Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity. It can be considered a subfield or method in economics. Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topics, including the location of industries, economies of agglomeration, international trade, real estate, ethnic economies, gendered economies, core-periphery theory, the economics of urban form, the relationship between the environment and the economy, globalization. There are varied methodological approaches. Neoclassical location theorists, following in the tradition of Alfred Weber, tend to focus on industrial location and use quantitative methods. Since the 1970s, two broad reactions against neoclassical approaches have changed the discipline: Marxist political economy, growing out of the work of David Harvey. Economists such as Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs have analyzed many traits related to economic geography. Krugman called his application of spatial thinking to international trade theory the "new economic geography", which directly competes with an approach within the discipline of geography, called "new economic geography".
The name geographical economics has been suggested as an alternative. Early approaches to economic geography are found in the seven Chinese maps of the State of Qin, which date to the 4th century BC and in the Greek geographer Strabo's Geographika, compiled 2000 years ago; as cartography developed, geographers illuminated many aspects used today in the field. The earliest travel journals included descriptions of the native peoples, the climate, the landscape, the productivity of various locations; these early accounts encouraged the development of transcontinental trade patterns and ushered in the era of mercantilism. World War II contributed to the popularization of geographical knowledge and post-war economic recovery and development contributed to the growth of economic geography as a discipline. During environmental determinism's time of popularity, Ellsworth Huntington and his theory of climatic determinism, while greatly criticized, notably influenced the field. Valuable contributions came from location theorists such as Johann Heinrich von Thünen or Alfred Weber.
Other influential theories include Walter Christaller's Central place theory, the theory of core and periphery. Fred K. Schaefer's article "Exceptionalism in geography: A Methodological Examination", published in the American journal Annals of the Association of American Geographers, his critique of regionalism, made a large impact on the field: the article became a rallying point for the younger generation of economic geographers who were intent on reinventing the discipline as a science, quantitative methods began to prevail in research. Well-known economic geographers of this period include William Garrison, Brian Berry, Waldo Tobler, Peter Haggett and William Bunge. Contemporary economic geographers tend to specialize in areas such as location theory and spatial analysis, market research, geography of transportation, real estate price evaluation and global development, Internet geography, social networks; as economic geography is a broad discipline, with economic geographers using many different methodologies in the study of economic phenomena in the world some distinct approaches to study have evolved over time: Theoretical economic geography focuses on building theories about spatial arrangement and distribution of economic activities.
Regional economic geography examines the economic conditions of particular regions or countries of the world. It deals with economic regionalization as well as local economic development. Historical economic geography examines the development of spatial economic structure. Using historical data, it examines how centers of population and economic activity shift, what patterns of regional specialization and localization evolve over time and what factors explain these changes. Evolutionary economic geography adopts an evolutionary approach to economic geography. More Evolutionary Economic Geography uses concepts and ideas from evolutionary economics to understand the evolution of cities and other economic systems. Critical economic geography is an approach taken from the point of view of contemporary critical geography and its philosophy. Behavioral economic geography examines the cognitive processes underlying spatial reasoning, locational decision making, behavior of firms and individuals. Economic geography is sometimes approached as a branch of anthropogeography that focuses on regional systems of human economic activity.
An alternative description of different approaches to the study of human economic activity can be organized around spatiotemporal analysis, analysis of production/consumption of economic items, analysis of economic flow. Spatiotemporal systems of analysis include economic activities of region, mixed social spaces, development. Alternatively, analysis may focus on production, exchange and consumption of items of economic activity. Allowing parameters of space-time and item to vary, a geographer may examine material flow, commodity flow, population flow and information flow from different parts of the economic activity system. Through analysis of flow and production, industrial areas, rural
Kapit Division, formed on 2 April 1973, is one of the twelve administrative divisions in Sarawak, Malaysia. It has a total area of 38,934 square kilometres, is the largest of the administrative divisions of Sarawak, its population was 114,924. Ethnically, the population of Kapit Division was 68.7% Iban, 19.1% Orang Ulu, 7% Chinese, 3.4% Malay, 1.3% Melanau, 0.3% Bidayuh, 0.1% "other". Kapit Division consists of two sub-districts; some 86% of the land area is held in forest reserve. The economy is agricultural, based on forestry, oil palm, rubber and pepper. Other natural resources include coal; the Bakun Dam is based in Kapit Division. Kapit local government Kapit Tourism
Rosalind Mathilde Franck was one of the earliest French women aviators, having learnt to fly in the summer of 1910. Her last flight was on 1 August 1910 in a Maurice Farman biplane when she took off from Boldon Flatts, Cleadon Village in the northeast of England. After hitting a flagpole the plane crashed, killing a boy, although she only sustained minor injuries. In an article published in Colliers Magazine in September 1911, Franck presents her impressions of her flights; the first was with Michel Effimoff who received a French licence on 15 February 1910. A little she and her husband flew for an hour and a quarter with Henry Farman who sought to break the record for two passengers, it was with the Farman brothers' manufacturing plant near Paris that Franck learned to fly. After establishing a record non-stop 14-mile flight at Mourelon, on 20 July 1910 she hoped to make a flight across the English Channel but was prevented by bad weather. In late July 1910, she arrived in the north of England where the manager of Sunderland's Empire Theatre had invited her to present demonstration flights in connection with the Boldon Races.
On 30 July 1910, she accomplished a flight of a mile and a half, the first significant distance covered by a woman in the United Kingdom. On the following Monday, she again attempted to fly but flew into a flagstaff which brought the plane down, causing the death of a young boy, hit by the engine; the accident brought her flying career to an end. She never obtained a licence. Mathilde Franck died in 1956