Spatial Inequality

A spatial differentiation of abundance of any measurable quality or characteristic. No geographical feature is evenly distributed across any landscape of the Earth except at a very small scale, so every spatial characteristic is marked by spatial inequality to some degree. Spatial inequality is primarily of concern to scholars who study the geography of economic development, and is related to the concept of segregation, a condition in which spatial inequality is established in an urban environment on the basis of race or other considerations and is reflected in the social distance between groups. Spatial inequality is often the motivating factor behind migration, because economic opportunity, wages, and amenities are never evenly distributed, and people tend to relocate to those places that offer the greatest advantages. Economic geographers may analyze and explain spatial inequality at any scale: global, regional, national, or local. World Systems Theory is an attempt to identify the factors and conditions that contribute to global spatial inequality of income and wealth. At the regional and national scales, concepts of core and periphery are sometimes employed to explain the presence and effects of spatial inequality. Many countries possess an economic core region that is characterized by an underdeveloped hinterland, resulting in an unequal distribution of economic development, income, and standards of living.

The spatial inequality of wealth and income are of interest because other spatial inequalities are often connected to this specific pattern of inequality. For instance, the spatial distribution of the quality or accessibility of health care in many countries is directly correlated with levels of personal or family income. Infant mortality rates, longevity, and other factors influencing the quality of life are also typically geographically associated with the spatial characteristics of monetary income. If it is assumed that such inequality is an undesirable geographic pattern, then a comparative, reasonably precise means of measuring such disparity is useful, as countries and regions may then be evaluated relative to one another. A common method used to accomplish this is the Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient is a mathematical index that ranges between a hypothetical value of zero to a maximum of one. A Gini coefficient of zero indicates a situation in which there is complete equality, in other words all individuals or family units receive exactly the same level of income or wealth. A coefficient of one indicates that all wealth is concentrated with one person or household, with all others receiving nothing, resulting in the maximum degree of inequality. Frequently, the coefficient is multiplied by 100 for reporting purposes, as this produces whole integers and is somewhat easier to use when making comparisons. In this system the maximum coefficient is 100, while the minimum remains zero. In reality, for countries the range of Gini coefficients is between 20, signifying low spatial inequality of income, to around 70, indicating a relatively large inequality. As a general rule, developing countries tend to have the largest Gini coefficients.

Solar Energy

It is no understatement that solar energy is the lifeblood of our planet. Weather, oceanic circulation, and life owe their existence to the energy output of our sun. Although it is true that solar energy is responsible for heating up our planet, there is a common misconception that solar energy and thermal infrared energy are synonymous. In fact, only a small proportion of the direct solar beam is composed of thermal infrared energy.

The sun is a star that has natural variation in output but the variations are currently insignificant enough to maintain life on Earth. The evolution of the sun and certain prehistoric output changes has been known to force climate change, but the present status of the sun is not such that we do not expect large changes in the next thousands of years. Sunspots are dark features on the sun’s radiating photosphere some 1,500°C cooler than their surroundings. They are caused by disturbances in the interior solar magnetic field. These disturbances are tube-shaped and sometimes pop above the photosphere. Sunspots occur where the magnetic field lines leave and enter the photosphere. These areas can grow until some reach sizes exceeding 30,000 km with individual sunspots usually lasting a few days to a few months. Numbers of sunspots cycle over 11–13 years, and increased numbers of sunspots are associated with increased solar activity. It has been conjectured that solar cycles influence weather and climate but this relationship is unclear because of all the other factors influencing Earth’s atmosphere. Prominences, coronal mass ejections, and flares are other output variations related to sunspots. However, the measured year-to-year solar variability at the top of Earth’s atmosphere is about 0.1 percent of the average. 

The sun is able to emit huge amounts of energy through space because its gases are heated as a result of fusion. The hotter a substance, the more energy it radiates because of the greater intensity of molecular vibration. The vibrating electrons of the gases’ molecules emit electromagnetic energy, and this energy is propagated through the void of space and through our atmosphere. In space, the speed is about 300,000 km per second with the speed of transmission through our atmosphere being negligibly slower. Solar energy can penetrate some Earth materials. Solar output is a staggering 3.31 × 1031 joules per day. Of course, Earth is small and 150 million km distant and the sun radiates in all directions, so we receive only about one two-billionths of the total solar output. The mean instantaneous solar input is 1.74 × 1017 joules per second at the top of the atmosphere; compare this figure with the “measly”1.5 × 1013 joules per second consumed by human activity on the planet.

Shatterbelt

A region of persistent political fragmentation due to devolution and centrifugal forces. The term has been applied by political geographers to a number of places since the SecondWorldWar, especially East Central Europe, but also SoutheastAsia, the Middle East, and Africa. A synonymous phrase is “crush zone.” Shatterbelts sometimes serve as buffer zones between hostile states or empires, and historically have played an important role in geopolitics. Shatterbelts in the Middle East and Africa emerged in the latter 20th century due to the collapse of imperialism, and the subsequent devolution of structures of governance to multiple independent states, most of which had never existed prior to the collapse of colonial authority. 

Regions classified as shatterbelts are characterized by states or territories that have a large degree of ethnic, linguistic, and/or religious diversity, and a history of antagonism and hostility between the groups living there, and can result from the balkanization of larger political entities. Boundaries in shatterbelts tend to be fluid and often contested, due to the fact that such political divisions frequently cross cultural regions, splitting ethnic groups between two or more countries. Although the term itself did not come into wide use until after World War II, the general concept of a shatterbelt appeared in the writings of political geographers several decades earlier. In a more modern context, shatterbelts often hold what Samuel Huntington has described as “civilizational fault lines,” a key concept in his “clash of civilizations” thesis.

