Culture Regions

 Industrial Regions
 Diffusion of the Industrial Revolution
 Industrial Ecology
 Industrial Cultural Integration
 Industrial Landscapes
Renewable resource crises
 Primary industries can be particularly
destructive
 Gouge huge open-pit mines
 Endanger renewable resources such as forest
and fisheries
 Deforestation is an ongoing process that
began at least 3000 years ago
 In the last half-century, a third of the world’s forest
cover has been lost
 Lumber use tripled between 1950 and 1998
Renewable resource crises

 Loss of the tropical rain forest

 Occurring in both Eastern and Western
Hemispheres
Renewable resource crises
 Loss of the tropical rain forest
 Most intensive clearing is in the East Indies and Brazil, and
commercial lumber interests are largely responsible)
 Canadians and Americans can only hypocritically chastise
other countries since their own west coast mid-latitude rain
forests continue to suffer severe damage because of
lumbering
 Foreign rather than Brazilian interests now hold logging
right to nearly 30 million acres of Amazonian rain forest
 Even forests converted to scientifically managed “tree
farms” destroys natural ecosystems
Renewable resource crises
 Overfishing
 A problem compounded by pollution
 Total fish catch of all countries combined rose from 84
million metric tons in 1984 to 110 million a decade later
causing some species to decline
 Salmon in Pacific coastal North America
 Cod in Maritime Provinces of Canada have reached a
biological crisis
 Caused a catastrophic recession in the Newfoundland cod
industry
 Some experts forecast a collapse of the world fisheries in
the near future
Acid rain
 Can be produced by secondary and tertiary industries that pollute
air, water, and land with toxic substances and other chemicals
 Known to researchers for 150 years
 Gained widespread publicity beginning in the early 1980s
 How it is created by the burning of fossil fuels by power plants,
factories, and automobiles
 Acidic sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides are released into the air

 These chemicals are flushed from the atmosphere by

precipitation
 Resultant rainfall has a much higher than normal acidity

 A shower that fell on Kane, in northern Pennsylvania in 1978 had

a pH reading equivalent to vinegar

Acid rain
 In today’s world, 84 percent of energy is generated
by burning fossil fuels
 Acid rain is capable of poisoning fish, damaging
plants, and diminishing soil fertility
 This problem has been intensively studied in
Germany, one of the world’s most completely
industrialized nations
 In 1982 only 8 percent of forests in western Germany
showed damage
 By 1990 over half the forests showed damage
 Only a crash program of pollution control and energy
conservation can now save Germany’s woodlands
Acid rain
 The Czech Republic faces a comparable problem
 In North America the effects of acid rain are
accumulating
 Over 90 lakes in the Adirondack Mountains of New York
were devoid of fish life by 1980
 In eastern Canada, 50,000 lakes face a similar fate
 Recent studies suggest acid rain now causes mass killings
of marine life along the northeastern coast of the United
States and forests in the Appalachians
 Oxides of nitrogen seem to be the principal culprit in
coastal waters
 Impact has been noted in Chesapeake, Delaware, and
Narragansett bays
 Long Island Sound is also feeling the effects
Industrial Pollution:
British Columbia, Canada
Industrial Pollution:
British Columbia, Canada
 While emissions from
pulp and paper mills
are degradable, the
foul-smelling sulfur
compounds will be
broken down only very
slowly by plants and
microorganisms.
Meanwhile they pollute
both air and water.
Industrial Pollution:
British Columbia, Canada
 Lumbering contributes to
deforestation, and since
sulfur oxides contribute to
acid rain, this forestry-
related manufacturing
process also contributes to
deforestation.
 Mid-latitude coasts are
especially vulnerable since
acid rain has severe effects
on the windward slopes
covered with clouds and
fogs.
Acid rain

