External Forces Flashcards
Government policies
Some government policies can affect the demographic, economic and social characteristics of places. For example, governments can fund schemes aimed at regenerating run-down urban areas. In 1992 in Manchester, the Hulme City Challenge Partnership rebuilt houses, created a new park, refurbished shopping areas, built an arts venue and a business park. This scheme led to an increase in the population in the area, created jobs, reduced unemployment and increased quality of life for some residents.
World Food Programme(WFP)-global institution
The World Food Programme (WFP) is an international organisation that provides food assistance, often as emergency aid, wherever it is needed. The WFP affects the social and demographic characteristics of places by ensuring that people have enough food, and preventing deaths from famine and starvation. For example, there has been intense conflict in Yemen since 2015, which has meant that millions of people don’t have regular access to food. The WFP has distributed food aid to millions of malnourished people.
The world bank-global institution
The World Bank is an international organisation that invests in, and helps to set up, thousands of projects round the world that are aimed at reducing poverty. Many of these projects affect the demographic, cultural, economic and social characteristics of the places where they are set up. For example, between 2010 and 2016 the World Bank provided funding for the Ningbo New Countryside Development Project in Ningbo, China. This project improved the social conditions in the area by providing wastewater disposal services to 144 rural villages that previously had no wastewater collection or treatment services.
Industrial Revolution
Large industrial cities developed that were globally connected through the trade of the goods produced. This resulted in large-scale rural to urban migration as people moved to the cities in search of work in the factories. Today, these old industrial centres remain as large cities, e.g. Sheffield became a major centre of the steel industry, trading items such as cutlery all round the globe. The work available in the steel industry attracted workers and made Sheffield a major population centre.
