First-year courses · Social sciences

Intro human geography: population, culture and cities

Human geography flashcards: place, region, scale, diffusion, population rates, migration, culture, urban systems and globalization, with Canadian examples.

41 cards5 topicsAbout 15 minutes a roundTypical first-year introduction to human geography

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About this deck

This deck covers the core vocabulary of a first-year human geography course, the half of geography that studies people, places and the patterns they create. It starts with the discipline's key concepts (place, space, location, region, scale, diffusion and distance decay), then moves through population (birth and death rates, fertility, the demographic transition, population pyramids), migration, cultural geography, urban geography (urbanization, metropolitan areas, central place theory, gentrification) and political and economic geography (states and nations, core and periphery, development indicators).

No background is required. You will get more out of the population cards if you are comfortable with rates per 1000 and percentages, and the examples use Canadian places and Statistics Canada terms wherever possible.

Geography is about patterns in space, so study with a map. For every concept, find one example from your own province or city and one from elsewhere in the world, then explain the difference. For the population rate cards, work the arithmetic yourself and check the units: some rates are per 1000 people and some are percentages.

Common mistakes: confusing site (the physical characteristics of a place) with situation (its position relative to other places); treating the demographic transition model as a prediction that every country must follow on a set timetable; and mixing up a state (a political unit with sovereignty) with a nation (a group sharing an identity).

Before you start: None. Comfort with percentages and rates per 1000 helps.

All 41 cards

Cover the definitions with a sheet of paper and test yourself, or use the study modes above.

Core concepts

Place: A location given meaning by its physical features and the people, memories and identities attached to it.Example: Calgary's Stampede grounds mean far more to residents than a set of coordinates.
Absolute location: A position stated exactly using a grid system, such as latitude and longitude or a street address.Example: Ottawa is at about 45.4 degrees N, 75.7 degrees W.
Relative location: A position described in relation to other places.Example: Windsor is directly across the Detroit River from Detroit.
Site and situation: One is the physical character of a place (terrain, water, soil); the other is its position relative to other places, routes and resources.Example: Quebec City's site is a cliff above the river; its situation controls access to the St. Lawrence.
Formal region: An area defined by one or more shared, measurable characteristics.Example: The Prairie provinces as a wheat-growing area.
Functional region: An area organized around a central node and linked by flows such as commuting, trade or communication.Example: A newspaper's delivery area centred on its city.
Perceptual region: An area defined by people's shared feelings and images rather than by precise data.Example: 'The North' or 'Atlantic Canada' as people imagine them.
Scale: The level at which a phenomenon is studied, or the ratio between distances on a map and on the ground.Example: Unemployment looks different at the national, provincial and neighbourhood levels.
Spatial diffusion: The spread of an idea, innovation or disease from its origin; expansion types spread outward from a source, while relocation types travel with migrating people.Example: A slang term jumping first between large cities (hierarchical spread) is one expansion type.
Distance decay: The tendency for interaction between places to weaken as the distance between them increases.Example: A store draws most customers from nearby neighbourhoods and few from far away.

Population

Crude birth rate: The number of live births per 1000 people in a population per year.Example: 360,000 births in a population of 40 million: 360000/40000 = 9.0 per 1000.
Crude death rate: The number of deaths per 1000 people in a population per year.Example: 320,000 deaths in 40 million: 8.0 per 1000.
Rate of natural increase: Crude birth rate minus crude death rate, usually expressed as a percentage, ignoring migration.Example: CBR 9.0 minus CDR 8.0 = 1.0 per 1000 = 0.1% per year.
Total fertility rate: The average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime at current age-specific birth rates; about 2.1 is replacement level in low-mortality countries.Example: A TFR of 1.4 is well below replacement, so without immigration the population would eventually shrink.
Doubling time: The number of years a population takes to double at a constant growth rate; approximately 70 divided by the percentage rate.Example: Growth of 2% per year doubles a population in about 70/2 = 35 years.
Demographic transition model: A model describing a shift from high birth and death rates to low ones, with death rates usually falling first, creating a period of rapid growth.Example: Stage 2: death rates fall with better sanitation while birth rates stay high.
Population pyramid: A bar graph of a population by age group and sex; its shape shows past birth trends and future needs.Example: A wide base suggests high fertility; a narrow base and wide top suggest an aging population.
Dependency ratio: The number of people of typical non-working age (under 15 and 65 or over) per 100 people aged 15 to 64.Example: 6 million young plus 7 million older per 26 million working-age: (13/26) x 100 = 50.
Physiological density: The number of people per unit of arable land, a better measure of pressure on farmland than arithmetic density.Example: Egypt's density looks moderate per total area but is very high per farmable km^2 along the Nile.
Malthusian theory: Thomas Malthus's 1798 argument that population tends to grow faster than food supply, leading to checks such as famine; critics point to technology-driven gains in food output.Example: Neo-Malthusians apply the idea to energy and environmental limits.

