Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
analysis. Thus, they would open a 10,000 square foot store in a city that could easily support a 50,000
square foot store, while opening a 50,000 square foot store in a town that could only support a 10,000
square foot store. In other instances, they would allocate significant floor space to maternity clothing,
baby goods, and toys in towns with a high percentage of retirees. Mind you, their location analysis
was great. They had nice stores in superb locations. They were just the wrong-sized stores (in many
instances) with the wrong product mix in the wrong locations. Good market analysis, a staple subject
of economic geography, could have made a difference.
Transportation Planner
Transportation concerns movement of goods and people from one location to another. Thus, trans-
portation planning is inherently geographical and attracts people with training in geography. Several
specializations are involved. Sur-veyors who plan for future road construction typically are well-
grounded in modern cartographic skills. Route planners concern themselves with devising optimal
itineraries for public buses and planning for evacuation of areas in the face of diverse emergencies.
Meanwhile, in the realm of manufacturing, appreciation is growing for “just in time” planning, which
seeks to bring together product components at a factory . . . well, just in time for assembly, thus redu-
cing significant warehousing costs. All of this rightly implies that the job outlook for transportation
planning specialists is excellent.
Urban Planner
Cities consist of countless land parcels devoted to residential, commercial, industrial, cultural, recre-
ational, transportation, governmental, sanitation, and other uses. Urban planners geographically al-
locate the various kinds of parcels in ways that promote orderly development of cities and enhance
their attractiveness as places to live and work. Virtually thousands of counties and municipalities in
theUnited States employ urbanplanners. Governments ofnearly all major cities include adepartment
of city planning that employs dozens of specialists in the field. The fact that cities keep growing and
that 75 percent of Americans now live in them bodes well for the future of urban planning as a career
field. Cartography, geographic information systems, air photo interpretation, and analysis of spatial
databases have emerged as critical tools of the planning trade.
