What
are the characteristics of region?
Explain types of Region? (1000 words)
Answers
Regions are a highly contested yet critical concept in the study of human geography and can be studied as they relate to space, place, and location. Regions allow us to generalize about a common characteristic so we can better group them. Human geography is not just concerned with describing cultural patterns, but with examining how they came about and their meaning.
For the AP® Human Geography Exam, you should look at regions as objects to investigate and explore so you can move beyond just locating and describing regions on a map. You should also think about the history of not just the country, but the people who live there now and those who migrated from other places. That research will reveal much about that region and the evolving nature of the planet in which we live.
In this AP® Human Geography study guide, we will define region as it applies to geography, examine regions as one of the five themes of geography, and identify examples of the three different types of regions. We will wrap up with what you can expect on the AP® Human Geography Exam on the topic of regions. Before we can study the concept of regions, you need to know where regions fall in the study of geography.
Five Themes of Geography
A study of geography does not only involve knowing where to find a variety of people and places on a map. It is just as important for you, as a geographer, to understand why you find those people in that particular place, and how those places influence their lives, their neighbor’s lives, and your life. You can use the five themes of geography as a way to understand geographic information so you can better appreciate cultural and environmental changes around the world.
The five themes of geography are:
Location
Human/environmental interactions
Regions
Place
Movement
A region is an area on the earth identified by two common characteristics: physical
What are the Different Types of Regions?
Now that we know that a region is an area that shares both human and physical characteristics, let’s look at the three types of regions in geography. Formal, functional and perceptual regions comprise the three classifications of regions used to organize complex ideas into simpler divisions. These three types of regions are of interest to geographers, engineers, and cartographers.
Formal (Uniform) Region
A formal region is an area with a high level of consistency in a certain cultural or physical attribute. Formal regions are uniform or homogeneous areas where everyone in that region shares common attributes or traits like language, climate or political system. Formal regions are primarily used to determine and outline political, cultural and economic regions. It also can be described as any geographic location with clearly delineated boundaries whose area is established, and there is no disagreement over the area a formal region occupies.
Examples of formal regions are varied. A formal region could be any country in the world, like the United States, or the linguistic region of a state. Specific examples that you may see on the AP® Human Geography exam could be: the French-speaking region of Canada, the dairying region of North America, or political boundaries demarcating nations and states.
Functional (Nodal) Region
A functional region in geography is an area centered on a node, focal point, or central hub surrounded by interconnecting linkages. The primary node in a functional region features surrounding areas with common social, political, or economic purposes that relate to trade, communications, or transportation. In other words, a functional region has a certain set of activities or interactions that happen within it, organized around a center node or focal point. The primary node also has a sphere of economic and social influence that is less noticeable in areas more removed from it.
A functional region, for example, can be a territory that is organized around something central, such as a city. The distribution of its services is limited to a certain area, which is its functional or main nodal region. Other examples of a functional region could be the Bank of America or FedEx.
Perceptual (Vernacular) Region
A perceptual or vernacular region is defined by feelings and prejudices that may or may not be true. It can also be an idea of a person’s mental map. It can be viewed as how people think about or perceive a region based on factors that may not reflect the truth, such as the Bible Belt or Hillbilly region. When labeling perceptual regions, there are common assumptions made about the place or people.
Explanation:
In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and the environment (environmental geography). Geographic regions and sub-regions are mostly described by their imprecisely defined, and sometimes transitory boundaries, except in human geography, where jurisdiction areas such as national borders are defined in law.
Apart from the global continental regions, there are also hydrospheric and atmospheric regions that cover the oceans, and discrete climates above the land and water masses of the planet. The land and water global regions are divided into subregions geographically bounded by large geological features that influence large-scale ecologies, such as plains and features.
As a way of describing spatial areas, the concept of regions is important and widely used among the many branches of geography, each of which can describe areas in regional terms. For example, ecoregion is a term used in environmental geography, cultural region in cultural geography, bioregion in biogeography, and so on. The field of geography that studies regions themselves is called regional geography.
In the fields of physical geography, ecology, biogeography, zoogeography, and environmental geography, regions tend to be based on natural features such as ecosystems or biotopes, biomes, drainage basins, natural regions, mountain ranges, soil types. Where human geography is concerned, the regions and subregions are described by the discipline of ethnography.
A region has its own nature that could not be moved. The first nature is its natural environment (landform, climate, etc.). The second nature is its physical elements complex that were built by people in the past. The third nature is its socio-cultural context that could not be replaced by new immigrants.[citation needed]