 Much of the pollution in Canada is caused by

American pollution
 Canadian government has asked the United
States to take action in stopping pollution
 United States government has not confronted the
problem
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Greenhouse effect is also produced by the
burning of fossil fuels
 Brings possibility of catastrophic change to Earth’s
climate
 Every year billions of tons of carbon dioxide (C0 2)
are produced worldwide, 50 times that produced in
1860
 Destruction of rain forests adds huge additional
amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere
 Chemical composition of the air is being altered
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Greenhouse effect is also produced by the
burning of fossil fuels
 Carbon dioxide is only one of the absorbing gases
involved in the greenhouse effect
 Permits solar shortwave heat radiation to reach Earth’s
surface
 Acts to block or trap long-wave outgoing radiation
 Causes a thermal imbalance and global heating
 The result at worst, could be a runaway buildup of
solar heat that would evaporate all water and
make any form of life impossible
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Greenhouse effect is also produced by the burning
of fossil fuels
 A lesser result could warm the global climate only enough
to melt or partially melt the polar icecaps
 Cause sea levels to rise as much as hundreds of feet
 Inundate the world’s coastlines
 Worst-case scenario for the year 2030 seems to include a
climatic warming to the level known 4 million years ago
 The year 1997 was the warmest year ever recorded
 The decade of the 1987 to 1997 also experienced the
highest average temperatures in history for a 10-year span
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Greenhouse effect is also produced by the burning
of fossil fuels
 Onset could be sudden, as some critical, unknown
threshold is reached in atmospheric carbon dioxide
 Doomsday is possibly being delayed by another industrial-
related environmental alteration
 Addition of huge amounts of particulate pollutants to the
atmosphere
 Such pollution acts to block out solar radiation and cool
climate
 Greenhouse effect and particulate pollution may have
acted to neutralize each other
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Some researchers deny we are experiencing global
warming
 We lack good weather records for all but the recent past
 If the climate is becoming warmer, the causes cannot
conclusively be determined at this time
 Many experts believe the greenhouse effect will be
accompanied by major changes in precipitation
 Some climatic models predict global warming would make
the tropics drier
 Also predict the middle and higher latitudes would be
wetter
 Violent weather may also increase, and evidence suggests
this may already be occurring
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Potentially more serious is the depletion of
the upper-atmosphere ozone layer
 Acts to shield all forms of life from the most
harmful types of solar radiation
 Freon used in refrigeration and air conditioning is
a major culprit
 Most industrialized countries contribute large
amounts of chemicals contributing to the problem
The Greenhouse effect and ozone
depletion
 Potentially more serious is the depletion of the
upper-atmosphere ozone layer
 Recent research suggests the problem may be worse than
believed
 In 1995, ozone levels in the Arctic high latitudes fell by one-
third
 Ozone hole was first detected over the Antarctic during the
1980s
 Greenpeace, and other organizations, warn ozone
depletion now threatens the future of all forms of life on
Earth
 Our modern industrial way of life may prove a
maladaptive strategy in terms of cultural ecology
Radioactive pollution

 Potentially the most serious, though invisible

 Catastrophe at Chenobyl in Ukraine on April
26, 1986
 All lands within a 18-mile radius of destroyed
reactor were evacuated and remain uninhabited
today
 Sizable swaths across Europe were bombarded
with different kinds of radioactive isotopes
 Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years attacks entire
human body
Radioactive pollution
 Sizable swaths across Europe were bombarded
with different kinds of radioactive isotopes
 Iodine-131 with a half-life of 8.1 days collects in the
thyroid gland
 Some estimates place amounts of cesium-137 released
as equivalent to at least 750 Hiroshima atomic bombs
 Ultimately, a sizable part of both Ukraine and Belarus
may be declared unfit for human habitation
 Tens of thousands of people could die from exposure to
radiation caused by this single catastrophe
Radioactive pollution

 The term “national sacrifice area” is now

heard in governmental circles as a potential
euphemism for districts rendered
permanently uninhabitable by radiation
pollution
 Mark Corson speaks of “hazardcapes” to
describe such places
The “Greens”

