· North America: The Postindustrial Transformation
Lecture Notes
By
Dr. Fernando A. Rodriguez

2 ·The North American Realm
· This large realm consists of two countries:
· The United States and
· Canada

3 · English Cultural Imprints Prevail in This Realm

· This realm is therefore known as Anglo-America (although there is a large French cultural imprint in Canada, especially the Province of Quebec).

· Ethnicity and religion and material culture reflect English roots as well as other European roots.

4 · North America’s Developed Status

· North America realm is the most urbanized of the world’s realms (75%).

· North American residents are highly mobile because they enjoy excellent networks of super highways.

· Commercial air lanes and railroads connect the realm’s far-flung cities and regions.

· People are very mobile because every year, at least one out of six people change their residences.

5 · Cycles of Economic Development

· In the 1990s, North America enters a New Age, the third since the arrival of Columbus.

· The first 400 years were dominated by agriculture and rural life.

6 · Cycles of Economic Development

· The second stage was one of urban industrialization that began approximately in the early 1930s.

7 · Cycles of Economic Development

· Today, we are entering the postindustrial age: a postindustrial society and economy which is dominated by the production and manipulation of information, skilled services, and high technology; and it manufactures and operates within global-scale framework of business interactions.

· As a result, new regions emerge and old regions try to reinvent themselves.

8 · The Postindustrial Age & Two Highly Advanced Societies: Canada and the United States

· Canada and the United States share many characteristics, but differences exist, as well.

9 · The Postindustrial Age & Two Highly Advanced Societies: Canada and the United States

· For example, the U.S. is slightly smaller than Canada, occupies the heart of the North American continent, and occupies a greater environmental range.

10 · The Postindustrial Age & Two Highly Advanced Societies: Canada and the United

States

· The population of the U.S. is dispersed across the country, forming major concentrations running north south down the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards.

· Canadian population, on the other hand, runs in an east-west corridor along the southern border of the country.

11 · The Postindustrial Age & Two Highly Advanced Societies: Canada and the United States

· Differences also become apparent when population totals and composition are examined.

· For example, the 1998 total for the U.S. were 269 million while Canada’s was only 39 million.

· Canada is really divided by language differences, 62% English- versus 24% French- speaking individuals.

· Canada’s multilingual situation is accentuated by the fact that the French speakers cluster in the province of Quebec. Here, more than 85 percent of Quebec’s population is French-speaking.

12 · The Postindustrial Age & Two Highly Advanced Societies: Canada and the United States

· On the other hand, cultural pluralism in the U.S. is a fact of life.
· De facto Segregation between black (12.8 percent) and whites (72.2 percent) is
common throughout the United States.
· Hispanics (11 percent) are quickly becoming the fastest-growing minority in the
United States and will become the largest minority by 2005.

13 · The Postindustrial Age & Two Highly Advanced Societies: Canada and the United
States

· Despite these differences, the United States and Canada rank among the most highly advanced countries of the world by every measure of economic development, possessing two of the highest living standards on Earth.

· Moreover, North America’s highly developed societies occupy a global leadership role that arose from a combination of history and geography.

14 · The Physiography of North America

· Its clear, well-defined division into physically homogeneous regions called physiographic provinces characterizes North America’s physiography.

15 · The Physiography of North America

· Each region is marked by a certain degree of uniformity in relief, climate, vegetation, soils, and other environmental conditions.

16 · The Physiography of North America

Obvious features include:

· The Rocky Mountains, the great mountain backbone of the continent running in a north-south alignment. This mountain range dominates the west from Alaska to New Mexico.

· The major feature of the Eastern half of the country is another, much lower

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chain of mountains, the Appalachian Highland. These uplands also trend more or less north south.

17 · The Physiography of North America

· Between the Rockies and the Appalachians lie North America’s vast interior plains, from the Arctic down to the Gulf of Mexico.

· These plains can be divided into several provinces:

· The Great Canadian Shield (the oldest rocks in North America.

· The Interior Lowlands and.

· The Great Plains that consists of a large, sedimentary plains that rise slowly westward toward The Rocky Mountains.

18 · The Physiography of North America

· Along the southern margin, these interior plains merge into the Gulf-Atlantic

Coastal, which extend from southern Texas along the seaward margins of the

Appalachians and the neighboring Piedmont until it ends at New York’s Long

Island.

19 · The Physiography of North America

· On the western side of the Rocky Mountains lie the zone of Intermontane Basins and Plateaus. This province includes:

· The Colombian Plateau.

· The Central Basin and Range Country —otherwise known as the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada. This region is called the Intermontane because it is between the Rockies and the Pacific Coast Mountains system to the west, and

· The Colorado Plateau

20 · The Physiography of North America

· From the Alaskan peninsula down to Southern California, the western coast of North America is dominated by an almost unbroken corridor of high mountain ranges. The major components of this coastal mountain belt include:

· The Sierra Nevada Mountains which are only 10,000,000 years old and

the youngest mountains in North America.

· The Cascades of Oregon and Washington and Northern California and.

· The Canadian and Alaskan Mountains.

21 · Climate Realms of North America

· In North America, as one might expect, the farther north one goes, the cooler it gets, temperature ranges are greatest where you have continentally.

· Precipitation generally declines towards the West —with the exception of the pacific coastal strip itself —as a result of the rain shadow effect whereby most Pacific Ocean moisture is effectively screened from the continental interior.

