The Big Questions in Geography

10 questions in hopes of stimulating a dialogue for future

geographers

1. What makes Places and Landscapes different from one

another and why is this important?• Before humans • Nature of uneven economic development• Nature of spatial distributions, patterns, and

associations• Interaction between physical and human

environments• Variability and uniformity• Effects of scale• Explaining the nature of variability is one goal

Next

Regional

City

2. Is there a deeply held human need to organize space?

• Creating arbitrary borders, boundaries, and districts

• city-states begat nation-states• Land and oceans carved into non-equal

units• Land partitioning affects environmental

quality• Effect of globalization on construction of

space• Intellectual space and cyberspace

World Maritime Claims

3. How do we delineate space?

• Criteria used– Boundaries without respect to ethnic

cultures in post colonial Africa and central Europe

– Complexities of multicultural populations– Political v. natural– Economic efficiency– Compatibility

• Congressional districts– Population census– http://www2.uiuc.edu/ro/observer/

archive/vol11/issue5/gerry.html

Pre WWI

Post WWI

4. Why do people, resources and ideas move?

• The diffusion of culture– Western—emphasis on materialism and

individualism– Digital space

• Historical patterns of settlements in relation with resources

• OPEC-retain its global power?

5. How has the Earth been transformed by human action?

• Less than 5% of the earth is “natural” landscape• The 1993 Flood

6. What role will virtual systems play in learning about the world?

• Information technology

• Decreasing the geographic distance

• Computers—if _____ then ______– Studying complex phenomena

• The Great Equalizer or next rust belt?

• Map of the haves and have-nots

7. How do we measure the unmeasurable?

• Go beyond the petty tyrannies of nation-states– Still protect national security– Still protect individuals right to privacy– Acxiom – ChoicePoint

• NAACP v. Harris - challenging the conduct of state and local officials in the 2000 Florida elections

• Constructed realities– Public policy– Aggregate: level of detail of the geographic units

8. What role has geography played in civilization and can play in

predicting the future?• Migration—redistribution of people in space

– Push and pulls• Untapped resources• Environmental change• Invasion and succession

• Prediction– Environments– Population characteristics– Customs, beliefs, values

9. How & why do sustainability and vulnerability change with place and

time?• Sustainability science

– Integration of many different social and natural science perspectives

• Suburban sprawl• Environmental insecurity of nations

– Armed conflicts– Mass migrations

• Contagious diseases• Ability to recover from natural or social forces

10. What is the nature of spatial thinking, reasoning and abilities?

• Geographic knowledge is the product of spatial thinking

• Scale changes– Representations among many spatial

dimensions

• Effect of distance, density and direction

Conclusion

• American Declaration of Independence– Spatial constraints– Looking globally

• Future needs

• Cities of the future?

• Terms: scale, nation-states, gerrymander, density, spatial,