 Pollution crises such as oil spills have led

people to political activism
 People who have become so distressed by
industrially caused environmental problems
they have become activists, or Greens
 In Europe, “green” political parties now exist
in countries such as Germany
The “Greens”

 Publication of the Green Index is one

reflection of increased concern in North
America
 Organizations such as the Sierra Club and
Greenpeace operate as political lobbyists for
environmental causes
Culture Regions

 Industrial Regions
 Diffusion of the Industrial Revolution
 Industrial Ecology
 Industrial Cultural Integration
 Industrial Landscapes
Labor supply
 Labor-intensive industries — those for which
labor costs form a large part of total
production costs
 Include industries depending on skilled workers
producing small objects of high value —
computers, cameras, and watches
 Manufacturers consider several characteristics of
labor in deciding where to locate
 Availability of workers with necessary skills
 Average wages
 Worker productivity
Labor supply
 Labor-intensive industries — those for which labor
costs form a large part of total production costs
 In recent decades, increasing mobility of labor throughout
the Western world has lessened locational influence of
labor
 Migration of labor increased after 1950, in Europe and U.S.
 In Europe, large numbers of workers migrated south to north
 Workers left homes in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and
Balkan states for employment in European manufacturing belt
Labor supply

 Labor-intensive industries — those for which

labor costs form a large part of total
production costs
 High-tech and “information industries” often locate
near major researchuniversities
 Offer a source of skilled innovative laborers
 Offer an attractive intellectual setting in which to live
Labor supply

 Labor-intensive industries — those for which

labor costs form a large part of total
production costs
 Industries dependent on largely unskilled labor
tend to relocate to economically depressed rural
areas
 Labor can be trained quickly and cheaply
 Can result in higher profits
 Large supply of cheap labor
Labor supply

 Labor-intensive industries — those for which

labor costs form a large part of total
production costs
 Much industry went to “Norma Rae-Ville” in
American South for above reasons
 Today, principal relocations go to less-developed
countries such as northern Mexico, along its
border with the United States
Labor supply
 A new global division of labor seems to be in the
works
 Behind these changes lies strategic thinking by directors of
global corporations
 As early as the mid-1970s, 298 American-based global
corporations employed up to 25 percent of their workers
outside the United States
 Such factories quickly drive up corporate profit margins
 Shift of production to faraway lands has a weakening effect
on organized labor inside the United States
Markets
 Type of market being served can affect location of
industries
 Makers of farm machinery cater to a more dispersed body
of consumers, giving them a greater freedom of choice in
location
 Specialized high-tech manufacturers often have one or two
principal customers and tend to locate near this market
 Clustering in cities pulls manufacturers to urban centers
Markets
 Greatest market potential exists where the
largest numbers of people live
 Once an industry locates in a particular place,
it provides additional jobs and attracts
laborers to the area
 Additional population in turn creates a larger local
market
 Other industries are then attracted to the area
 An agglomeration is then created as the end
result
Markets

 Industrial districts develop through

agglomeration
 Creates a snowballing effect
 Difficult to control in free-enterprise systems
 Can produce serious overcrowding and an
excessively clustered population
 Intense concentration of industries and
population is characteristic of most
industrialized nations
The political element

 Governments often intervene directly in

decisions concerning industrial location
 Desire to establish strategic, militarily important
industries that would otherwise not develop
 Decrease vulnerability to attack by scattering
industry
 Place vital strategic industries in remote locations,
removed from possible war zones
 Diversifying industries to create self-sufficiency
The political element

 Governments often intervene directly in

decisions concerning industrial location
 Bring industrial development and higher standard
of living to poverty- stricken provinces
 Halt agglomeration effect in existing industrial
areas
 Most Often governments intervene in certain
socialist countries, such as China
 Some intervention can be found in most every
industrial nation
The political element

 Examples of industry being scattered by

governments
 Major industrial complex in the Ural Mountains
deep inside Russia was in response to German
military advance in 1941
 For strategic reasons, the U.S. government during
WW II encouraged development of an iron and
steel industry in Utah
 American aircraft similarly became dispersed by
government policy
The political element

