Week 3 Critique: Development

For Week 3's Blog Critique, I will be focusing on Andrew Osborne's Week 3 Blog on Development. As he begins to talk about the abandoned coal mine and other places we visited, he mentioned Katie Willis's definition from the Key Concepts in Geography text: "Development is used in everyday speech to refer to change" (Willis, 2009), and how Willis is refering to 'development' as anything that has been altered by people. I believe that Willis had a different point in mind, though. As I read further into Willis's definition, Willis stated:

"However, within geography, development usually has more specific meanings, refering to either national-level processes of econominc, political, and social change, or the positive change resluting from intentional actions to improve the living conditions of poor or marginal populations." (Willis, 2009)

He goes on to explain that development can take on many different perspectives and has changed and morphed over time, but the constant is that it is influenced by power (Willis, 2009)

The perception that the Greer limestone mine as being sustainable due to its counter-effects on the acidity of the stream is a concept that I would not have thought about. When we think of sustainable development, we do not typically think of a limestone mine that is polluting into the stream as 'sustainable,' and that point is arguable, but it is an interesting concept to think about. James Duncan, in his entry in The Dictionary of Human Geography, cites W.M. Adams in explaining that the phrase 'sustainable development' is a flexible term, and used to justify ideas about economuy, environment, and society (Adams, 2001). Adams also cites the Brundtland Report of 1987 in defining sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (Adams, 2009). While I doubt that the Greer Limestone company had sustainability in mind when polluting the stream, the fact that they are resulting in a sustainable impact (combatting the acidity of the water with basic pollutants, resulting in cleaner water) is a very different perspective, but he makes a sound case for claiming that it is a sustainable development.


Adams, W.M. 2001: Green Devleopment: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World, 2nd edn. London: routledge

Duncan, James Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print.

Gregory, Derek. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2009. Print.

Week 3: Development

For week 3, I will be focusing on the geographic concept of "development." On our bike ride trip down the Decker's Creek Rail Trail, we experienced many different types of development, and the aftermath of other types of development/reclamation. Towards the beginning of the trip, we viewed what happens after a form of development becomes obsolete, particularly due to advances in technology and globalization.

The dictionary of human geography defines development as:

A central keyword of twentieth-century political economy and social policy, which can broadly refer to processes of social change or to class and state projects to transform national economies, particularly in formerly colonized or third world geographies.

While riding down the Decker's Creek Trail, it's very easy to see that it was once a railroad. Besides the name of "rail trail," it was relatively flat, and flowed downhill along the creek, which is typical of railroads, following the path of least resistance. Water usually takes the best path of least resistance, so many rail lines in this part of the world built these lines based on what nature had already given them. This area is particularly famous for its coal, and shortly into the ride, we visited an old coke furnace. The coke furnaces were mostly overgrown and hard to tell what they used to be if one is not familiar with them. The evidence of the rail yard that was once there is all gone except for the old bridge we crossed over and a couple leftover railroad ties. This is an example of development, and how quickly things can change. The are was once not nearly as forested, and was polluted with smoke from the railroad and furnaces, but this was a necessary cost for Pittsburgh's steel industry development. The coke was burned down so it was lighter and easier to transport on the railroad, and then shipped to Pittsburgh's steel mills. This modernization and industrialization are often top-down focused with little involvement from the affected communities. )Clifford 2009)

As we traveled closer to Morgantown, we passed the Greer Limestone mine. This is yet another example of the uneven development that is typical of natural resource-rich areas like West Virginia and Appalachia. Property values in this area have to have decreased significantly, pollution has risen, etc. because of this mine. But because of this mine, we can build roads and put limestone scrubbers on our coal power plants for cleaner energy.

