Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
modern buildings, factories on the outskirts, and modern
farms nearby. In some cases roads and rails lead to a bustling
port, where luxury automobiles are unloaded for use by the
privileged elite and raw materials or agricultural products
from the country are exported to points around the world.
In these core areas of countries, the rush of “progress” may
be evident. If you travel a few miles into the countryside or
into a different neighborhood in the city, however, you will
likely see a very different picture. The contrasts between
rich and poor areas are not simply the result of differences
in the economic endowments of places. Government policy
frequently affects development patterns as well. Hence,
in this section of the chapter we turn to how governments
collaborate with corporations to create islands of develop-
ment, and consider how people try to generate growth in
the periphery of the periphery.
authority. Government policies play an important role at
the interstate level, but they also shape patterns of devel-
opment within States—not just between urban and rural
areas, but within each of these sectors.
Of course, governments alone do not determine pat-
terns of wealth and poverty, but they are almost always
part of the picture. Consider the case of the Ninth Ward in
New Orleans, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina
in 2005. On its surface, what happened to the Ninth Ward
was the result of a natural disaster. But the fl ooding of that
part of New Orleans was also the result of government
decisions decades ago to build levies and settle fl ood-prone
areas. The concentration of people living there was also
the product of innumerable policies affecting housing, the
construction of businesses, and the like. Once the hurricane
hit, many looked to government to rebuild the devastated
section of the city. The limited nature of the governmental
response is evident in the landscape today (Fig. 10.14).
At a somewhat larger scale, consider the contrasts
between parts of rural Wisconsin and rural Appalachia in
the United States. In rural Wisconsin, many of the sur-
viving family farmers are educated at land-grant universi-
ties in plant and animal sciences and in agribusiness. They
may well be running a highly mechanized dairy farm. On
such farms, the farmer equips each cow with a barcode
The Role of Governments
The actions of governments infl uence whether, how, and
where wealth is produced. This is because the distribution
of wealth is affected by tariffs, trade agreements, taxation
structures, land ownership rules, environmental regula-
tions, and many other manifestations of governmental
Field Note
“Walking through New Orleans' Lower
Ninth Ward more than two years after
Hurricane Katrina, it seemed as if the
natural disaster had just happened.
Street after street of devastated,
vacant buildings was all the eye could
behold—many still bearing the mark-
ings of the emergency crews that had
moved through the neighborhood in
the wake of the hurricane, showing
whether anyone had died inside. It
struck me that r e construction would
require a public commitment on the
order of what occurred in Europe after
World War II, when cities reduced to
rubble by bombing were rebuilt almost
from scratch. No such commitment
ever materialized, but some prog-
ress has been made in recent years.
Recent census data shows a city that is
slightly smaller and slightly richer than
the pre-Katrina city, with a somewhat
reduced black population, and a mod-
estly expanding number of Hispanics.”
Figure 10.14
Destroyed House in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans.
© Alexander B. Murphy.
