What is a nation-state?
Answer: A state whose population shares a single national identity.
Explanation
Japan is often cited; multinational states (Russia) contain many nations.
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AP Human Geography: Population, Culture, and Cities (High School)
PoliticalDevelopmentUrbanAgriculturePopulationCultureMigration
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Political
What is a supranational organization?
Answer: An alliance of states that cede some sovereignty for common goals.
Explanation
The European Union, United Nations.
Centripetal vs centrifugal forces?
Answer: Centripetal forces unify a state (shared language, national symbols); centrifugal forces divide it (ethnic conflict, regionalism).
Explanation
Devolution transfers power to regions.
What is gerrymandering in geographic terms?
Answer: Drawing electoral districts to favor a group, through packing or cracking voters.
Explanation
Districts take odd shapes.
What are the main shapes of states and a problem with each?
Answer: Compact (efficient), elongated (hard to govern far ends, Chile), prorupted (Thailand), fragmented (Indonesia), perforated (South Africa around Lesotho).
Explanation
Shape affects communication and defense.
Development
What is Rostow's model?
Answer: Five stages of development: traditional society, preconditions for takeoff, takeoff, drive to maturity, high mass consumption.
Explanation
Wallerstein's world-systems theory (core, semi-periphery, periphery) is a critique.
What does the Human Development Index measure?
Answer: Life expectancy, education, and income per capita, combined into a single score.
Explanation
Alternative to GDP alone.
Urban
What is a megacity?
Answer: A city with more than 10 million people.
Explanation
Most new megacities are in developing countries.
What is gentrification?
Answer: Wealthier residents move into a lower-income neighborhood, raising property values and displacing residents.
Explanation
Associated with urban renewal.
What is the rank-size rule and a primate city?
Answer: Rank-size: the nth largest city is 1/n the size of the largest. A primate city is disproportionately larger than the next (e.g., Paris, Mexico City).
Explanation
Primate cities concentrate power.
What is the central place theory?
Answer: Christaller's model of how settlements of different sizes are spaced to provide goods and services: larger places offer higher-order goods.
Explanation
Threshold and range define a service's market.
What is the difference between the Burgess, Hoyt, and Harris-Ullman models?
Answer: Burgess: concentric zones. Hoyt: sectors along transportation lines. Harris-Ullman: multiple nuclei around several centers.
Explanation
All describe North American cities.
Agriculture
What does von Thünen's model explain?
Answer: How distance from a market determines land use: intensive, perishable goods close in; grazing and extensive uses far out.
Explanation
Based on transport costs.
Subsistence vs commercial agriculture?
Answer: Subsistence farming feeds the farmer's family; commercial farming produces for sale.
Explanation
Developed countries: commercial, highly mechanized.
What were the agricultural revolutions?
Answer: First: domestication of plants and animals (Neolithic). Second: mechanization and higher yields (1700s–1800s). Third (Green Revolution): high-yield seeds, fertilizers, irrigation (mid-1900s).
Explanation
The Green Revolution raised yields but increased chemical use.
Population
What does the demographic transition model describe?
Answer: How a country's birth and death rates change with development: Stage 1 high both; Stage 2 death rate falls; Stage 3 birth rate falls; Stage 4 both low; Stage 5 birth below death.
Explanation
Population grows fastest in Stage 2.
What did Malthus argue?
Answer: Population grows geometrically while food supply grows arithmetically, leading to crisis.
Explanation
Boserup countered that necessity drives agricultural innovation.
What is the dependency ratio?
Answer: The number of people under 15 and over 64 compared with the working-age population.
Explanation
High ratios strain the economy.
What does a population pyramid show?
Answer: Age and sex structure; a wide base indicates rapid growth, a narrow base an aging population.
Explanation
Shape reveals the demographic transition stage.
What is the total fertility rate and the replacement level?
Answer: Average number of children per woman; about 2.1 maintains a stable population.
Explanation
Many developed countries are below replacement.
What is the rate of natural increase?
Answer: Crude birth rate minus crude death rate, expressed as a percentage.
Explanation
Does not include migration.
Culture
What is cultural landscape?
Answer: The visible imprint of human activity on the land: buildings, fields, roads.
Explanation
Sequent occupance: layers of successive cultures.
Universalizing vs ethnic religions?
Answer: Universalizing religions seek converts worldwide (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism); ethnic religions are tied to a people or place (Hinduism, Judaism).
Explanation
Universalizing religions spread by relocation and hierarchical diffusion.
What is a lingua franca?
Answer: A common language used for communication among speakers of different languages.
Explanation
English in international business; Swahili in East Africa.
What are the types of diffusion?
Answer: Relocation (people move), expansion: contagious (spreads to neighbors), hierarchical (from major nodes), and stimulus (idea spreads, form changes).
Explanation
Hearth = origin point.
Folk vs popular culture?
Answer: Folk culture is traditional, local, and slowly changing; popular culture is widespread, fast-changing, and spread by media.
Explanation
Popular culture tends toward uniform landscapes.
Migration
What is brain drain?
Answer: The emigration of educated, skilled people from a country.
Explanation
Remittances sent home can partly offset it.
What is chain migration?
Answer: Migrants follow family or community members who moved earlier to the same destination.
Explanation
Creates ethnic enclaves.
Forced vs voluntary migration?
Answer: Forced migrants have no choice (refugees, enslaved people); voluntary migrants choose to move.
Explanation
Internally displaced persons stay within their country.
What are push and pull factors?
Answer: Push factors drive people to leave (war, poverty); pull factors attract them (jobs, safety).
Explanation
Ravenstein's laws: most migrants move short distances, often to cities.
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