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Health & Fitness

Geography, It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore!

Don't know much about geography? Even if you don't know your states and capitals, you know more than you realize.

 

I’m a map geek. There.  I’ve said it.  That doesn’t mean that I’m going to Maps Anonymous anytime soon, just that I’m “in touch” with my inner carto-nerd. 

The first map I ever had was a freebie pocket US highway/states map, but now, if I look on the nearest bookshelf, I count nine atlases.  That doesn’t count the scores of books that have maps but aren’t atlases, the ones still packed in boxes from the last move, or the scores of geography textbooks that I have from my college days.

I also count amongst my map collection two high school geography textbooks…one from the 1930s and one from the 1890s.  Along with the fact that most of the maps in these books had been initially hand-drawn, it’s amazing how much our understanding of the world changed (the 1890s book was astonishingly racist).

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It’s also quite amazing how much our patterns of settlement have changed.  For instance, what do these cities have in common: 

  • Austin, TX;
  • Charleston, SC;
  • Charlotte, NC;
  • Columbia, SC;
  • Lansing, MI;
  • Lincoln, NE; 
  • Little Rock, AR;
  • Madison, WI;
  • Mobile, AL;
  • Pasadena, CA;
  • Raleigh, NC;
  • Las Vegas, NV;
  • Sacramento, CA;
  • San Jose, CA,
  • Tampa, FL;
  • Phoenix, AZ;
  • Tucson, AZ  


As recently as 80 years ago, they were all smaller in population than Duluth.  Places like El Paso, Miami, Knoxville, San Diego, Spokane, Tacoma, and Wichita were all about the same size as Duluth.

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I’m also a geography geek.  It’s possible to be a map geek without being a geography geek.  You can fall compass-over-north-arrow over the aesthetic quality of a map without loving the data behind it much like you can gush over the colors of a painting without knowing that this was the artist’s “dark period” where he drank a lot and painted “with no lights”.

My favorite definition of geography is that it is “every other discipline viewed spatially, through the definition of place”.  Ken Jennings, multi-million dollar Jeopardy winner and outed-geography geek wrote that.  

Probably because of my background as a city planner, my geographic “wheelhouse” is economic, physical, and locational geography.  Economic geography is the economic interplay between nations, but also states, regions, and towns.  In fact, there are even equations and theories to predict which store at which someone will spend their money. 

Physical is the landforms around us, hills, rivers, swamps, mountains, oceans, et cetera.  These things impact how and where we live.  For instance, few people, other than in a Monty Python movie, build castles in a swamp.

This leaves locational geography.  Why we build where we do and what we build.

In the days of yore, we built primarily along rivers, oceans, and lakes.  Even to this day, it’s tough to think of a major city that’s not located along a river, ocean, or lake.  We may put rivers in concrete in Los Angeles, set rivers ablaze in Cleveland, or fear their rise in the spring, but we still settle along them.

Why?  Well, we humans tend to like water since we’re made up of a lot of it.   Potable water is great for drinking, cooking, bathing, and, unless you’ve fouled it, finding tasty animals within or near it.

Of course, there’s also the fact that after you’ve drank, cooked, and eaten the bounty from it, you’ve got the end result of human waste to deal with.  Until recent times, these things found their way into the rivers and oceans.  Why?  Because the river and/or tides would carry them away.  Out of sight, out of mind was the philosophy…which worked, as long as you were upstream.

Another reason was defense.  Oceans and lakes provided long vistas in which enemy vessels could be sighted and defense forces marshaled to areas to repel invaders prior to landing.  Land-side attacks were not guaranteed the same sort of “early warning.”  Fording even a small river without a bridge leaves an attacker vulnerable to all defenders. So, it was possible to use the body of water as an extra wall, much like a basketball team would use the sideline as an extra defender.  The medieval city of Paris, founded on Ile de la City, used this initial island location quite successfully until it ultimately expanded to the Rive Gauche and the Rive Droite.

Waterways can also be used to transport goods.  Duluth and New York are among cities built on natural harbors.  Saint Paul and Saint Louis started as river transportation hubs.  The voyageurs, and before them, Native Americans, had a vast transportation system built upon canoeing the unsettled lands of the Midwest. 

Transportation has been an element limiting the physical size of cities as well.  Most old cities formed with the “urbanized” area defined in a very pedestrian manner.  Literally.  The built-up area of the city did not extend past an area that was walkable.  The city’s hinterland was the area in which goods could reliably be carted in, whether that be horse, ox, or other animal-powered cart. 

The widespread adoption of the horse as personal transportation expanded these settlements outward.  Despite only having one horsepower, no GPS, and terrible emissions equipment, you couldn’t beat the fact that the horse did much of the walking, it was faster, and it had a very good “miles per bushel” rating.

Trolleys, streetcars, and interurban rail extended these settlements even more, creating “streetcar suburbs”, many of which are now part of the original city.  But these raised more issues.  With denser development farther from the body of water, and people still needing to expel bodily wastes, systems for municipal water and wastewater began to grow and, eventually, become the standard for urbanized development.

Finally, the automobile created an amazing amount of location choices.  It was now possible to live in a community and work farther away.  Vast infrastructures were created to move and to house personal automobiles, ranging from garages to parking lots, to highways (both local and interstate.)  The vast majority of suburbs formed and expanded during this automobile era, Woodbury included. 

I guess what it “All Comes Down To” is people think of geography as maps, states and capitals, and “primary exports” based upon classes that they may have had in elementary or secondary school.  

While these are worthwhile facts to know, they only tell part of the story.  Like most facts, they need to have a context.  I think it’s a lot more interesting to know why a state is shaped the way it is, why a certain city is a capital, what does the primary export do for the economy, where is it found within the country, how is it brought to market, who benefits from it. 

I don’t blame the educators.  All my geography teachers in elementary and secondary school majored in physical education, but had interest in some forms of geography.   Years ago, geography was taught more in a contextual manner, but has now been largely lumped in with “social studies” by bureaucrats.  While this allows many interrelated subjects like civics, economics, sociology, geography, and political science to be taught, it often doesn’t provide a great depth of knowledge in any of them.

Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in an education day and so many days in a class year and more “requirements” that must be met for not only graduation, but also for admittance into higher education.  I’m not even sure that, if a more contextual approach was taken, it would improve the geographical knowledge.  Perhaps some, like me, would benefit and flourish and others would still remain apathetic. It’s hard to say for certain.

And that’s the view from the old, steel drafting table.

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