 Local and state governments often directly

influence industrial location
 Grant tax concessions to persuade industries to
locate in their areas
 Also can act to prevent industries viewed as
undesirable
 Brewery — where influential local church leaders hold
prohibitionist views
 Development of pollution-prone industries
The political element

 Another type of government influence comes

in the form of tariffs
 Import-export quotas
 Political obstacles to free movement of labor and
capital
 Various types of hindrance to transportation
across borders
 Reduce size of a market area proportional to
amount of tariff imposed
The political element

 Free-trade blocs — groups of nations that

have banded together economically and
abolished most tariffs
 European Union (EU)
 Composed of 15 nations
 Succeeded in abolishing tariffs within its area
 North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), joined the U.S., Canada, and
Mexico
Industrialization and cultural change

 Industrialization is the most potent and

effective agent of cultural change in modern
times
 Entire cultures have been reshaped
 Traditions thousands of years old have been
discarded almost overnight
 Has caused much of the replacement of folk
culture by popular culture
Industrialization and cultural change
 Perhaps the principal cultural change and
subsequent cornerstone of Western civilization was
the concept of technology-based progress
 By-product of continual invention and change
 Many people discarded notions of heaven and afterlife to
accept the belief in a better future on Earth
 Industrial society became more secularized
 Optimism bred of faith in progress allowed industrial
cultures to discard, perhaps unwisely, “the ageless fear of
the greater power and potency of nature”
Industrialization and cultural change

 On a more prosaic level, changes wrought by

industrialization include:
 Increased interregional trade and intercultural
contact
 Basic alterations in employment patterns
 A shift from rural to urban residence for vast
numbers of people
 Release of women from the home
 Ultimate disappearance of child labor
Industrialization and cultural change
 On a more prosaic level, changes wrought by
industrialization include:
 Initial increase in rate of population growth followed by a
drop to unprecedented low birth rates
 Increased individual mobility and mass migrations of
people
 Decline of the multigeneration family
 Greatly increased educational opportunities for the
nonwealthy
 Increase of government influence and functions
 Most basic change is the way people make their living
Culture Regions

