Fields of human geography II: urban, population, settlement and economic geography

Detail

1. Where these fields sit in human geography

• Human geography studies how people and their natural surroundings shape each other. It also studies how people use and change the space around them.
• NCERT (Class 12, Ch 1, Table 1.2) splits human geography into fields. Each field is paired with a sister discipline. A sister discipline is a nearby social science that studies the same subject without the focus on place.
• This section covers four fields: urban, population, settlement and economic geography.
• What makes it geography: the sister discipline asks what and why. The geographer also asks where, how it is spread over space, and why it differs from place to place.

Field	Sister discipline	What it studies
Urban geography	Urban studies and planning	Where towns grow, how they grow, what they do, how they are laid out inside, and problems like slums and congestion
Population geography	Demography	Population growth, distribution, density, sex ratio, migration and occupational structure
Settlement geography	Urban/rural planning	Types, patterns, sites and functions of villages and towns
Economic geography	Economics	Where economic activities are located and how they spread

2. Urban geography

• Definition: urban geography is the study of towns and cities. It looks at where they grow, how they grow, what work they do, how they are laid out inside, and their problems.
• Sister discipline: urban studies and planning.
• Main themes:
• Location and growth: why a town grows at a river crossing, a port, a mining site or a road junction.
• Functions: what a town mainly does, for example administration, trade, industry, mining, religion or tourism.
• Internal structure (morphology): how land inside a city is used, such as the central business district, housing, industry and the edges of the city.

• Problems: slums (crowded, poor housing without basic services), congestion (traffic jams and overcrowding), and pressure on water, sewerage and transport.

• Indian scale (Census 2011):

• India's total population was 1,210.2 million on 1 March 2011. About 377.1 million of these people lived in urban areas [4][5].
• Urban share: 31.16% in 2011, up from 27.81% in 2001.
• Urban areas gained 91.0 million people in 2001–2011, and the urban population grew by 31.8% [5].
• Million-plus cities/urban agglomerations (an urban agglomeration is a town together with the built-up areas around it) rose from 35 (Census 2001) to 53 (Census 2011) [5].
• For the first time since Independence, the absolute rise in population in 2001–2011 was larger in urban areas than in rural areas [5].

3. Population geography

• Definition: population geography studies how the size, make-up and spread of population differ from place to place, and why.
• Sister discipline: demography, the statistical study of births, deaths, migration and the age and sex make-up of a population.
• Difference: demography counts and measures. Population geography maps the numbers and explains them through land, climate, resources and the economy.
• Themes (Class 11, kegy201; Class 12, Table 1.2):
• Population growth: the change in numbers over time, made up of births minus deaths plus net migration.
• Distribution: where people live, for example crowded river plains and almost empty deserts.
• Density: the number of persons per sq km.
• Sex ratio: in India, the number of females per 1,000 males.
• Migration: people moving from one place to another, rural to urban or between countries.

• Occupational structure: the share of workers in primary, secondary and tertiary jobs.

• Covered in detail in: world-population and india-population.

4. Settlement geography

• Definition: settlement geography studies places where people live, from a single hamlet to a megacity. It looks at their type, pattern, site and function.
• Sister discipline: urban and rural planning.
• Key terms:
• Site: the actual ground a settlement stands on, for example a hilltop, a river bank, a spring or a dry spot in a flood plain.
• Type: rural (most people do farming and other primary work) or urban (most people do non-farm work).
• Pattern: the shape a settlement takes, for example compact (clustered), semi-clustered, hamleted or dispersed, or linear and rectangular in form.

• Function: what the settlement mainly does.

• Class 11 (kegy201) groups population and settlement geography together. It covers rural and urban settlement features along with population themes.

• Covered in detail in: human-settlements.

5. Economic geography

• Definition: economic geography studies where economic activities are located, why they are there, and how they spread over space.
• Sister discipline: economics.
• Scope (kegy201): primary to quaternary activities, plus transport and trade.
• Primary: taking things directly from nature, such as farming, mining, fishing and forestry.
• Secondary: turning raw materials into goods, which means manufacturing.
• Tertiary: services such as trade, transport and communication.
• Quaternary: knowledge-based work such as research, information technology and data.

Sub-field of economic geography	Sister discipline
Geography of resources	Resource economics
Geography of agriculture	Agricultural sciences
Geography of industries	Industrial economics
Geography of marketing	Business studies, economics, commerce
Geography of tourism	Tourism and travel management
Geography of international trade	International trade

• Covered in detail in: primary-activities-world, secondary-activities-world, tertiary-quaternary-activities and world-trade.

