What we know as nature is rapidly disappearing with urban and ex-urban encroachment. Places we like to visit are becoming commodified into a Disney-like simulations. Geographers are concerned with all these and many other related issues. This course provides a framework for understanding some key local and global issues from a geographic perspective. We look at how geography and the understanding of spatial relationships can help us decipher aspects of current world problems.
Careful attention is paid to the scale at which spatial patterns and processes operate.
Geographers are interested in patterns and processes at all scales from the environmental perceptions of the smallest child to global space economies. The course is divided into four sections. The first section is an introduction to how geographers look at the world. This includes a discussion of why geography is important in a rapidly shrinking global arena as well as descriptions of some basic geographic concepts and methods, globalization and natural resources. The second section deals personal geographies, population change and identity.