What are some examples of external flows and what do they do?
- Recently, flows of people, money, resources and ideas between places have increased due to improvements to transport
- These flows cause places to become more connected - this is globalisation in action
What are demographic characteristics?
Demographic characteristics are to do with who lives in a place and what they’re like.
Demographic characteristics of places can change due to effects of changing external flows
What are these flows?
Flows of people, money and investment and ideas and resources
What are flows of people?
- Flows of people can change any demographic characteristic of a place
- e.g. young people leaving towns as the houses are too expensive, leaving a high proportion of elderly people in said towns.
- Large scale migration
What are flows of money and investment?
- Governments and businesses can change the invest money in specific places
- E.g. the London Docklands Developments Corporation was a group set up by the government in 1981 to redevelop the docklands area, resulting in a population, economic and industrial boost.
What are flows and ideas and resources?
- Ideas such as birth control can flow to new places and affect their demographic characteristics
- E.g. reducing population and birth rate affects population size - many of the poorest countries have little to no contraception. Spreading knowledge about contraception through flows of ideas and resources
How do flows affect the cultural characteristics of a place?
Flows of people - New people moving into a place and bringing their culture with them
Flows of money, investment and ideas - New cultural ideas introduced to places can change the characteristics of those places. Fast Food companies from the USA started opening restaurants in China in the 80s and 90s which have grown rapidly since.
Economic characteristics are affected by many flows
- What external flows change economic characteristics?
- People visiting places can change economic characteristics
- Products that may have only been consumed locally or regionally can be sold to global markets
- Reduced investment and competition from global market can lead to decline in certain industries e.g. mining and manufacturing in the UK
How do flows affect social inequality?
- Flows of people - Regional migration from rural to urban areas. Migrants often have a poor quality of life, but by moving to the city, this can improve it vastly
- Flow of resources - The outward of natural resources from poorer countries can change levels of social inequality
- Flow of money and investment - Gentrification has improved social characteristics of some places, but can also increase inequality.
What is gentrification?
Where wealthier people buy property in run-down areas and improve the housing