The classic example of a shatterbelt is southeastern Europe, especially the Balkan Peninsula. This region has been functionally a shatterbelt for at least 500 years, as it has been geographically sandwiched between more powerful states that attempted to control part or all of the territory. From the 16th century to the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire controlled large swaths of the Balkans at various times, and imposed Islamic culture on many of the peoples under its rule. Almost the entire population of what are today Albania and Kosovo were converted to Islam, and significant numbers were converted in portions of modern-day Bosnia and Bulgaria as well. A majority of the Slavic-speaking peoples in the region retained their Christian religious identity, but they too were divided into Roman Catholics (Slovenes, Croatians) or Orthodox Christians (Serbs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Bulgarians) whose relationships were frequently antagonistic. Compounding this complex ethnic geography was the presence of large non-Slavic Christian minorities like the Hungarians and Germans, especially in those portions of the region that fell within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and many other groups scattered throughout the peninsula. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire afterWorldWar I, the subsequent creation of Yugoslavia, and four decades of the Cold War only temporarily subsumed the turbulent character of this shatterbelt, as witnessed by the violent birth of seven new countries, most of which had never been independent previously, between 1991 and 2008. Kosovo’s independence in the latter year indicates that shatterbelts will remain volatile regions well into the 21st century.

Sequent Occupance

The American geographer Derwent Whittlesey is credited with first articulating the concept of sequent occupance, although he drew heavily on the theoretical work of others in the field of cultural geography, especially the ideas of Carl Sauer (see sidebar). Sequent occupance is the notion that landscapes are shaped over time by the sequential settlement, or at least sequential use, of that landscape by various groups who occupy the land. Thus, according to the proponents of this approach to landscape study, a place can be understood only through an examination of the historical impact of such occupation, and a comprehension of the nature of the culture at each stage of occupation. 

The theory had a deep influence on the approach of historical and cultural geographers in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. The concept of sequent occupance has its roots in Social Darwinism, in that the landscape is seen as evolving over time due to the various influences upon it, and the condition of the present landscape contains elements from all previous occupations. Most of the proponents of sequent occupance emphasize the necessity of fieldwork to identify the ways that the land had been utilized by past cultures. Past occupancy is reflected in the presence of structures from previous cultures, alterations of the natural environment, etc. Such a reading of the landscape reveals the practices and processes that combine to form the landscape in its present condition. Sequent occupance as a theory of geographical development focuses on the relationship between human activity and the natural environment, although there is no implicit assumption that the sequence is necessarily continuous, or that successive occupations and uses are superior to those that came previously.

The theory is in almost direct opposition to the intellectual position of environmental determinism, because sequent occupance suggests that how cultures use the landscape is not predominantly determined by the physical environment, but rather is a product of the culture itself. Various cultures, in other words, interact with the landscape based on their technological capacity, and it is that capacity, not the environment, that dictates the human-landscape dynamic. Sequent occupance is a conceptual component of many contemporary studies in cultural ecology, and both emerged from an emphasis on human ecology in the work of some geographers in the early 20th century. 

In some cases the historical patterns of settlement of a place may be partially revealed through a study of the local toponymy, which frequently carries clues to the history of previous cultural occupants as well as to a place’s former function on the landscape. Sequent occupance continues to have a strong influence on studies in historical geography, and most contemporary historical geographers engaged in holistic landscape studies would subscribe to the basic principle of the theory, i.e., a landscape cannot be completely understood in a vacuum of time, and only a consideration of all past cultural uses will result in a full picture of the relationship between human activity and the physical environment.

Segregation

The spatial division of a population according to racial or ethnic characteristics. Since the 1950s many studies in social geography have been conducted on the residential racial segregation present in most major cities in the United States. Before the 1920s, many cities in the northern region of the United States had a relatively small black population, but a large migration of Southern blacks in the 1920s and 1930s northward greatly increased the percentage of African Americans living in urban places like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and New York. By the 1950s sociologists of the so-called “Chicago School” were conducting research on the spatial separation of racial groups in Chicago, and this research stimulated similar studies of the racial segregation patterns found in other cities.

Segregation in residential areas in these urban environments followed more or less the same geographical arrangement—an inner city that was predominantly black, with smaller clusters of other ethnic or racial minorities; and a surrounding fringe of suburbs that were overwhelmingly populated by white residents. In the 1960s these spatial patterns appeared to become even more distinct, and were accompanied by a decline of the inner-city area. Property values declined, the local tax base eroded, and the quality of services provided to residents suffered, including law enforcement, fire protection, and education.

The term “white flight” was coined to describe the process whereby cities became racially segregated. Whites began leaving inner-city neighborhoods in the 1930s as greater numbers of black families moved in, but this process dramatically accelerated after World War II. Several factors contributed to the movement of whites to the suburbs. The construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s allowed whites in the suburbs to live a considerable distance from the inner city, but still commute there on a daily basis relatively easily. Low land values in the countryside, relatively low mortgage rates, and the application of mass production techniques to housing construction after the war enabled many whites to purchase homes in the suburbs, but blacks were unable to follow because incomes in the black communities were lower, and few blacks could afford to relocate. Moreover, discriminatory practices in lending prevented blacks frompurchasing property in predominantly white areas. “Redlining,” for example, was a tactic mortgage lenders used to maintain the segregated character of housing in the large cities. When a residential area was redlined, mortgage lenders would deny mortgage applications of blacks and other minorities for property within the area, effectively prohibiting them from living in that part of the city. This was done primarily to protect property values, because the mortgage holders felt that the presence of minority residents would depress the value of existing residences. Such discriminatory practices are now illegal, but their effect remains, as most urban areas in the United States remain quite segregated. However, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has declared in recent census reports that the level of segregation in American cities is declining, as white neighborhoods have gradually become more integrated.