combined with the invention of air conditioning, allowed for the massive urban areas of Las Vegas and Phoenix to grow (figure 1.40). Natural environments offer opportunities and constraints, but due to human ingenuity, they do not determine spatial patterns.
Environmental perception and hazards
Geographers are also interested in how people perceive their environments and how these perceptions influence cultural ecology. Environmental perception relates to the way in which people view the environment and how this view influences their interpretation and use of the natural landscape. One group of people may view the forest as a place for recreational hiking and will want to preserve it in a natural state, while another may view it as a source of economic development and will want to harvest wood for sale. Different perceptions lead to very different uses of the land.
Figure 1.40.Phoenix, Arizona. While the natural environment influences human settlement, people overcome many of its challenges with technology. Without air conditioning, the growth of Phoenix would be highly constrained. Photo by Tim Roberts Photography. Stock photo ID: 91397345. Shutterstock.
Humans can perceive natural landscapes in terms of exploitation, preservation, or sustainability. The exploitative approach is to use natural resources and modify natural landscapes in the unlimited pursuit of economic growth. Preservation is aimed at leaving natural resources and landscapes untouched by humans, with use geared, at most, toward limited-impact recreation. In contrast to both, sustainability is the idea that natural resources and landscapes can be used by humans for economic growth, but they must be used in a manner that is sustainable in the long run. Lumber can be harvested from forests, but only at a rate that allows for regeneration of trees and protection of wildlife and other flora; fishing can be sustainable by restricting the amount of fish taken per season; natural landscapes can be converted to urban uses or farming as long as waterways are protected and wildlife preserves are incorporated. Sustainability can be accomplished either by cultural norms in a society or by government regulations that restrict overuse.
Environmental perception is useful when studying how people react to natural hazard risk. Many residents of modern urban societies view natural hazards as something that humans can control. People build homes in areas prone to flooding along rivers and coastlines, in wooded and canyon areas at risk for fire, and in areas of landfill subject to earthquake liquefaction. As cities in much of the western United States expand, more and more homes are being built in scenic yet fire-prone hillside areas. Residents assume that firefighters and forest crews will keep their homes safe, which in many cases is true, but at a great cost in terms of economic resources (figure 1.41). Similarly, residents of the southeastern United States increasingly live along coastal areas subject to hurricanes and other flooding. Again, the perception is that these scenic areas are safe to live in, resulting in a great deal of housing and urban infrastructure that is exposed to serious environmental risk.
Figure 1.41.Homes destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in Far Rockaway, New York. Many people perceive natural hazard risk as minimal, and they continue to build in places prone to hurricane wind and flood damage. Photo by Leonard Zhukovsky. Stock photo ID: 130759928. Shutterstock.
Figure 1.42.Tsunami warning sign in Castro, Chile. After a deadly earthquake and tsunami in 2010, some towns began establishing buffer zones between housing and the coast. Photo by Matyas Rehak. Stock photo ID: 568647175. Shutterstock.
In some societies, people may not believe that humans can control natural hazard risk but rather must leave their fate in the hand of gods. Still others may avoid living in areas of risk, avoiding flood zones or canyons at risk for landslide or fire. In some cases, perceptions of natural hazard risk can change over time, altering how people inhabit the land. In Chile, a major earthquake in 2010 sent tsunami waves rushing over many coastal towns, destroying tens of thousands of homes and killing over five hundred people. As a result, people’s perceptions of coastal risk changed. Reconstruction aimed to mitigate future risk, with some coastal areas being reserved for parkland and housing in high-risk areas being built to withstand future inundation (figure 1.42).
Go to ArcGIS Online to complete exercise 1.7: “Environmental perception: Flood risk in Miami.”
References
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Chapter 2
Population
A natural starting point for a book on human geography is to examine where humans live and how these patterns impact places and regions. As we move through busy cities, gridlocked with traffic, a brown haze of smog in the air, concrete in all directions, we may get the feeling that the world has reached a breaking point and cannot support any more people. But then we can visit vast open spaces, from forests and deserts to savannas and steppes, where humans have left a much more minimal imprint on the landscape. Clearly, the distribution of human population
