth that are referred to as the structural transformation. The first part of the structural transformation involved a large decline of the agricultural employment share as the manufacturing employment share grew substantially. In some developing countries, and in particular in China and other parts of Asia, some of this process of structural transformation is ongoing. General equilibrium models of spatial growth can help explain where and at what time such transitions can happen. Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2014 ) show how the collocation of service industries close to manufacturing clusters led to productivity growth in the service industry close to these manufacturing clusters, which started the structural transformation between manufacturing and services.

As a final application consider the economic impact of climate change. The environmental impact of climate change is a protracted, slow-moving phenomenon that has, and will have, heterogeneous impacts across locations, so modeling its effect with a dynamic spatial model is essential. Furthermore, because it affects many regions simultaneously, it will also have general equilibrium effects that can be sizable. Furthermore, since it affects regions differentially depending on their latitude, location relative to the coasts, and other geographic characteristics, it is likely to generate important shifts in economic activity in the world. Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2015 ) argue that global warming could shift economic activity in the northern hemisphere by about 10º north in the next 100 years. Importantly, because agents can adapt to new climates by trading, migrating, and other forms of economic adaptation, the cost of climate change will depend crucially on the magnitude of these spatial frictions. Absent any mobility costs, adapting by moving can be very effective, thereby leading to small costs. In contrast, if migration costs are large or prohibitive (as in the case of institutional restrictions), the resulting costs can be catastrophic. Put in context, the cost of climate change for the people in northern locations depends fundamentally on their ability to migrate to Europe and other countries that might be less affected by this phenomenon.

Future Directions and Challenges

Although the literature discussed here has made important contributions to the understanding of the geography of growth and development, this important topic remains underexplored. On the theoretical side, these frameworks are still missing fully forward-looking dynamics in contexts where agents naturally care about the impact of their actions in the future. Modeling forward-looking behavior in dynamic-spatial models with growth is essential when aiming to characterize optimal government policy, for example. Introducing irreversible capital investments would also require modeling forward-looking dynamics. Progress on this front is urgent.

On the more applied side, the use of satellite nightlights data together with population count data at a high level of spatial resolution over time can uncover many patterns that are still not well understood. As an example, consider Figures 2 and 3 . These figures depict local patterns in the growth of nightlights and population density. Using a single satellite for consistency, the growth in nightlights for all 30-second squared pixel of the world surface between 2000 and 2007 was calculated, as was the growth in population density over this period. Locations where there is no data or where the change in both variables was zero (or close to zero using a 0.5% band) are shown in white. Locations where one of these variables did not change are depicted in yellow. In most cases, these are cells that have very little economic activity and population. The areas of large cities where nightlights are top-coded (like Paris in Figure 2 ) are depicted in maroon. The rest of the cells are depicted according to the pattern of the sign of the growth rates in these two measures. Red cells show growth in both population density and nightlights. These are areas of mixed growth where both residences and, probably, businesses in the service sector are concentrating. Blue areas are where population density is declining but lights are growing. These areas are most likely specializing in industrial production. Green areas are where population density is growing but lights are declining—areas that are probably specializing as residential neighborhoods. Finally, pink areas are where both measures are in decline. Of course, these interpretations are tentative, at best.

Figure 2. Nightlight and population density growth, Europe (LandScan and NOAA, 2000–2007).

Figure 3. Nightlight and population density growth, Asia (LandScan and NOAA, 2000–2007).

Compare the difference in patterns between England, France and Spain in Figure 2 . The southern part of England is (apart from London, which is all top-coded) painted in green and red dots. Namely, under this interpretation, the area is developing as a group of towns specialized in services and mixed land use surrounded by mostly residential areas where population is growing. France and Spain look very different. They have much more pink, indicating that population and economic activity are leaving these areas and concentrating in space. Most of the periphery cities are becoming less dense but brighter at night, indicating more industrial specialization. The differences in these patterns is striking in countries that are, roughly, at similar levels of development.

