GEOG 101 – cultural landscape

This project requires you to conduct research on one of the two topics described below. You will thenassess, summarize, and present your research findings in PowerPoint format. This will be similar towriting a research paper, except that your material will be presented in a more visual medium. As such,you will have to distill your main points down to a fairly small amount of text, and provide support foryour findings using tools such as maps, photographs, diagrams, graphs, and tables. Just like a researchpaper, your presentation should include slides that contain a title, introduction to the topic, main body,summary and conclusions, and references. Creative use of properly cited graphics and photos from theInternet that are relevant to your topic is encouraged. Your presentation should be 12-15 slides in length,not including reference slide and/or photo credit slide(s). You may choose either of the following topics:Geography is an academic discipline that focuses on spatial distribution and spatial variation. Notsurprisingly, the distribution of populations, cultures, and economic activities on the Earth’s surface isclosely dependent upon the ability of people to move from one place to another. History is rife withexamples of important cities that have developed and grown as a result of their ability to serve asports and/or transportation hubs. The development of railroads and highways around the world hasallowed some areas to grow in population and flourish economically, while others have languished.Many regions, and in some cases, entire countries, have remained “under-developed” due, at least inpart, to an inadequate transportation network. On a smaller scale, different cities have developeddifferently as a result of the dominant modes of transport. For example, cities that grew largely duringan era of automotive transport tend to be quite different from those that came to prominence duringthe days of streetcars or horse-drawn carriages.Obviously, you will not be able to cover all aspects of transportation and geography around the world,so you will need to focus. You could, and probably should, research a particular city, region, or country.Depending upon the breadth of your topic you may want to focus on a particular mode of transport,or even a particular road, railway, harbor, or airport. The key point is that you should demonstrate therole that transportation has played in developing the geography of an area, and vice versa. You shouldtry to incorporate key terms and concepts that we have covered in the course where possible, such as:1. cultural landscape2. functional region3. agglomeration4. hinterland5. migration6. relocation diffusion7. frontier8. core/periphery relationships