AP Human Geography Unit 7 Cheatsheet: Industrial and Economic Development Patterns and Processes

What triggered industrialization?

• New technologies (steam power, mechanization)
• Availability of natural resources (coal, iron, timber)
• Capital and investors seeking profit

Major geographic shifts:

• Food supply ↑ → population growth
• Rural workers → urban industrial jobs
• Class structures transformed (new middle class, urban working class)
• Demand for raw materials → colonialism & imperialism

Five economic sectors:

• Primary: extraction (agriculture, mining, fishing)
• Secondary: manufacturing & processing
• Tertiary: services (retail, education, healthcare)
• Quaternary: information & knowledge (research, finance)
• Quinary: high-level decision-making (executive, government)

Manufacturing location factors:

• Labor availability & cost
• Transportation (shipping containers, break-of-bulk points)
• Proximity to markets & raw materials
• Least cost theory: minimize total production costs
• Core, semiperiphery, periphery locations

Sustainability challenges from industrialization:

• Natural-resource depletion, mass consumption → waste & pollution
• Climate change from fossil-fuel dependence

Sustainable development solutions:

• Renewable energy transition, circular economy
• Ecotourism: protects threatened ecosystems, creates local jobs
• UN Sustainable Development Goals: small-scale finance & public transit

Human Development Index (HDI):

• Combines health (life expectancy), education (schooling), income (GNI per capita)
• More comprehensive than GDP; reveals spatial variation in well-being
• Limitations: masks internal inequality, doesn't measure sustainability