Figure 3 shows the same graph for China and India. Although both countries exhibit spatial concentration (evidenced in the ubiquity of the color pink), the difference in their spatial patterns is striking. China seems to exhibit industrial concentration in the north, together with residential development only around its largest cities (including Hong Kong). Periphery cities seem to be developing as both business and residential hubs (depicted in red). India, in contrast, exhibits growth in nightlights only in a few selected locations.

New data brings a variety of new questions. Making sense of these and many other patterns embedded in these and other spatially disaggregated data can hold the key to understanding why some economies grow rapidly and other stagnate.

Further Reading

Review articles.

• Carlino, G. , & Kerr, W. (2015). Agglomeration and innovation. In G. Duranton , J. V. Henderson , & W. C. Strange (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 5, pp. 349–404). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Davis, M. , & Van Nieuwerburgh, S. (2015). Housing, finance, and the macroeconomy. In G. Duranton , J. V. Henderson , & W. C. Strange (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 5, pp. 753–811). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Desmet, K. , & Henderson, V. (2015). The geography of development within countries. In G. Duranton , J. V. Henderson , & W. C. Strange (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 5, pp. 1457–1517). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Desmet, K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2009). Spatial growth and industry age. Journal of Economic Theory , 144 (6), 2477–2502.
• Desmet, K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2010). On spatial dynamics. Journal of Regional Science , 50 (1), 43–63.
• Lewis, E. , & Peri, G. (2015). Immigration and the economy of cities and regions. In G. Duranton , J. V. Henderson , & W. C. Strange (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 5, pp. 625–685). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Redding, S. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2017). Quantitative spatial economics. Annual Review of Economics , 9 , 21–59.

