The world is diverse. This diversity is thrilling. It helps feed our curiosity about each other. And our places. Places are different from each other. Here’s a brief look at differences among places.
Some basics
Earlier, I had introduced you to a few concepts. I’ll summarize them below again:
- Site features – what a place contains. This has two aspects:
- Natural site features – the natural elements such as soils, rocks, climate, etc.
- Cultural site features – human-made content of a place; physical (buildings, clothing, etc.), and non-physical (language, beliefs, etc.). However, note that the non-physical features most often find physical expression. For example: language finds expression on boards and other signs.
- Situation features – how places are connected to other places. This is vital for understanding how places become more or less prominent and how they interact, i.e., how spatial interaction
- Location – where something is on Earth. Two kinds of locations:
- Absolute (also called unique or mathematical) location tells the exact location of a place. When we give the latitude and longitude of a place, we are using this concept.
- Relative – where things are located in relation to other things. We use this concept very commonly … when we give directions to each other. A comical sight is people giving directions on their mobile phones … wildly gesticulating and pointing to things!
Some examples
You do have an atlas, don’t you? No?? Please! Get to your nearest stationers or booksellers and buy an atlas. You can get them for about Rs 150 to really good ones at Rs 350. However, the more inexpensive ones will do just as well.
Open your atlas to the world political map and pick some latitude line. At the scale of that map, you can probably only pick only the major, named latitudes: the Equator, Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Arctic Circle, and Antarctic Circle.
Now follow your chosen latitude and identify several places that share that latitude.
You can do the same remembering the latitude you have chosen and looking at more detailed maps and identifying places more easily.
Are places on the same latitude the same everywhere? To phrase it in terms of the concepts that I have listed at the beginning of this essay, do they have the same site features? Well, the latitude on which these places sit is only one feature. What other site features could you explore?
In the atlas, you can look at the physical map of the areas and make out the type of topography (the ups and downs), some parts of its hydrography (rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water), and perhaps vegetation.
Are these identical to all the places? Or are they different in one or more respects? Why might they be similar or different?
Notice this brings to mind the first two of the geography questions that I have often shared with you:
- Where is something?
- Why is it there?
Notice, also, that we don’t answer these two questions as if they were exam questions. Rather, we have to apply them to the places you have discovered in the atlas.
In answering the second of the above two questions, you will have to examine the situation of the place. This situation leads to the types of spatial interaction that that place has with other places.
Try this
Consider Mangaluru (12˚50’ N), Bengaluru (12˚59’ N), and Chennai (13˚5’ N). They are approximately on the same latitude. Yet they are very different places. How?
Locations of Mangaluru, Bengaluru, and Chennai. Almost same latitude, but different! Click on the image to open a larger version in a new tab. [Image: Google Earth]
What lies between … Mangaluru – Bengaluru – Chennai. Source: Raj Bhagatt on Twitter. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Well, I’ll start off a list for you. You can take it further.
- Mangaluru is west of Bengaluru, while Chennai is east of Bengaluru. (You can play with this in different ways … good practice with both geography, and with prepositions in English).
- Two are coastal cities (altitude of 22m for Mangaluru and 6m for Cheannai), and the other is inland (altitude 920m).
- Mangaluru and Chennai are quite muggy throughout much of the year. Bengaluru has some kind of winter. It’s hardly worth noticing. But if you look at how Bengalureans behave in winter, you might think they live in Siberia or something! (Related reading: http://www.tigs.in/bwcv/ )
- Mangaluru is on the Arabian Sea and faces west (think Europe!). No wonder Vasco da Gama reached India from the west and landed at Kozhikode in God’s Own Country (Kerala). Mangaluru also receives a lot of rain from the southwest monsoon but hardly any from the northeast monsoon.
- Chennai is on the Bay of Bengal and faces east. No surprise that many kings of olden times expanded their territories into southeast Asia (e.g.: Malaysia, Indonesia), kept coming back to find wives in the old Tamil country, and in the process ended up teaching us how to steam idlis instead of deep frying them in ghee! How health-conscious!
- Much later, the British raj exploited both eastern and western ports of India to take their loot back to England.
- More number of international flights operates from Bengaluru and Chennai than Mangaluru. This means that Bengaluru and Chennai are more directly connected with international destinations than Mangaluru.
- Bengaluru and Chennai are capital cities, while Mangaluru is not. How does this affect the levels of power that the different places have? And their population sizes?
In the above example, you should be able to identify all the concepts with which I started this essay.
Develop the above example as far as you can go, on paper. Assign a different colored pencil for each of the above concepts. When you identify each of the geography concepts in your write-up, underline those parts with the chosen colored pencil.
Your write-up will light up with geography.
Explore
- Find examples of ‘non-physical’ cultural features in your neighborhood that have a ‘physical’ expression.
- Why are ‘named’ latitudes named that way? Also, why are those latitudes not a neat number like 20 degrees, 30 degrees, etc. and instead are 23.5 degrees, 66.5 degrees, etc.?
- Why don’t the places you picked don’t have exactly the same type of climate or soils and so on even though they are on the same latitude?
If you want to explore places online, you can use the interactive map below to explore more.
A version of this article appeared in the Deccan Herald Student Edition on 25 September 2019
Featured image: The latitude(s) of Mangaluru, Bengaluru, and Chennai