6. Core-periphery model (Beyond NCERT)

• Author: John Friedmann (1966), who built the model from a study of regional development policy in Venezuela.
• Definition: the core-periphery model explains regional inequality, meaning the gap between rich and poor regions. It says this gap first widens and then narrows as a country develops.
• Core: a region rich in capital, skills and innovation (new ideas and technology), usually a big city region.
• Periphery: a dependent region that supplies the core with labour and raw materials.
• How it works:
• Early stage: the core pulls in workers, money and resources from the periphery → the core grows fast and the periphery falls behind → inequality widens.

• Later stage: the core becomes crowded and costly, and markets, roads and technology reach further → industry and services spread outward → the gap narrows.

• Four stages (standard textbook form):

Stage	Spatial picture
1. Pre-industrial	Many small, independent local centres; little inequality
2. Transitional (early industrial)	One strong core dominates; periphery drained
3. Industrial	Sub-cores grow in the periphery; gap begins to narrow
4. Post-industrial	Linked, balanced national urban system

• Related ideas:

Thinker	Year	"Core gains" force	"Growth spreads" force
Gunnar Myrdal	1957	Backwash effects: the core pulls capital, skilled people and trade away from poor regions	Spread effects: demand and technology flow out to the surrounding regions
Albert Hirschman	1958	Polarisation: growth gathers at a few points	Trickle-down: benefits slowly reach lagging areas

• Myrdal's view is circular and cumulative causation: once a region gets ahead, its advantages keep adding up, so backwash effects can stay stronger than spread effects unless the state steps in.

• Hirschman was more hopeful: he expected trickle-down to win in the end.

• Indian application:

• Cores: metro regions such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai-Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad.
• Periphery: lagging eastern and central states that send out migrant labour.
• Policy response, the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP):
  • Launched by the Prime Minister in January 2018 to quickly transform 112 of the most under-developed districts [2][3].
  • Districts are ranked each month on incremental progress ("delta ranking") across 49 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) [2][3].
  • The KPIs fall under 5 themes: Health and Nutrition; Education; Agriculture and Water Resources; Financial Inclusion and Skill Development; and Infrastructure [2][3].
  • The strategy is the 3 Cs: Convergence of Central and State schemes, Collaboration of Central and State nodal officers with District Collectors, and Competition among districts [2].
  • NITI Aayog anchors the programme at the Centre, but state governments are the main drivers. Each state has a committee under its Chief Secretary [2].
• See planning-sustainable-development.

Prelims Hooks

• Sister-discipline pairs (Table 1.2): population geography – demography; urban geography – urban studies and planning; settlement geography – urban/rural planning; economic geography – economics.
• Trap: geography of marketing pairs with business studies, economics and commerce, not "marketing management". Geography of tourism pairs with tourism and travel management.
• Geography of agriculture – agricultural sciences; geography of industries – industrial economics; geography of resources – resource economics.
• Core-periphery model – John Friedmann, 1966 (Venezuela study).
• Backwash and spread effects – Gunnar Myrdal, 1957. Polarisation and trickle-down – Albert Hirschman, 1958. Do not mix up the two pairs.
• Census 2011: urban population 377.1 million, urbanisation 31.16% (27.81% in 2001). Million-plus cities/urban agglomerations rose from 35 to 53 [4][5].
• ADP: launched January 2018, 112 districts, 49 KPIs, 5 themes, anchored by NITI Aayog [2][3].
• Economic geography covers primary to quaternary activities plus transport and trade (Class 11).

Mains Points

• Why the spatial view adds value: demography or economics alone gives national averages. Population, urban and economic geography show where inequality is concentrated, such as crowded metros and slums next to districts that send out migrants. That is the basis for area-specific planning (GS-I: population, urbanisation).
• Core-periphery and Indian regional imbalance:
• Capital, skills and services cluster in metro cores, causing backwash effects such as migration, loss of talent and uneven investment from eastern and central states.
• Spread effects stay weak where roads, power and skills are poor.

• Policy response: the ADP's convergence-collaboration-competition model with incremental (delta) ranking on 49 KPIs [2][3].

• Urban-geography problems from fast urbanisation:

• Urban areas added 91.0 million people in 2001–2011, and million-plus cities rose to 53 [5].
• This led to slums, congestion and service shortfalls. The remedy lies in planned settlement hierarchies and growth of secondary towns, which means strengthening spread effects (GS-I urbanisation; GS-III infrastructure).