Other Central Papers

• Ahlfeldt, G. M. , Redding, S. , Sturm, D. M. , & Wolf, N. (2015). The economics of density: Evidence from the Berlin Wall. Econometrica , 83 (6), 2127–2189.
• Allen, T. , & Arkolakis, C. (2014). Trade and the topography of the spatial economy. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 129 (3), 1085–1140.
• Caliendo, L. , Dvorkin, M. , & Parro, F. (In press). Trade and labor market dynamics: General equilibrium analysis of the China trade shock. Econometrica .
• Desmet, K. , Nagy, D. K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2018). The geography of development. Journal of Political Economy , 126 (3), 903–983.
• Eaton, J. , & Kortum, S. (2002). Technology, geography, and trade. Econometrica , 70 (5), 1741–1779.
• Anderson, J. , Larch, M. , & Yotov, Y. (2017). Growth and trade with frictions: A structural estimation framework . Working Paper. Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.
• Bleakley, H. , & Lin, J. (2012). Portage and path dependence. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 127 , 587–644.
• Boucekkine, R. , Camacho, C. , & Zou, B. (2009). Bridging the gap between growth theory and the new economic geography: The Spatial Ramsey Model. Macroeconomic Dynamics , 13 , 20–45.
• Burchfield, M. , Overman, H. G. , Puga, D. , & Turner, M. A. (2006). Causes of sprawl: A portrait from space. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 121 (2), 587–633.
• Bustos, P. (2011). Trade liberalization, exports and technology upgrading: Evidence on the impact of MERCOSUR on Argentinean firms. American Economic Review , 101 (1), 304–340.
• Caliendo, L. , Parro, F. , Rossi-Hansberg, E. , & Sarte, P. D. (2018). The impact of regional and sectoral productivity changes on the U.S. economy. The Review of Economic Studies , 85 (4), 2042–2096.
• Carlino, G. , Chatterjee, S. , & Hunt, R. (2007). Urban density and the rate of invention, Journal of Urban Economics , 61 (3), 389–419.
• Coelli, F. , Moxnes, A. , & Ulltveit-Moe, K. H. (2016). Better, faster, stronger: Global innovation and trade liberalization . NBER Working Paper 22647. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Combes, P. , Duranton, G. , Gobillon, L. , Puga, D. , & Roux, S. (2012). The productivity advantages of large cities: Distinguishing agglomeration from firm selection. Econometrica , 80 (6), 2543–2594.
• Costinot, A. , & Rodriguez-Clare, A. (2014). Trade theory with numbers: Quantifying the consequences of globalization. In G. Gopinath , E. Helpman , & K. Rogoff (Eds.), Handbook of international economics (Vol. 5, pp. 197–261). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Davis, D. R. , & Weinstein, D. E. (2002). Bones, bombs, and break points: The geography of economic activity. American Economic Review , 92 (5), 1269–1289.
• Davis, M. , & Van Nieuwerburgh, S. (2015). Housing, finance, and the macroeconomy. In G. Duranton , J. V. Henderson , & W. C. Strange (Eds.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics (Vol. 5, pp. 625–685). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• De Loecker, J. (2007). Do exports generate higher productivity? Evidence from Slovenia. Journal of International Economics , 7 (1), 69–98.
• Delventhal, M. (2017). The globe as a network: Geography and the origins of the world income distribution . Working Paper. Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
• Desmet, K. , Nagy, D. K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2017). Asia’s geographic development. Asian Economic Review , 34 (2), 1–25.
• Desmet, K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2012). Innovation in space. American Economic Review , 102 (3), 447–452.
• Desmet, K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2014). Spatial development. American Economic Review , 104 (4), 1211–1243.
• Desmet, K. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2015). On the spatial economic impact of global warming. Journal of Urban Economics , 88 , 16–37.
• Dix-Carneiro, R. (2014). Trade liberalization and labor market dynamics. Econometrica , 82 (3), 825–885.
• Dixit, A. , & Pindyck, R. (1994). Investment under uncertainty . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Donaldson, D. (2018). Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the impact of transportation infrastructure. American Economic Review , 108 , 899–934.
• Donaldson, D. , & Hornbeck, R. (2016). Railroads and American economic growth: A “market access” approach. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 131 (2), 799–858.
• Donaldson, D. , & Storeygard, A. (2016). The view from above: Applications of satellite data in economics. Journal of Economic Perspectives , 30 (4), 171–198.
• Duranton, G. , & Puga, D. (2004). Micro-foundations of urban agglomeration economies. In J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 4, pp. 2063–2117). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Eeckhout, J. (2004). Gibrat’s law for (all) cities. American Economic Review , 94 (5), 1429–1451.
• Gabaix, X. (1999). Zipf’s law for cities: An explanation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 114 (3), 739–767.
• Head, K. , & Mayer, T. (2014). Gravity equations: Workhorse, toolkit, and cookbook. In G. Gopinath , E. Helpman , & K. Rogoff (Eds.), Handbook of international economics (Vol. 4, pp. 131–195). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Henderson, V. , Storeygard, A. , & Weil, D. (2012). Measuring economic growth from outer space. American Economic Review , 102 (2), 994–1028.
• Henderson, V. , Squires, T. , Storeygard, A. , & Weil, D. (2018). The global spatial distribution of economic activity: Nature, history, and the role of trade. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 133 (1), 357–406.
• Jaffe, A. , Trajtenberg, M. , & Henderson, R. (2005). Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers as evidenced by patent citations. Ed. John Cantwell . Edward Elgar.
• Krugman, P. R. (1991). Increasing returns and economic geography. Journal of Political Economy , 99 (3), 483–499.
• Krusell, P. , & Smith, A., Jr. (1998). Income and wealth heterogeneity in the macroeconomy. Journal of Political Economy , 106 (5), 867–896.
• Lee, S. & Lin, J. (2018). Natural amenities, neighbourhood dynamics, and persistence in the spatial distribution of income. Review of Economic Studies , 85 , 663–694.
• Lewis, E. , & Peri, G. (2015). Immigration and the economy of cities and regions. In G. Duranton , J. V. Henderson , & W. C. Strange (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (pp. 625–685). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Lucas, R. (1976). Econometric policy evaluation: A critique. In K. Brunner & A. Meltzer (Eds.), The Phillips curve and labor markets. Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy (pp. 19–46). New York, NY: Elsevier.
• Marshall, A. (1920). Principles of economics . London, U.K.: Macmillan.
• Monte, F. , Redding, S. , & Rossi-Hansberg, E. (2018). Commuting, migration and local employment elasticities. American Economic Review , 108 (12), 3855–3890.
• Nagy, D. K. (2018). City location and economic development . CREI Working Paper. Barcelona, Spain: Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional.
• Ravikumar, B. , Santacreu, A. M. , & Sposi, M. (2017). Capital accumulation and dynamic gains from trade . St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank Working Paper. St. Louis, MO: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
• Redding, S. J. , & Sturm, D. M. (2008). The costs of remoteness: Evidence from German division and reunification. American Economic Review , 98 (5), 1766–1797.
• Rosenthal, S. S. , & Strange, W. C. (2004). Evidence on the nature and sources of agglomeration economics. In In J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (Eds.), Handbook of regional and urban economics (Vol. 4, 2119–2171). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.
• Rossi-Hansberg, E. , & Wright, M. (2007). Urban structure and growth. Review of Economic Studies , 74 (2), 597–624.
• Sequeira, S. , Nunn, N. , & Qian, N. (2017). Migrants and the making of America: The short and long-run effects of immigration during the age of mass migration . Working Paper. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
• Soo, K. (2005). Zipf’s law for cities: A cross country investigation. Regional Science and Urban Economics , 35 (3), 239–263.
• Traiberman, S. (2017). Occupations and import competition . Working Paper. New York University, New York, NY.
• Trew, A. (2017). Endogenous infrastructure development and spatial takeoff . Working Paper. University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, U.K.