Migration

Push and pull factors: Push factors drive people away from a place (conflict, unemployment); pull factors attract them to a destination (jobs, safety, family).Example: Oil sector jobs pulled workers from Atlantic Canada to Alberta in the 2000s.
Net migration: Immigrants (or in-migrants) minus emigrants (or out-migrants) for a place over a period.Example: 50,000 arrive and 30,000 leave: the balance is +20,000.
Refugee: Under the 1951 UN Convention, a person outside their country who cannot return because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons such as race, religion, nationality or political opinion.Example: Distinct from an internally displaced person, who has not crossed an international border.
Internal migration: Movement of people within one country, for example between provinces or from rural to urban areas.Example: Interprovincial moves recorded by Statistics Canada.
Chain migration: A pattern in which migrants follow relatives or people from the same community who moved earlier.Example: Neighbourhoods where families from one region settle generation after generation.
Remittances: Money that migrants send back to family in their home country, a major income source for some economies.Example: Monthly transfers from workers in Canada to relatives abroad.

Culture

Folk culture versus popular culture: One is traditional, local and slow to change; the other spreads quickly across large areas, often through media and trade.Example: A local fiddling tradition compared with a global streaming hit.
Language family: A group of languages descended from a common ancestor language.Example: English and French both belong to the Indo-European family; Cree belongs to the Algonquian family.
Acculturation and assimilation: The first is adopting some traits of another culture while keeping one's own; the second is a more complete absorption into the dominant culture.Example: Speaking English at work but the heritage language at home reflects partial change.
Cultural landscape: The visible imprint of human activity on the land, such as field patterns, buildings and place names.Example: Long, narrow river lots along the St. Lawrence reflect the seigneurial system.
Sacred space: A place given religious or spiritual meaning by a group, often with rules about its use.Example: Many Indigenous nations hold specific mountains, lakes or sites as spiritually significant.

Urban, political and economic geography

Urbanization: The growth in the share of a population living in towns and cities, along with the spread of urban ways of life.Example: Canada shifted from mostly rural in the 1800s to mostly urban today.
Census metropolitan area: A Statistics Canada unit: one or more neighbouring municipalities around a core, with a total population of at least 100,000, of which at least 50,000 live in the core.Example: The Calgary CMA includes the city plus nearby communities linked by commuting.
Central place theory: Christaller's model explaining the size and spacing of settlements as market centres; higher-order goods need larger market areas.Example: Many villages offer groceries, but only a few large cities have specialist hospitals.
Gentrification: The arrival of higher-income residents and investment in a lower-income neighbourhood, raising rents and often displacing longtime residents.Example: Older inner-city districts near downtown transit are frequent cases.
Urban sprawl: Low-density, car-dependent development spreading outward at a city's edge.Example: New single-detached subdivisions on former farmland.
Rank-size rule: A pattern in which the nth largest city has about 1/n the population of the largest city.Example: If the largest has 6 million, the second would have about 3 million and the third about 2 million.
Primate city: A city far larger than the next largest in the country and dominant in its economy and politics.Example: Bangkok is several times larger than any other Thai city.
State versus nation: One is a political unit with sovereignty over a territory; the other is a people sharing a culture and identity, who may or may not have their own territory.Example: The Kurds are often described as a nation without a state.
Core-periphery model: A view of the world economy (from world-systems theory) in which wealthy core regions dominate trade and capital, with peripheral regions supplying raw materials and labour.Example: Semi-periphery countries sit between the two.
Human Development Index: A UN composite measure of development combining life expectancy, education and income per person.Example: Two countries with similar income can rank differently because of health or schooling.