Land Hemisphere
The half of the globe containing the freatest amount of land surface, centered on Western Europe. In geomorphology, this can also refer to the position of the African continent, which lies central to the world's landmasses
Physiography
Literally means landscape description, but commonly refers to the total physical geography of a place; includes al of the natural features on the Earth's surface, including landforms, climate, soils, vegetation, and water bodies
Infrastructure
The foundations of a society: urban centers, transport networks, communications, energy distribution systems, farms, factories, mines, and such facilities as schools, hospitals, postal services, and police and armed forces
Local Functional Specialization
A hallmark of Europe's economic geography that later spread to many other parts of the world, whereby particular people in particular places concentrate on the production of particular goods and services
The Isolated State
Explains the location of agricultural activities in a commercial economy. A process of spatial competition allocates various farming activities into concentric rings around a cental market city, with profit-earning capability the determining force in how far a crop locates from the market. The original (1826) Isolated State model now applies to the continental scale
Model
An idealized representation of reality built to demonstrate its most important properties. A spatial model focuses on a geographical dimension of the real world, such as the von Thunen model that explains agricultureal location patterns in a commercial economy
Industrial Revolution
The term applied to the social and economic changes in agriculture, commerce, and especailly manufacturing and urbanization that resulted from technological innovations and specialization in late-eighteenth-century Europe
Nation-State
A country whose population possesses a substantial degree of cultural homogeneity and unity. The ideal form to which most nations and states aspire - a political unit wherein the territorial state coincides with the area settled by a certain national group or people
Nation
Legally a term encompassing all the citizens of a state, it also has other connotations. Most definitions now tend to refer to a group of tightly-knit people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, and other shared cultural attributes. Such homogeneity actually prevails within very few states
Centifugal Forces
A term employed to designate forces that tend to divide a country - such as internal religious, linguistic, ethnic, or ideological differences
Centripetal Forces
Forces that unite and bind a country together - such as a strong national culture, shared shared ideological objectives, and a common faith
Indo-European Languages
The major world language family that dominates the European geographic realm. This language family is also the most widely dispersed globally, and about half of humankind speaks one of its languages
Complementary
Exists when two regions, through an exchange of raw materials and/or finished products, can specifically satisfy each other's demands
Transferability
The capacity to move a food from one place to another at a bearable cost; the ease with which a commodity may be transported
Intervening Opportunity
In trade or migration flows, the presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away
Primate City
A country's largest city - ranking atop the urban hierarchy - most expressive of the national culture and usually (but not always) the capital city as well
Metropolis
Urban agglomeration consisting of a (central) city and its suburban ring
Central Business District (CBD)
The downtown heart of a central city, the CBD is marked by high land values, a concentration of business and commerece, and the clustering of the tallest buildings
Supranationalism
A venture involving three or more states - political, economic, and/or cultural cooperation to promote shared objectives. The European Union is one such organization
Devolution
The process whereby regions within a state demand and gain political strength and growing autonomy at the expense of the central government
Four Motors of Europe
Rhone-Alpes (France), Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany), Catalonia (Spain), and Lombardy (Italy). Each is a high-technology-driving region marked by exceptional industrial vitality and economic succes not only within Europe but on the global scene as well
Regional State
A "natural economic zone" that defies political boundaries, and is shaped by the global economy of which it is a part; its leaders deal directly with foreign partners and negotiate the best terms they can with the national governments under which they operate
Site
The internal locational attributes of an urban center, including its local spatial organization and physical setting
Situation
The external locational attributes of an urban center; its relative location or regional position with referece to other non-local places
Conurbation
General terms used to identify a large multi-metropolitan complex formed by the coalescence of two or more major urban areas. The Atlantic Seaboard Megalopolis, extending along the northeastern U.S. coast from southern Maine to Virginia, is a classical example
Landlocked Location
An interior state surrounded by land. Without coasts, such a country is disadvantafed in terms of accessibility to international trade routes, and in the scramble for possession of areas of the continental shelf and control of the exclusive economic zone beyond
Break-of-Bulk
A location along a transport route where goods must be transferred from one carrier to another. In a port, the cargoes of oceangoing ships are unloaded and put on trains, trucks, or perhaps smaller river boats for inland distribution. An entrepot
Entrepot
A place, usualy a port city, where goods are imported, stored, and transshipped; a break-of-bulk point
Shatter Belt
Region caught between stronger, colliding external cultural-political forces, under persistent stress, and often fragmented by aggressive rivals. Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia are classic examples
Balkanization
The fragmentation of a region into smaller, often hostile politcial units
Exclave
A bounded (non-island) piece of territory that is part of a particular state but lies separated from it by territory of another state. Alaska is an exclave of the United States
Irredentism
A policy of cultural extension and potential political expansion by a state aimed at a community of its nationals living in a neighboring state