1. Using data of G-Econ 4.0 from Yale University.

2. The number is around 83% using purchasing power parity. Again, the data comes from G-Econ 4.0 from Yale University.

3. See Desmet, Nagy, and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2018 ) for details.

4. As shown by Desmet, Nagy, and Rossi-Hansberg ( 2017 ), this increasing correlation with the level of a region’s income is also presence across counties and metropolitan statistical areas in the United States.

5. Lee and Lin ( 2018 ) show that natural amenities resulted in persistent higher income across neighborhoods in U.S. cities between 1880 and 2010. Bleakley and Lin ( 2012 ) also show the persistence of development to natural characteristics like the presence obstacles to river navigation. David and Weinstein ( 2002 ) also provide evidence of persistence on regional development.

6. Actually, the relationship should be U-shaped since geography is irrelevant for prohibitive or zero transport costs but positive for intermediate values. However, at empirically relevant levels of transport costs, reductions in trade costs probably lead to increases in the importance of geography (as evidenced by the large increases in world trade flows in the last several decades, for example).

7. See also Anderson, Larch, and Yotov ( 2017 ) and Ravikumar, Santacreu, and Sposi ( 2017 ) for examples of dynamic numerical approaches with capital accumulation in trade frameworks.

8. See G-Econ for full data description and downloads.

9. See LandScan for data description and downloads.

10. Data is provided by the National Center for Environmental Information; see Version 4 DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights Time Series for data descriptions and downloads.

11. Other studies use more detailed satellite imagery to measure changes in developed land. See for example Burchfield, Overman, Puga, and Turner ( 2006 ), who measured the extent of U.S. urban sprawl between 1976 and 1992.

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Development, Geography, and Economic Theory

• Published 15 September 1995
• Economics, Geography

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New economic geography: what about the n, economics, geography, and knowing “development”, the firm in economic geography*, new economic geography: history and debate.

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3.1 Development - Cambridge iGCSE GEOGRAPHY 0460 & 0976 (5 double lessons + TNC Nike case study)

Subject: Geography

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

28 August 2024

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This is a complete set of five double lessons in one powerpoint. There are 84 slides in total with varied activities keep students’ attention. It has learning objectives, starters, main activities, and summaries. Skills required for Paper 2 are also included, and all questions have answers. I’ve added relevant past paper questions with mark schemes.

