GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

How does the spatial layout of a workplace impact productivity and corporate culture?  “Google has spent a lot of time studying what makes workplaces innovative and casual interactions are important. Sullivan lists three factors to make that set companies apart: learning by interaction, collaborations and fun.”  Spaces that encourage interaction and collaboration increase productivity.  Spaces that are ‘fun’ help facilitate a vibrant community and deepens worker loyalty.  

Tags: spatial, architecture, labor, podcast.

Over half the global population lives in cities, and the problems confronting these megacities will loom large for future sustainability issues–both at local and global scales. This list ranks the cities by city limits and governance jurisdiction (not by the expanded Metropolitan Statistical Area).  

Tags: urban, megacities, unit 7 cities.

As mentioned earlier, a South American pope was a symbolic recognition of the demographic shift in the Church’s population away from Europe. 

Tags: culture, religion, Christianity.

The juxtaposition of the hypermodern coverage of the election of a new pope (with telecasts, social media, instantaneous global network coverage, etc.) with the archaic medieval rituals of the conclave (locked doors, smoke signals, etc.)  is endlessly fascinating to me.  Even in the 21st century, there is a place for the traditional.   So who is Pope Francis?  As the first South American pope, some feel this reflects the southern demographic shift within the Catholic Church.  Also, click here for the science behind the white vs. black smoke.

Tags: culture, religion, Christianity.

Tags: pollution, infographic, ecology.

This is late for International Women’s Day, but it is never a wrong time to analyze the spatial and temporal patterns of the expansion of women’s political rights.  This interactive map is excellent for seeing these few metrics, but a more expanded dataset with maps concerning gender (in)equality in the world and the status of women is WomanStats.  

Tags: gender, mapping, statistics, political.

Many of our first experiments of creating landforms and designing a new world started in the sandbox.  This video shows how that early childhood activity can make for an excellent classroom demonstration to shows how Earth’s physical systems work.  If you have a digital topographic map to superimpose on the sandbox and a GPU-based water simulation, then you’ve got this fantastic video.  Click here to learn more about this UC Davis project on the visualization of lake ecosystems.

Tags: water, physical, geomorphology, landforms, visualization.