GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

I was recently flying over New York City and I was stunned at the vastness of this metropolis and amazed at the arrogance we take when we assume we ‘understand’ a place with millions of people and complex networks.  The geographic enterprise is remarkably ambitious and even if we can’t fully understand everything about our planet, we strive towards that goal…then I read this article and the magnitude of the universe simultaneously overwhelmed and inspired me.  8.8 billion earth-like planets!!  The only reason anyone could ever be bored is if they have stopped being curious about all that surrounds us.  

This NPR article highlighted this video and research that shows that a basic understanding of climate change is missing in our society (which opens up room for naysayers to think that all opinions are equally valid in a scientific discussion).

Regions are fluid constructs that we use to think about places.  The region that we think of today as “Latin America” would not have been a discrete region 600 years ago since historical events have shaped the geographic evolution of the attributes of the region and the borders of world regions will continue to be redrawn.  Some have recently argued that since the end of the Cold War, the monikers Eastern and Western Europe are less meaningful in an economic context.   This map shows this old division can still be seen in this cultural/political context.  Some have argued that Russia’s recent move against gay rights is a geopolitical strategy to differentiate themselves from the West. 

Tags:  Europe, regions.

Earlier in the semester we discussed how difficult it is to establish a new country in a region with political and economic instabilty.  This is only further complicated by the presence of factional rivalries.  It’s a tragedy that these problems are being played out.  

Tags: South Sudan, political, Africa, states.

This podcast highlights the political governance issues surrounding urban agriculture. 

This is a fun tool to make geographic analysis very personal.  You can also weight the importance of the locations based on the number of years stayed at a location.   For example, the map above is unweighted, but the map below reflects that most of my life was in the Western part of the United States.

In this map, all Zip codes with more than 500 people are ranked from 0 to 99 based on household income and education.  The ‘Super Zips’ rank 95 or higher. The map at the top shows the highest concentration of the nation’s 650 Super Zips. The typical household income in a Super Zip is $120,272, and 68 percent of adults hold college degrees. That compares with $53,962 and 27 percent in the other zips mapped.  Washington D.C. shows a powerful bifurcation: One-third of Zip codes in the D.C. area are considered ‘Super Zips’ for wealth and education and large swaths of the metropolitan area are considered food deserts.

This weekend I had the privilege essentially flying from Boston to Washington DC at night and was mesmerized by the vast urban expanse beneath me.  It was the greatest concentration of wealth in the United States as well as the some of the most blighted regions of the country.  What explains the spatial patterns of highly concentrated wealth and poverty in the biggest cities?  Are cities a causal factor in wealth and poverty creation?  What does this zip code data tell us? What accounts for the spatial patterns in your region?    

Tags: Washington DC, urban, unit 7 cities.housing, economic, poverty, place, socioeconomic, neighborhood.