An accompanying word document includes diagrams to stick in.

Theme 3: Economic Development Section 3.1: Development Part A: Use indicators to assess the level of development Part B: Identify and explain inequalities between and within countries Part C: Classify production into different sectors, making links to level of development Part D: Case Study of a TNC - Nike Part E: Globalisation

Case Studies required for 3.1 • A transnational corporation and its global links - Nike

These resources are for iGCSE specifications 0460 and 0978

Books which support this resource:

Complete Geography for Cambridge iGCSE and O Level. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0198424956.

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iGCSE Geography - Cambridge 0460 / 0978 - Theme 3: Economic Development - Full scheme of work with model answers, case studies

This is a **complete unit of work** for the Year 11 students completing their Cambridge iGCSE geography course. There are 7 sets of resources for each of the sections within Theme 3: Economic Development. I have followed the specification carefully and all lessons are complete with suitable **case studies**, plus relevant **exam questions with mark schemes.** Each resource has learning objectives, starters, main activities, and summaries. Questions have **model answers** to save teacher time and to make peer/self marking easier. **Skills** required for **Paper 2** are embedded, which means there is more time for revision and less time spent on Paper 2 practise before the exam season begins. **Theme 3: Economic Development** 3.1: Development 3.2 Food Production 3.3 Industry 3.4 Tourism 3.5 Energy 3.6 Water 3.7 Environmental Risks of Economic Development Books which support these teaching resources: Complete Geography for Cambridge iGCSE and O Level. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0198424956. Cambridge iGCSE and O level Geography Coursebook. 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN:9781108339186. *Watch this space for other resources. I have full schemes of work for Cambridge iGCSE geography. COMING SOON!*

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• Resources and Development Class 10 Case Study Social Science Geography Chapter 1

Last Updated on September 3, 2024 by XAM CONTENT

Hello students, we are providing case study questions for class 10 social science. Case study questions are the new question format that is introduced in CBSE board. The resources for case study questions are very less. So, to help students we have created chapterwise case study questions for class 10 social science. In this article, you will find case study for CBSE Class 10 Social Science Geography Chapter 1 Resources and Development. It is a part of Case Study Questions for CBSE Class 10 Social Science Series.

Table of Contents

Case Study Questions on Resources and Development Class 10

Read the following passage and answer the questions:

We have shared our land with the past generations and will have to do so with the future generations too. Ninety five per cent of our basic needs for food, shelter and clothing are obtained from land.

Human activities have not only brought about degradation of land but have also aggravated the pace of natural forces to cause damage to land. Some human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing, mining and quarrying too have contributed significantly in land degradation. Mining sites are abandoned, after excavation work is complete, leaving deep scars and traces of over burdening. In states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, deforestation due to mining have caused severe land degradation. In states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, over-grazing is one of the main reasons for land degradation. In the states like Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, over irrigation is responsible for land degradation due to water logging leading to increase in salinity and alkalinity in the soil.

Q 1. How does human activities have brought about land degradation? Ans. Human activities have brought about land degradation through the factors like deforestation, over-grazing, mining and quarrying.

Q 2. How is over irrigation responsible for land degradation? Ans. Over irrigation is responsible for land degradation due to water logging leading to increase in salinity in soil.

Q 3. Why is human considered as the main culprit for land degradation? Ans. Human is considered as the main culprit for land degradation due to the following reasons: (i) His excavation work at mining sites. (ii) His significant contribution to deforestation. (iii) He has aggravated the pace of natural forces causing damage to land. (Any two)

Planning is the widely accepted strategy for judicious use of resources. It has importance in a country like India, which has enormous diversity in the availability of resources. There are regions which are rich in certain types of resources but are deficient in some other resources. There are some regions which can be considered self-sufficient in terms of the availability of resources and there are some regions which have acute shortage of some vital resources. For example, the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are rich in minerals and coal deposits. Arunachal Pradesh has abundance of water resources but lacks in infrastructural development. The state of Rajasthan is very well endowed with solar and wind energy but lacks in water resources. The cold desert of Ladakh is relatively isolated from the rest of the country. It has very rich cultural heritage, but it is deficient in water, infrastructure and some vital minerals. This calls for balanced resource planning at the national, state, regional and local levels.