22 · Climate Realms of North America

· Consequently, America is divided into an arid western and a humid eastern half with a broad transitional zone.

· This transitional zone consists of a mix of forests in the mountains and grasslands in the High Plains of North America.

· Moreover, the soils are excellent in the central portion of the United States and

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moderately good in other areas surrounding the Great Plains.

· In Canada, the soils in the southern and central portion of the country are also excellent, making Canada a major exporter of wheat.

23 · Climate Realms of North America

· Hydrograph: The surface water patterns are dominated by two major drainage systems.

Systems that lie between the Rockies and the Appalachians:

· The Great Lakes, and

· The Mississippi-Missouri River network that is fed by such major tributaries as the Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas rivers.

24 · The United States

· Population in time and space: With accelerating speed after 1800, as one major technological breakthrough followed another, Americans continue to reshape America into the 1990s, with perhaps the most significant trend being the persistent drift of people and livelihoods toward the south and west, away from the north and east. In 1980 for the first time, the geographic center of the country crossed the Mississippi.

25 · The United States

· Beyond the frontier movement other causes of migration include:

· The explosive growth of cities triggered by the Industrial Revolution which, in turned, launched a rural to urban migratory pattern that continued until the 1960s.

26 · The United States

· One of the most significant migrations of this era (and one of the biggest international movements in history) was the migration from the south to the north by, principally, African Americans. This trend has ended as substantial numbers of blacks are returning to the South. This reversal is part of the much larger north-south migration to the Sunbelt.

27 · The United States

· Three reasons for this migratory movement are:

· The United States economy and its higher-paying jobs that continue to shift to the south and west,

· The retirement migration to places like Florida and Arizona, and

· Much of the new wave of immigration from Middle America and East Asia, a wave which is directed toward the area adjacent to Mexico and southern California.

28 · The United States

· As you recall in your historical readings, the original British colonial settlement was along the eastern seaboard. The three main areas of settlement were:

· New England (Massachusetts Bay and its environment) that specialized in commerce,

· The southern Chesapeake Bay colony (referred to as the Tidewater area of Virginia and Maryland) emphasized large-scale production of tobacco, and

· The Middle Atlantic area of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, which is the home to a number of smaller independent-farmer colonies.

29 · The United States

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· After the American Revolution, the frontier pushed open the settlers who spilled across the Appalachian Mountains. They discovered that the soils of the Interior Lowlands were especially favorable for farming.

30 · The United States

· This migration sparked the rapid growth of agriculture and the widening of coastal-interior trading ties across ever-greater distances.

31 · The United States

· By 1860, the railroad made these connections even better, and only the American South remained out of the mainstream, preferring to export tobacco and cotton from its plantations to overseas markets.

· Eventually, slavery, economic differences and this divergent regionalism led to the greatest event in American history: The American Civil War.

32 · The United States

· The second half of the 1 1800s saw the great movement west to the Pacific Coast.

· As early as 1869, California was linked to the rest of the nation by the intercontinental railroad.

· People found out that the interior grasslands could grow wheat, and a white population slowly replaced the last stand of the American Indians. (The film, “Dances With Wolves”, accurately displays the gradual, inevitable displacement of the Indians by white Americans.)

33 · The United States

· Twentieth-Century Urbanization: In the U.S., the Industrial Revolution occurred about a century after it did in Europe, but when it finally did cross the Atlantic in the 1 870s, it took hold so successfully that only 50 years later America was surpassing Europe as the world’s mightiest industrial power.

34 · The United States

· As a result, urbanization really increased. By 1920, 51 percent of the U.S. population resided in town and cities; in 1950, 64 percent; and in 1998, 75 percent.

· During the rapid industrialization, nearly 25 million European immigrants arrived between 1870 and 1914.

35 · The United States

· Moreover, throughout the evolutionary history of the United States, the national urban system went through several periods or Epochs:

· The Sail-Wagon Epoch (1790-1830) was marked by a primitive overland and water circulation. The leading cities were the northeastern ports of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

· The Iron Horse Epoch (1830-1870) marked by the spread of small-scale manufacturing. New York became the primate city, followed by the booming new industrial cities of Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago.

36 · The United States

· The Steel-Rail Epoch (1 879-1 920) spanned the Industrial Revolution. This epoch was marked by the rise of the steel industry along the Detroit-Chicago-Pittsburgh axis; the increased scale of manufacturing that favored concentration in the most favored raw material and market locations for the industry.

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37 · The United States

· The Auto-Air Amenity Epoch (1920-1 930) was marked by cars, urban to suburban spread, and service-sector jobs.

· The Satellite-Electronic-Jet Propulsion Epoch (1970 to the present) is marked by the newest advancements in global-scale communications, computer technologies, and transoceanic travel.

38 · The United States: Cultural Geography

· As the nativist culture of the United States matured, it developed a set of powerful

values and beliefs:

· Love of newness

· A desire to be near nature

· Freedom to move

· Individualism

· Societal acceptance

· Aggressive pursuit of goals

· A firm sense of destiny

· A disposable society

39 · The United States: Cultural Geography

· Language: No less than 1/8 of the American population spoke a primary language other than English in 1990.

· Even today, in this media age, we still have regional dialects; witness the South and New England areas, for example.

40 · The United States: Cultural Geography