AP Human Geography: Industrialization and Economic Development Notes
Industrialization and Economic Development Key Terms
Keys to Economic and Industrial Development
- Economic geography: A field of human geography that studies economic development and the inequalities that are created. The main goal is to find out why the world is divided into relatively rich and relatively poor countries.
- Capitalism: An economic system in which businesses are owned by private individuals and companies who are free to decide what to produce and how much to charge.
- Socialism: An economic and political system in which the government regulates private business and basic industries and controls the means of production (e.g., factories, resources, machinery, and technology).
- Communism: An economic and political system in which the central government holds the means of production in common for all of the citizens.
- Site factors: A place’s physical features related to the costs of business production, such as land, labor, and capital.
- Situation factors: The features of a location’s surrounding area, especially as related to the cost of transporting raw materials and finished goods.
- Basic industry: An industry that is the main focus of an area’s economy (e.g., the steel industry is the basic industry of Pittsburgh).
- Non-basic industry: Industry that supports the work of the basic industry; created due to the economic growth brought about by the area’s basic industry.
- Multiplier effect: Describes the expansion of an area’s economic base as a result of the basic and non-basic industries located there.
- Variable cost: A cost that changes based on the level of output that a business produces.
- Fixed cost: A cost that does not change based on the level of output that a business produces.
- Time-space compression: Describes a company’s effort to increase efficiency in the delivery process by diminishing distance obstacles.
- Agglomeration: A localized economy in which a large number of companies and industries cluster together and benefit from the cost reductions and gains in efficiency that result from this proximity.
- Cumulative causation: Describes the continued growth due to the positive aspects of agglomeration.
- Deglomeration: The process of industrial deconcentration in response to technological advances or increasing costs due to competition.
- Industrial Revolution: A period of rapid development of industry that started in Great Britain in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was brought about by the introduction of machinery and technology, such as steam power, which resulted in the growth of factories and the mass production of goods.