Q. 1. Which of the following statements correctly describes about resource planning? a. Identification and quantification of available resources. b. Development of available resources. c. Both a. and b. d. Uneven distribution of resources.

Ans. Option (c) is correct.

Q. 2. Resource planning is important in a country like India due to: a. enormous diversity in availability of resources b. deficiency in certain types of resources c. abundance of water resources d. rich cultural heritage

Ans. Option (a) is correct.

Q. 3. The state(s) which is/are rich in minerals and coal deposits is/are: a. Jharkhand b. Chhattisgarh c. Madhya Pradesh d. All of these

Ans. Option (d) is correct.

Q. 4. The states like Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh are rich in coal and minerals but have less development in resources as: a. they are economically less developed b. they have rich cultural heritage c. they lack water resources d. they lack technological and institutional support

• Power Sharing Class 10 Case Study Social Science Political Science Chapter 1
• Forest and Wildlife Resources Class 10 Case Study Social Science Geography Chapter 2
• The Making of a Global World Class 10 Case Study Social Science History Chapter 3

Nationalism in India Class 10 Case Study Social Science History Chapter 2

The rise of nationalism in europe class 10 case study social science history chapter 1, topics from which case study questions may be asked.

• Types – natural and human
• Need for resource planning
• Natural resources
• Land as a resource
• Soil types and distribution
• Changing land-use pattern
• Land degradation and conservation measures.

Everything available in our environment which can be used to satisfy our needs, provided it is technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally acceptable, can be termed as ‘resource’.

The first International Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 endorsed global Forest Principles and adopted Agenda 21 for achieving sustainable development.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Resources and Development Class 10 Case Study

Q1: what are case study questions.

A1: Case study questions are a type of question that presents a detailed scenario or a real-life situation related to a specific topic. Students are required to analyze the situation, apply their knowledge, and provide answers or solutions based on the information given in the case study. These questions help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Q2: How should I approach case study questions in exams?

A2: To approach case study questions effectively, follow these steps: Read the case study carefully: Understand the scenario and identify the key points. Analyze the information: Look for clues and relevant details that will help you answer the questions. Apply your knowledge: Use what you have learned in your course to interpret the case study and answer the questions. Structure your answers: Write clear and concise responses, making sure to address all parts of the question.

Q3: What are the benefits of practicing case study questions from your website?

A3: Practicing case study questions from our website offers several benefits: Enhanced understanding: Our case studies are designed to deepen your understanding of historical events and concepts. Exam preparation: Regular practice helps you become familiar with the format and types of questions you might encounter in exams. Critical thinking: Analyzing case studies improves your ability to think critically and make connections between different historical events and ideas. Confidence: Practicing with our materials can boost your confidence and improve your performance in exams.

Q4: What are the important keywords in this chapter “Resources and Development”?

A4: Important keywords for CBSE Class 10 Resources and Development are given below: Land Use Pattern: Use of land for different purposes like forests, cultivation, fallow land, etc. Ecological Balance: The balance in our physical and cultural environment. Man’s activities cause disturbances in this balance. For example, two important aspects are balance of gases in air and balance of constituents in soil. Land Degradation: Depletion of the resources of the land through soil erosion, mining, deforestation, etc. Khadar: The new alluvium. Kankar: Substance now containing calcium carbonates. Laterite: Soils from which silicates have been leached out and iron and aluminium predominate. Bangar: The old alluvium. Conservation: Preservation and protection of natural or man-made resources. Regur: Black soil of extremely fine clayey material. Basin: A wide depression or an area drained by a river. Sub-soil: Part of the soil below the top layer, normally used for cultivation to the depth to which most plant roots grow. Fallow Land: Agricultural land left uncultivated after two-three crops to restore its natural fertility. Marginal Land: Land which is difficult to cultivate and yields little profit. Net Sown Area: The total land under crop production excluding wasteland or land left fallow. Soil: Top layer of earth containing humus.

