Definition of Economic Geography
Miscellanea / / November 13, 2021
By Florencia Ucha, in May. 2011
As a consequence of the enormous object of study that it holds is that its approach is divided into various sub-branches that deal with specific topics but obviously associated with the discipline mother that is the surface of our planet.
Branch within Geography that deals with studying the relationships that exist between geography and the economic activities of a given region and that has the mission of making them more profitable
The economic geography is a branch within human geography that takes care of study the different types of economic activities undertaken by men and their relationship with the exploitation of natural resources
, that is, economic geography is oriented to discover how people live, the relationships they establish with the spatial distribution of resources, production and consumption, both of goods and of services.It is necessary to thoroughly analyze the market supply and demand relationships from the perspective of space, that is, between consumers and producers in a given area, to which they must add other variables such as the laws of the market, the commercial law own and others, the globalization and the economic situation of each nation.
The geographic reality of a nation is directly related to the economic development that that nation will be able to achieve, this means that if your geography allows it, you will be able to develop certain activities that will report Benefits. Now, to be clear that it is not always just a question of good geography, you can have it but not have public policies or the work capacity to develop it. In other words, all these aforementioned issues must be positively aligned to ensure that the economy of a country is prosperous.
For example, a territory full of mountains and with poorly constructed routes, and also without the infrastructure necessary linked to means of transport, it will not be able to aspire to a good development in the sense that we have been talking about. Meanwhile, a city that has the precise and optimal connections will be, and obviously the relationships and the economic reality of these will be very different.
Without exceptions, the geographical reality of an area will set the standard for how it can produce and what it can produce.
More precisely, economic geography deals with studying the relationship between physical and biological factors producers of natural resources and also the economic and technical conditions that determine their production and transport.
Economic sectors
Meanwhile, economic geographers and other specialists in matters of economic interference argue that in order to understand the relationships between economic activities and the space, it will first be essential to understand, from the analysis, the different economic sectors, because the varied offer of products and services that we find ourselves with supposes a diversity in terms of how to produce them.
This is how we find the sectors: primary (Includes those activities that involve the extraction of goods and natural resources: agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, energy production. They are linked to the rural sector), secondary (These are those activities that involve the transformation of assets and resources that have been appropriately extracted from their natural habitat; are tasks that mostly take place in urban areas, because both the nearby workforce and the potential consumer are used), tertiary (It implies activities whose products are not tangible goods, therefore, they are intangible, although they are plausible to suffer an economic transaction: banking, tourism, commerce, transportation. They are also developed in the urban space) and quaternary (affects highly intellectual services such as research, innovation and development: high technology, telecommunications, education, consulting, among others).
Topics in Economic Geography