Economic Geography: Activities, Systems, and Spatial Organization

Geography

Geography is the description of the land, including land survey systems (Geosistema) and the interrelationships of its component elements. These elements can be biotic or abiotic, and encompass the atmosphere (air), lithosphere (rocks), hydrosphere (water), and pedosphere (soil, a mixture of the aforementioned). This includes aeromass, hydromass, biomass, lithomass, and artifactomass (the total mass of elements built by humans).

Economic Geography

Economic Geography is the study of the location and distribution of different activities that are part of the economic process.

Economic Activities

Economic activities represent an effort to meet human needs through the wise use of resources. They involve the economic issue, the production process, the production of goods and services, and the interrelation between humans and nature.

Requirements

• Basic: Living essentials such as food, clothing, and housing.
• Secondary: Elements that help improve the quality of life, such as healthcare and entertainment.
• Created or Superfluous: Non-essential needs.

Economic activity is an action to meet needs through production, consumption, and accumulation (savings).

Environment

• Natural: Biotic and abiotic components.
• Built:
  • Organizational Subsystems: Political, economic, social, and cultural.
  • Built Subsystems: Houses, other structures, and types of communication.

Geo-Economic Approach

The geo-economic approach studies the localization of resources, the manner of use of these resources by humans, and the spatial distribution of the phases of the production process. In this study, the production and consumption aspects of economic geography are fundamental. However, it is essential to review the exchange, clearly showing the relationship between economic activities.

Linked together, economic activities form a production system characterized by:

1. Specialization of work
2. Development of exchange
3. Use of money

This leads to:

1. Growing importance of capital
2. Enterprise development and economic coordination mechanisms

Social System

Every society defines that people have different roles and different social statuses.

Culture

Culture encompasses everything we do in society.

Trade System

A trade system consists of the rules that govern an economy, such as a free market.

Planning and Economic Activity

The economic system and space/territory interact dialectically, as manifested through:

• Location of economic activities and business location factors
• Models/patterns of location and regional/urban economic structure
• Territorial conditions (resources, accessibility, social relations, institutional framework)
• Features of companies and sectors
• Distribution of activity and employment
• Types of spaces (homogeneous/functional)
• Territorial effects of economic activity
• Mobility, distribution, and population structure
• Regional and local labor markets
• Consumption capacity and social welfare
• Territorial inequality and environmental impacts

It can be deduced that spatial organization is a reflection of economic activity.

It is also important to consider:

• The influence of economic policies on the territory
• The influence of local policies on the economy