The Character of Places Flashcards
Endogenous Factors
The internal factors which shape a place’s character. These could be physical, e.g. its location, topography and physical geography, or they could be human, e.g. the land use, built environment, infrastructure and demographic and economic characteristics.
Exogenous Factors
The external factors which shape a place’s character, including the relationship to other places and the flows in and out of a place, e.g. the flows of people, resources, money and ideas.
Location
Location refers to where a place is, e.g. on the coast or inland, in a rural or urban area, at a bridge point or a confluence of roads.
Topography
Topography refers to the shape of the landscape.
Places can be characterised directly by their topography, e.g. in a valley, places would be characterised as flat, whereas in a mountainous region, places would be characterised by steep slopes.
Physical Geography
Physical geography refers to the environmental features of a place, e.g. altitude, aspect, soil and rock type.
Places can be characterised directly by their physical geography, e.g. a place could have igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic rocks, which form different landscapes.
Physical geography also affects other factors that give places their character. E.g. economic characteristics - a place that is rich in natural resources such as iron or coal may be characterised by the industries that can exist there, such as mining or smelting.
Land Use
Land use refers to the human activities that occur on the land, e.g. farming, industry, leisure, residential use etc.
Land use is one of the most important human factors in directly defining the character of places, e.g. a place could be thought of as rural if the land use is farming, or urban if the land is used for commercial businesses.
Built environment and infrastructure
The built environment refers to aspects of places that are built by humans.
Infrastructure specifically refers to the structures built for transport, communications and services e.g. roads, phone and broadband networks and sewer systems.
Demographic characteristics
Demographic characteristics are about who lives in a place and what they’re like. Demographic factors include things like age, gender, education level, religion, birth rates, ethnicity and population size.
Demographic factors can directly contribute to the character of places, e.g, many people retire to seaside locations, which means they can have higher proportions of older people. Seaside places may then be characterised as ‘old’ places (i.e. places where older people feel like insiders, and younger people feel like outsiders).
Economic characteristics
Economic characteristics are factors to do with work and money, e.g. income, employment rates and the types of job available.
Economic factors can directly contribute to the character of places, e.g. places such as Kensington in London have a high proportion of above average earners and low unemployment and as such are characterised as wealthy.
Money-Exogenous
Flows of investment affect the character of places. For example, Japanese car manufacturer Nissan has a factory in Sunderland. The flow of investment from Japan has influenced some of the characteristics of Sunderland, including the land use around the factory, the built environment of the factory and the type of employment available.
People-Exogenous
Migration can influence the character of places. For example, parts of the UK have an ethnically diverse population due to migration from other parts of the world. This gives some places their unique demographic characteristics, e.g. 27% of the population of Birmingham are of Asian descent.
Ideas-Exogenous
Tourism influences the character of many places. For example, the land use and economic characteristics of Las Vegas are affected by tourism - the casinos and hotels are there for the tourists, and these create employment.
