Pre-Reading Notes

Welcome to Chapter 4: North America! I find my students often have a better grasp on this chapter – probably because they live here! Still, I hope that this chapter helps you critically analyze the geography of North America and offers a new perspective on issues you may not have fully understood. So, let’s dive right in!

First of all, this chapter only includes Canada and the United States – even though Mexico is considered part of North America. Why is that? Well, as we’ve discussed, the idea of “continents” as static, well-defined entities isn’t entirely accurate. When we consider the cultural landscape of North America as well as historical patterns of colonization and development, we find that the United States and Canada have much in common, while Mexico has more in common with its neighbors to the south. Thus, I’ve included Mexico in the “Middle and South America” chapter.

The core focus of this chapter is industrialization, which is the process of becoming industrialized (having more manufacturing and industry.) Industrialization, and later deindustrialization, has really driven the patterns of development we find in North America.

The learning objectives for Chapter 4, and questions you might consider, are:

• Identify the key geographic features of North America
  • If you were chatting with a young person from another country who knew very little about North America, what are the main physical features of North America you’d teach them about?
  • What are some of the environmental challenges facing North America?
• Describe how the process of industrialization shaped North American geography
  • How would you describe the human geography of North America before industrialization?
  • How did the process of industrialization change North American geography?
• Analyze how the patterns of industrialization impacted development in North America
  • Where were the primary centers of industry in North America, and why did these areas develop?
  • How did industrialization drive urbanization, and what are some of the effects of this shift?
  • What are some of the current patterns of urban development found in North America?
• Describe the current patterns of inequality in the United States
  • Which areas of the United States are the most impoverished?
  • What demographic patterns do we find related to inequality across the United States and Canada?

Don’t forget to add your own review questions to this list as you read the chapter!

Notes After Reading

Welcome back to the study notes for Chapter 4! As I mentioned, I find students have a pretty good understanding of this chapter, but something I often get a lot of questions about are the related concepts of decentralization and urban sprawl. So let’s get to it!

Imagine that you were planning a new city. Maybe you played that SimCity game as a kid. (I was never great at this and my city usually devolved into a bit of a mess, so please note that apparently your success at playing the game has little bearing on whether or not you can be a successful geographer.) At any rate, picture your ideal, well-planned city. Maybe it would have some businesses and shops in a very cute downtown area (maybe even a really built up downtown if you like a more bustling city). It might have apartments and larger homes surrounding this area, restaurants many people can walk to, perhaps a few larger businesses where people work, and so on. Follow me so far? So here’s a little map of our awesome urban center:

(Please know that I tried to make a really nice graphic of this with a drawing of a little cluster of apartment buildings and businesses and houses and it did not go well. So just imagine it.)

Okay, so after a while, our town starts doing pretty well. Maybe a few high rises go up, maybe a more high-tech industry moves in. Downtown is bustling and there’s high demand, but that means that real-estate prices start to go up too. And things have gotten a bit crowded. So what do some residents do? They decide to move out to the surrounding areas. They have cars so they can afford the added transportation cost, and their higher incomes mean they can afford larger houses and more land away from the city center. Other residents follow, and you now have some small neighborhoods popping up around the urban center, represented by the house icons in the figure below:

More and more neighborhoods develop as increasing numbers of people are lured by the prospect of having larger homes and more space. This process is known as suburbanization, the process of people moving into the suburbs. Eventually it becomes this sprawling urban area – so that’s what urban sprawl is!

Now imagine that the workers in the surrounding homes are no longer tied to jobs in the urban center. Maybe the area has deindustrialized and now has more service jobs that could be done remotely. Maybe a new business decides that real estate is too expensive in the urban center and locates near one of the surrounding neighborhoods. Maybe that then attracts more suburban housing developments and eventually what was once a small neighborhood becomes a larger edge city.

So essentially, suburbanization and urban decentralization (which often results from deindustrialization) fuel urban sprawl and the development of edge cities. It might seem complicated, but all of these processes are working together.

Now then, so what? Why does any of this matter? Well, remember that many of those who moved out were wealthier? This meant that housing values in the urban center declined as people moved away, and some apartment complexes and duplexes suffered in terms of upkeep as well as landlords saw their rents decrease. Eventually, some of the workers living in the surrounding neighborhoods and edge cities decided they disliked the long commute and missed the amenities of downtown and so they moved back to the urban center – buying cheap, historic housing and renovating it. Others followed. And while this had the effect of raising housing values (so some cities encouraged it because it meant you’d get higher property taxes), those higher housing values meant that some lower income workers were now priced out of the urban center. This is gentrification.

Okay well who cares? So the lower income workers have to move, and maybe they end up moving into affordable housing that’s popped up in the surrounding neighborhoods and cities because the urban center is too expensive. Is that so terrible? Well, another challenge this sprawling system presents to cities is remember that people originally moved away from the urban center because they wanted more space and could… wait for it… afford the commute. They had cars. So this whole urban system was predicated on having a car. In the former, tightly developed urban center, having public transportation was relatively easy since it basically just involved moving residents to and from the city center. Now, though, some residents might live in the urban center but work in the edge city or vice versa. Some might live in a neighborhood but work in the edge city. So just as the urban area has sprawled, now you need a public transit system that enables the movement of workers over this sprawling metropolis and that is very challenging. Take a moment and Google some maps of metro systems in the United States, like the DC Metro or the New York City subway. Note that they are designed to get workers from surrounding areas and bring them to the center – but that’s less and less needed as urban decentralization has occurred.

Great work on this chapter! Don’t forget to go back to the chapter questions and test yourself!