 Industrial Regions
 Diffusion of the Industrial Revolution
 Industrial Ecology
 Industrial Cultural Integration
 Industrial Landscapes
Industry creates a landscape, not for
beauty, but for profit and utility
 Primary industries exert perhaps the most
drastic impact on the land
 May contain slag heaps
 Strip-cut commercial forests
 Massive strip-mining scars
 Gaping open-pit mines
Industry creates a landscape, not for
beauty, but for profit and utility
 Primary industries exert perhaps the most
drastic impact on the land
 Open “forests” of oil derricks
 Geographer Richard Francaviglia calls these
“hard places”
 He feels they accurately reflect much of what we
in the Western world value-competition, risk
taking, and dominion over nature
Industry creates a landscape, not for
beauty, but for profit and utility
 Other primary industries please the eye and
complement nature
 Fishing villages of Portugal or Newfoundland even attract
tourists
 In other cases, efforts are made to restore the landscape
 Establishment of grasslands in old strip-mine areas
 Recreational ponds in old borrow pits along interstates
 Artificial grasslands are inexpensive for mining companies
to establish
 Poor and potentially toxic for cattle grazing
 Dominated by exotic Eurasian grasses
 Concentrated in areas that bore a forest cover before mining
Industry creates a landscape, not for
beauty, but for profit and utility
 The most obvious factory building landscapes
are found in secondary industry or
 manufacturing
 Some are imaginatively designed and well
landscaped
 Others are surrounded by gray seas of parking
lots
 Range from the futuristic to stark “brick-pile
factories to award-winning structure designed by
famous architects
Industry creates a landscape, not for
beauty, but for profit and utility
 The most obvious factory building landscapes
are found in secondary industry or
manufacturing
 Some are imaginatively designed and well
landscaped
 Others are surrounded by gray seas of parking
lots
 Range from the futuristic to stark “brick-pile
factories to award-winning structure designed by
famous architects
Industrial Landsape, Lanzhou, China
Industrial Landsape, Lanzhou, China
 In 1949, as part of a
decentralization effort,
Lanzhou was designated for
industrialization.
 A former Silk Road oasis, it
functioned as a caravan
stop and garrison.
 Now it is northwest China’s
principal industrial base with
refineries, coal and
petrochemical complexes,
metal processing and
machine-making factories,
and textile mills.
Industrial Landsape, Lanzhou, China
 An important military base,
it is also a key center for
China’s atomic energy
industry.
 Lanzhou’s population has
swelled to more than 2
million.
 Air pollution is worse in
most Western cities with
sulfur-dioxide emissions
from the combustion of low-
quality coal in factories and
household stoves a major
contributor.
Manufacturing landscapes initially
appeared in Britain
 Poets and artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries reacted strongly to the emerging
landscape
 Geographers Peters and Anderson studied their works
 After an early period of optimism, some poets and artists
quickly sensed something amiss in the landscape
 Their warning, in the form of paintings and poems, began
appearing in the 1775 to 1800 period
 Some artists left paintings that convey a sinister, forbidding,
unpleasant landscape
 Much of the British industrial region was already
known as the “Black Country”
Manufacturing landscapes initially
appeared in Britain
 Douglas Porteous from Yorkshire, England, coined
the word topocide, meaning the deliberate, planned
killing of a place for benefits of industry
 Geographer Shane Davies, son of the Welsh coal
fields, had a nostalgic view
 He lamented the deliberate government-supported
obliteration of the defunct mining landscape after 1930
 He felt there would soon be nothing left of the mining
landscape
 He felt that Britain seeks “to sanitize landscapes pillaged
while forging an industrial empire”
Service industries produce a
landscape
 Includes visual elements as diverse as high-rise
bank buildings, hamburger stands, “silicon
landscapes,” and concrete and steel webs of
highways and railroads
 Some highway interchanges can be described as
modern art forms
 Perhaps the high point of the tertiary landscape is
found in bridges
 Many are often graceful and beautiful structures
 Few sights of the industrial age can match a well-designed
rail or highway bridge
Age of the automobile

 Early in the twentieth century vehicles began

to displace walking
 Los Angeles is the ultimate automobile city
 The freeway system allows motorists to observe
their surroundings at nonstop speeds
 Allows drivers to look down on the world
 In some areas, streets actually have no sidewalks
at all
Age of the automobile

 Los Angeles is the ultimate automobile city

 In other areas, the layout of main avenues has
been planned with the car in mind
 Pedestrians feel ill at ease amid the noise, traffic
jams, drive-in banks, and parking lots
 Shopping streets are no longer scaled to
pedestrians — Los Angeles’s Ventura Boulevard
extends for 15 miles
Reading the Landscape:
Vancouver, Canada
Reading the Landscape:
Vancouver, Canada
 Vancouver is a major port
on the west coast of North
America. Canadian wheat
is transported by rail to the
Vancouver Wheat Pool’s
storage elevators from
where it is shipped around
the Pacific Rim. The
railway cars are designed to
carry wheat.
 Note how rail lines, truck
routes, warehouses and
shipping facilities
agglomerate here.
Reading the Landscape:
Vancouver, Canada
 There are container ships,
loading cranes and a variety
of containers, some of
which are refrigerated to
carry products such as fish.
 Fishing boats and seafood
packing plant are in the
foreground.
 There is a sugar refinery in
front of the grain elevators.
Reading the Landscape:
Vancouver, Canada
 The large white ship reflects
that Vancouver is a key stop
on Alaska cruise routes.
 Which industrial sectors are
represented in this picture?
 What kinds of spatial
interaction between
Vancouver and other parts
of the world are evident
here?