Q5: When and why was the Rio-de-Janeiro Earth summit held?

A5: Rio-de-Janeiro summit was held in 1992 in Brazil. Earth Summit: To achieve sustainable development in order to combat environment damage, poverty and disease, it laid emphasis on global cooperation, mutual needs and shared responsibilities.

Q6: What type of soil is found in the river deltas of the eastern coast? Write three main features of this type of soil.

A6: Alluvial Soil: Its main features are: (i) Mostly these soils contain adequate proportion of potash and lime which are ideal for the growth of sugarcane, paddy, wheat, etc. (ii) Such a soil is the result of deposits of river. (iii) Very fertile soil

Q7: What do you mean by land use pattern? Name the factors that determine the use of land.

A7: Utilisation of land for various purposes, such as cultivation, grazing of animals, mining, construction of roads, etc. Factors that determine land use pattern are: (i) Topography (ii) Climate (iii) Human Factor (iv) Accessibility

Q8: What does the term ‘sustainable economic development’ mean? How can we eradicate irrational consumption and over-utilisation of resources?

A8: Sustainable economic development means ‘development should take place without damaging the environment’ and development in the present should not compromise with the needs of the future generations. We can eradicate irrational consumption and over-utilisation of resources through conservation of resources. Irrational consumption and over-exploitation of resources lead to many socioeconomic and environmental problems. To overcome these problems and to preserve resources for our future generation as well, proper management and conservation of resources is essential

Q9: What is resource planning? Write three phases of resource planning.

A9: Resource planning is a proper and judicious planning of resources. Resources are put to use according to availability and needs for development of the economy. Three processes which are involved in resource planning are: (a) Identification and inventory of resources across various regions of the country. It involves surveying, mapping, qualitative and quantitative estimation and measurement of the resources. (b) Evolving a planning structure, endowed with appropriate technological skill and institutional set up for implementing resource development plans. (c) Synchronizing the resource development with overall national development plans.

Q10: Explain the role of human in resource development

A10: Human is at the centre of resource development. Actually all resources become resources only when they are put to use by humans. It is human who makes natural things usable with the help of technology. Had no technology been there, development would not have been possible. There are regions where natural resources are in abundance but the regions are not developed, e.g., Africa. But if humans are developed, they make the region developed with technology, e.g., Japan.

Q11: Are there any online resources or tools available for practicing “ Resources and Development” case study questions?

A11: We provide case study questions for CBSE Class 10 Social Science on our  website . Students can visit the website and practice sufficient case study questions and prepare for their exams.

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Specimen question papers

Specimen question papers are available for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher qualifications. These show what a question paper looks like - how it is structured and the types of questions it contains. They also include marking instructions. Find them under 'Past Papers and Marking Instructions' on our NQ subject pages .

Digital question papers

Question Papers in Digital Format for candidates with disabilities and/or additional support needs.

• Digital Question Papers
• Braille question papers

Creating your own assessment materials from SQA question papers

Our National Qualifications 2020-21 section has advice on creating your own bespoke assessments from SQA question papers.

Conditions of use

The information in a past paper may be reproduced in support of SQA qualifications only on a non-commercial basis. If it is reproduced, SQA must be clearly acknowledged as the source. If it is to be reproduced for any other purpose, written permission must be obtained from [email protected]

Where a past paper includes material for which SQA does not own the copyright, this material can only be reproduced on a non-commercial basis for the purposes of instruction in an educational establishment. If it is to be reproduced for any other purpose, it is the user's responsibility to obtain the necessary copyright clearance from the copyright owner. The acknowledgements page in a past paper lists the owners of copyright items that are not owned by SQA.

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