Shaping the Human Mosaic
92
CHAPTER 3
POPULATION GEOGRAPHY
Shaping the Human Mosaic
Would you feel comfortable walking here? If not, why not?
A street scene in the large city of Kolkata, India.
(National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy.)
Go to “Seeing Geography” to learn more about this image.
93
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
3.1
Describe the regional patterns of population characteristics and how these are distributed spatially and change over time.
3.2
Identify patterns, causes, and consequences of population migrations and the things—such as diseases—that accompany them.
3.3
Discuss theories of population growth and control and how these have changed over time.
3.4
Recognize the ways in which the natural world shapes population characteristics, and how population characteristics in turn shape the natural world.
3.5
Analyze the imprint of demographic factors on the cultural landscape.
The nineteenth-century French philosopher Auguste Comte famously asserted that “demography is destiny.” Though this might be a bit of an exaggeration, it is true that one of the most important aspects of the world’s human population is its demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, health, mortality, density, and mobility. In fact, many cultural geographers argue that familiarity with the spatial dimensions of demography provides a baseline for the discipline. Thus, population geography provides an ideal topic to launch our substantive discussion of the human mosaic.
population geography
The study of the spatial and ecological aspects of population, including distribution, density per unit of land area, fertility, gender, health, age, mortality, and migration.
The most essential demographic fact is that more than 7 billion people inhabit the Earth today. But, numbers alone tell only part of the story of the delicate balance between human populations and the resources on which we depend for our survival, comfort, and enjoyment. Think of the sort of lifestyle you may now enjoy or aspire to in the future. Does it involve driving a car? Eating meat regularly? Owning a spacious house with central heating and air conditioning? If so, you are not alone. In fact, these “Western” consumption habits have become so widespread that they may now be more properly regarded as universal. Satisfying these lifestyle demands requires using a wide range of nonrenewable resources—fossil fuels, extensive farmlands, and fresh water among them—whose consumption ultimately limits the number of people the Earth can support. Indeed, it has been argued that if Western lifestyles are adopted by a significant number of the globe’s inhabitants, then our current population of 7 billion is already excessive and will soon deplete or contaminate the Earth’s life-support systems: the air, soil, and water we depend on for our very survival. Although we may think of our geodemographic choices, such as how many children we will have or what to eat for dinner, as highly individual ones, when aggregated across whole groups, they can have truly global repercussions.
94
As we do throughout this book, we approach our study using the five themes of cultural geography. The demographics of human populations—their size, age, gender compositions, and spatial distribution—are discussed under the regional theme. Population mobility and the related movement of diseases that affect human populations are discussed next. Population debates are considered under the theme of globalization. Although population is experienced locally and policies affecting population are typically set at the national level, the size and impact of human populations involve a debate that is most commonly pitched at the global scale. Next, the theme of nature-culture reveals that the ways in which we interpret the natural world and adapt it to our needs are deeply entwined with demographic practices. We close with a consideration of the geodemographic cultural landscape, which highlights the surprisingly diverse ways that places across the world respond to changing population dynamics.