CGP Changing Places

• Changing Places

  The external forces that cause change and affect the character of places
• The page is about how places have been shaped by the connections to other places and the way they developed in the past
• External Forces Driving Changes in Many Places

  • Government policies
  • Decisions of transnational corporations
  • Impacts of international or global institutions
• Government policies

  1. Can directly affect the demographic characteristics of places

  2. Can affect the cultural characteristics of places

  3. Can affect the demographic, economic and social characteristics of places
• Government policies

  • One-child policy in China
  • Policies to increase birth rate in France
• Government policies controlling immigration

  Can affect the cultural characteristics of places
• Government policies

  • Funding schemes to regenerate urban areas in Manchester
• Transnational corporations (TNCs)

  Decisions of TNCs can have major impacts on the demographic, social and economic characteristics of places
• Impact of TNC decisions

  • Car manufacturing in Detroit, USA
• After the 1950s, many manufacturing TNCs relocated factories to places with cheaper labour, which led to massive population decline, high unemployment and social deprivation in Detroit
• World Food Programme (WFP)


  Provides food assistance, often as emergency aid, which affects the social and demographic characteristics of places by ensuring people have enough food and preventing deaths from famine and starvation
• World Bank


  Invests in and helps set up projects around the world aimed at reducing poverty, which can affect the demographic, cultural, economic and social characteristics of places
• World Bank project

  • Ningbo New Countryside Development Project in China, which improved social conditions by providing wastewater disposal services
• Past and present connections and developments shape the character of places
• The way in which places developed in the past strongly affects their character in the present
• Factors that influenced the initial development of settlements

  • Location factors (e.g. confluence of rivers, access to natural resources)
  • Endogenous factors (see page 152)
• During the Industrial Revolution, large industrial cities developed that were globally connected through trade, leading to rural-urban migration
• Many UK cities were heavily affected by deindustrialisation in the later 20th century, leading to economic and social decline
• The character of places is shaped by a mix of all the connections and developments they have undergone throughout their history, and the present-day connections and developments
• Sheffield's character

  • Still characterised as an industrial city
  • Now also characterised as a student city with academic and research excellence
  • Developing new connections in high-tech industries
  • Re-branding as 'The Outdoor City' to encourage tourism