Do you love geography? Do you love to explore the wonders of the world in a geographical way? Have you ever heard of regional geography? If you have heard of it, then how much do you know about regional geography? Well, in this article, we shall add to your knowledge on regional geography and answer the question of “what is regional geography” to those who are in the dark on the topic. Through research, we have organized facts about regional geography that are going to amaze you. Hence follow along as we unravel this great topic.
Regional Geography
What exactly is regional geography? Well, It is the geography’s branch that bases its studies on the regions of the world.
What is a region? A region can be defined as simply a portion of the universe or earth. The portion has one or even more similarities in terms of characteristics. The characteristics make the areas unique when compared to other areas in the world.
Regional studies base some of their studies on unique and specific characteristics of a place. The characteristics studied are related to the following areas:
- Culture
- Topography
- Environment factors, for example, different for a and fauna species
- Climate
- Economy
- Politics
Regional geography is also responsible for the study of boundaries that are laid between places. In geography, they are referred to as transition zones. They represent the beginning and also the ending of some specific region. The boundary can be small or pretty vast. For instance: North American and Sub-Saharan Africa Transition zone is large since these two regions mix.
Regional geographers typically study different zones and the unique characteristics of North America and Sub-Saharan Africa.
A bit of history on Regional Geography
The study of regions has been around for ages. However, regional geography developments as a geography branch happened in Europe. To be precise, the people responsible for this transition were the French together with Paul Vidal de la Blanche, a profound geographer.
Back in the 1800s, de la Blanche came up with the milieu, possibilism, and pay idea.
- Milieu – milieu stood for natural environment
- Pay – stood for the local or country region
- Possibilism – stood for the following theory: Our environment sets limitations and constraints on us. However, humans respond to these limitations and constraints by developing different cultures. Through this reaction, different regions gain uniqueness and remain distinct from other areas.
After a while, possibilism led to environment determinism development which states that: the environment is responsible solely for human societal and human development.
In the US regional geography was developing fast, specifically in the European parts, within the span of the first and the second world war. During this specific time, people used to criticize geography primarily due to its nature of descriptiveness regarding environmental determinism. They also criticized it due to its lack of focus. Due to all these critics, geographers from all over the world were struggling to keep this subject as a university-level credible subject.
Back in the 1930s and 1920s, geography was declared as a perfect regional science. Its primary concern was to discover why some areas were different, and others were similar. The science also tried to identify why humans were able to separate regions. The whole study and discovery process was defined as the areal differentiation.
Conclusion
Regional geography has been around for a while, and chances are that it is not going away anytime soon. However, this geography branch is undeniably fascinating to study hence. We hope this article has answered all the questions that you might have had regarding the topic.
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