AP HUG - Unit 5

• Services


  Activities that fulfil a human want or need and return money to those who provide it
• Settlements


  Permanent collection of buildings where people reside, work, and obtain services
• In developed countries, most people work in services, such as shops, offices, restaurants, universities, and hospitals
• Most people in developed countries obtain what they need from service providers
• Services are closely linked with settlements because services are located in settlements
• Geography plays an especially important role in the provision of services because geographic principles determine the optimal location for a service
• Types of services


  • Consumer services
  • Business services
  • Public services
• Consumer services


  Services provided to individual consumers who desire them and can afford to pay for them
• Business services


  Services that facilitate the activities of other businesses
• Public services


  Services that provide security and protection for citizens and businesses
• Around one-half of all jobs in the United States are in consumer services
• Main types of consumer services

  • Retail
  • Health
  • Education
  • Leisure
• One-fourth of all jobs in the United States are in business services
• Main types of business services


  • Professional services
  • Transportation services
  • Financial services
• About 10 percent of all U.S. jobs are in the public sector
• Breakdown of public sector employment

  • Federal government (1/6)
  • State governments (1/4)
  • Local governments (3/5)
• All humans need food to survive
• All of the growth in U.S. employment has been in services, whereas employment in primary- and secondary-sector activities has declined
• Obtaining food


  Buy it or produce it ourselves
• The most rapid increase in consumer services was in the provision of health care, education, entertainment, and recreation
• Developed countries


  People purchase nearly all of their food, which is produced primarily through commercial agriculture
• The fastest-growing business service is professional
• Central place theory


  Explains how the most profitable location for a consumer service can be identified
• Developing countries


  People produce much of their food themselves through subsistence agriculture
• Market area


  The area surrounding a service from which customers are attracted
• Locations mentioned


  • India
  • Indonesia
  • Mozambique
  • Illinois River
  • Broken Bow
  • Côte d'Ivoire
  • Georgia
  • Maryland
  • Vernazza
  • Mongolia
  • Pengzhou
  • Myanmar
  • Namibia
  • Kassiopi
  • Radi
  • Iowa
  • California
• Range


  The maximum distance consumers are willing to travel to obtain a service
• Agriculture was invented around 10,000 years ago in multiple places
• Threshold


  The minimum number of customers needed to make a service viable
• Prior to the agricultural revolution, people survived by hunting and gathering food
• Environmental factors


  • The first domestication of crops and animals coincided with climate change
  • The end of the last ice age, when permanent ice cover receded from Earth's mid-latitudes to the polar regions, resulting in a massive redistribution of humans, other animals, and plants
• Hexagons represent a compromise between circles and squares to represent market areas in central place theory
• Cultural factors


  • A preference for living in a fixed place rather than as nomads may have led hunters and gatherers to build permanent settlements and to store surplus vegetation there
  • Damaged or discarded food produced new plants
  • Deliberate cutting of plants or dropping of berries on the ground to see if they would produce new plants
  • Subsequent generations learned to pour water over the site and to introduce manure and other soil improvements
• Agriculture originated when humans domesticated plants and animals for their use
• The United States can be divided into market areas based on the hinterlands surrounding the largest urban settlements
• Important agriculture hearths


  • Southwest Asia
  • East Asia
  • Central and South Asia
  • Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Latin America
• Subsistence agriculture


  Production of food primarily for consumption by the farmer's family
• Commercial agriculture


  Production of food primarily for sale off the farm
• Hexagons


  • Nest without gaps
  • Variation in distance from center is less than with a square
• In developed countries, around 3% of workers are engaged directly in farming, compared to around 42% in developing countries