AP Human Geography Final Project
The Purpose of the AP Human Geography Final Project is to apply geographic concepts to your local community in order to better understand geography and your community. You will present this application in the form of a research paper using the Turabian documentation style. The paper will have seven sections: The Nature and Perspectives of Geography (which you will use as an introduction to your paper), Population, Cultural Patterns and Processes, Political Organization of Space, Agricultural and Rural Land Use, Industrialization and Economic Development, and Cities and Urban Land Use. Some portions of the assignment will be more relevant to your cities than others but all of them will have some relevance, either contemporary or historical. In all cases be as specific as possible for the information available. You may share sources of information with any classmate researching the same city, but this assignment is in no way meant as a group or team project. Any research papers which contain nearly identical passages will be docked a minimum of 100 points, more for egregious violations.
Geography: Its Nature and Perspectives
You will begin your paper with an introduction of your city, including a history, where you will describe your city in general terms, assuming your audience knows nothing of your city. You will also describe your city in terms of the key geographic concepts of location, space, scale, pattern, regionalization, and globalization.
You must also use the five key geographical skills throughout your paper. In each section of the paper you will use one or more of these key skills. If at any point you are not using any of the skills, you are probably doing it incorrectly.
- How to use and think about maps and spatial data
- How to understand and interpret the implications of associations among phenomena in places
- How to recognize and interpret at different scales the relationships among patterns and processes
- How to define regions and evaluate the regionalization process
- How to characterize and analyze changing interconnections among places
In order to find information for your project you will use traditional geographic sources such as field observations and census data as well as any other archival data you find useful and relevant. You may also find long time community residents to interview which you help you obtain a better picture of the evolution of your city.
Population
1. Conduct a geographical analysis of the population of your city.
- Show the distribution of population density of your city as a whole and at three different scales.
- Show present and future consequences of population densities and distributions of population within your community.
- Show the demographic composition of your community including age, gender, and ethnic/racial factors.
- Show the past, present, or future impacts of natural hazards on the population of your community.
2. Show the growth or decline of your communitys population over time and space.
- Show the historical trends of your communitys population and project future trends.
- Show how theories of population growth can describe your community.
- Show the general patterns within your community of fertility, mortality, and health.
- Show how your community fits within the demographic transition model. Is it different at a local, state, or national scale?
- Describe population policies affecting your community and how your community has been impacted.
3. Describe population movement affecting your community.
- Show what push and pull factors have brought people in and out of your community both from an historical and contemporary perspective.
- Show how both voluntary and involuntary migration affect your community again from an historical and contemporary perspective. Do larger migration patterns affect your community?
- Show how models of migration destination have impacted your community.
- Show the patterns of circulation and activity space within and around your community.
Cultural Patterns and Processes
1. Demonstrate an understanding of cultural concepts.
- Describe the traits and complexes that make up culture in your community.
- Show how different types of diffusion have affected culture within your community.
- Show how acculturation has affected culture within your community.
- Show what cultural regions and realms your community fits within at different scales from global to regional.
2. Explain cultural differences within your community as well as at larger scales.
- Show the role of language in shaping your communitys culture at different scales.
- Show the role of religion in shaping your communitys culture at different scales.
- Show the role of ethnicity in shaping your communitys culture at different scales.
- Show how popular, folk, and high culture have and are shaping your communitys culture. Have there been conflicts between any of them that contribute to community change?
3. Describe the impact on the environment of your communitys attitudes and practices.
4. Explain the cultural landscape and cultural identity of your community.
- Describe the cultural values and preferences of your community.
- Describe the symbolic landscapes of your community. How have they contributed to a sense of place? What other factors in your community have contributed to a sense of place?
Political Organization of Space
1. Explain the territorial dimensions of politics as they relate to your community.
- Show how the concept of territoriality helps shape your community.
- Describe the boundaries of your city, including what types of boundaries they are.
- Show the impact of your communitys boundaries on your communitys identity and any impact on interaction and exchange with other communities at different scales.
2. Show any impacts on your community from the evolution of the contemporary political pattern.
- Show your community fits within the nation state concept.
- Show how colonialism and/or imperialism affected the development of your community over time.
- Show the internal political boundaries of your community as well as how the larger concept affects your community at different scales.
3. Show the challenges to the current political-territorial arrangements that affect your community at different scales.
- Show how the changing nature of sovereignty has an impact on your community.
- Show how the fragmentation or unification of traditional political units affects your community.
- Show how the relationships between political patterns and ethnic, economic, and environmental patterns at different scales affect your community.
Agricultural and Rural Land Use
1. Show how the development and diffusion of agricultural techniques has impacted your community over time.
- How has the diffusion of the techniques of the second agricultural revolution have historically impacted your community.
2. Chart your communitys place within the major agricultural production regions.
- Show what agricultural system is practiced within your communitys bioclimatic zone.
- Show differences within your communitys bio-climatic zone. How do the demands of different markets affect those variations?
- Chart the linkages and flows between food production regions and your community.
3. Describe the historical land use and settlement patterns of your community.
- Show how localization of economic activities affected your community. What land use model would most accurately describe your communitys past?
4. Explain how modern commercial agriculture has impacted your community.
- Show any ways that your community has contributed to the Green or biotechnologic revolutions.
- Chart how the blending of primary, secondary, and tertiary activities has affected your community. How has the mechanization of agriculture affected your community?
- Show how the diffusion and spatial organization of industrial agriculture has impacted your community.
- Show the impact of agriculture on the environment of your community. How would a possible food shortage affect your community?
Industrialization and Economic Development
1. Explain the growth and diffusion of industrialization as it has affected your community.
- Show how the changing roles of energy and technology have affected your community.
- Explain how the Industrial Revolution affected your communitys historical development.
- Show how the evolution of economic cores and peripheries has impacted your community at different scales.
- Show how models of economic localization such as land rent or industrial
- location have affected the economic development of your community.
2. Explain how contemporary patterns and impacts of industrialization and development are affecting your community.
- Show how your community fits within the spatial organization of the world economy.
- Show how levels of development vary by comparing your community with another community at a different level of development.
- Explain any concerns your community may have about deindustrialization.
- Show how the issues of environmental change and sustainability brought about by industrialization affect your community.
- Describe in detail the development initiatives of your community government.
Cities and Urban Land Use
1. Explain where your community fits in a definition of urbanism based on the Census Bureau.
2. Describe your community in terms of the origin and evolution of cities.
- Show how your community fits into an historical pattern of urbanization.
- Chart the affect on your community of rural-urban migration and urban growth.
- Show how your community fits within a hierarchal model of global cities and megacities.
- Show how your community fits in an urban system model of its urban system. Develop an additional model to describe a community of your size.
3. Explain the functional character of contemporary cities as it applies to your community.
- Show how the changing employment patterns of urban systems affects your community.
- Show how the demographic and social structures of your community are changing.
4. Describe the built environment and social space of your community.
- Compare the internal structure of your community with similar communities.
- Graph the transportation networks and infrastructure of your community.
- Compare the political organization of your community with other urban areas.
- Show the efforts of your community to plan and design future growth or development. Create a plan of your own which would optimize development while preserving historical areas and open space.
- Show patterns of race/ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic class within your community.
- Show the results of uneven development within your community. Map areas subject to ghettoization. Are there areas of your community which could or do benefit from gentrification?
- Show the impact of suburbanization as it affects your community. Is or could your community develop into an edge city?