As we got closer to Morgantown, we began to see more developed areas on the hillsides. The neighborhood in which I grew up was on the left, and over the horizon were a dozen other cookie-cutter housing developments. Because of the history of the area that has been so deep in subsistence farming and small industrialized areas like the coke furnaces or the iron furnace referenced in the previous blog post has led to the fierce opposition to zoning regulations (Grason 2006), which has led to the types of developments we saw on this particular trip: Huge apartment and single-family home developments adjacent to mobile home parks adjacent to a gas station adjacent to an office building. This illustrates the concept of development and how the concept has changed over time, and how uneven development has impacted our lives in Appalachia.

As we made our way into downtown Morgantown and met up with the Monongahela River rail-trail (formerly the B&O Railroad), we saw what an incredible REdevelopment has happened there. Where there is now a park and amphitheatre and repurposed bus depot, and other facilities, used to be the slum of the city. This shows how the concept of development has changed over time. It was normal in the early twentieth century to have riverfronts and/or railroad areas to be slums. Now they types of redevelopment we have now is concidered normal.

Clifford, Nicholas J. Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print. 

Gragson, Ted, and Paul Bolstad. "Land use Legacies and the Future of Southern Appalachia." Society & Natural Resources 19.2 (2006): 175-90.

Gregory, Derek. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2009. Print.

Blog Critique, Week 2

For the critique for week 2, I will be focusing on Thomas Davis' blog on Nature.

First and foremost, Thomas explains that there are many different definitions and assumptions about words like "natural" and organic," and every person and every discipline seems to have different definitions and different perspectives. In our textbook "Key Concepts in Geography," Clifford refers to this contest of meanings and understanding of nature, which I think is useful in understanding this key concept.

Nature is a contested term that means different things to different people in different places. Generally, this contestation revolves around three main meanings: the 'nature' or essence of a thing; 'nature' as a material place external to humanity; and 'nature' as a universal law or reality that may or may not include humans. (Clifford 2009)

This debate on whether humans are a part of nature or not is quite an interesting one. Never before on our planet has any species had such an incredible and massive impact on our planet and on other species, but does that really make humans and our way of life and our evolution "unnatural?"

The perspective of the Cranesville Swamp is an important one. One one hand, should we leave it completely alone, since we are trying to preserve "natrual" landscape? But at the same time, the entirety of that land has been impacted by humans, from non-native species being planted after log harvesting, to the degradation of the original soil and original trees to the pollution in the air. If we replant trees, is that really a "natural" phenomenon? Is the human touch a "natural" phenomenon? I think it is an interesting topic to think about and there some important questions to be asked.

I liked his use of T. Hagerstrand's article on Geography and the Study of Interaction Between Nature and Society. It really shows that humans are a part of nature, and we have a responsibility. Gregory quotes John Locke (1690) in the Dictionary of Human Geography. It really shows how quickly humans have changed in our relationship with nature.

In the first ages of the world men were more in danger to be lost, by wantering from their company, in the then vast wilderness of the earth, than to be straitened for want of room to plant in. And the same measure may be allowed still without prejudice to anybody, as full as the world seems. (Locke, 1690)

This was a very well thought-out and well-researched post. The perspective of showing how we are interacting and impacting nature, but also recognizing that we are a part of nature, is an important one.

Gregory, Derek. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2009. Print.

Holloway, Sarah L. Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print. 

Locke, J. 1967 [1690] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: Fontana.

Week 2: NATURE

For the week two field trip, we visited the Round Right farm and the Cranesville Swamp. Both of these places are embedded in nature, but in two entirely different ways. Nature is a hotly debated concept in geography, and has three distinct meanings, as defined in the 'Key Concepts in Geography' text:

1. Intrinsic nature: the essential charactersitics of a thing (e.g. the nature of social exclusion
2. External nature: the external, unmediated material world (e.g. the natural environment).
3. Universal nature: the all-encompassing force controlling things in the world (e.g. 'natural laws' or 'Mother Nature'). (Clifford 2009)

The Cranesville swamp was a very interesting place to visit, and we got somewhat of a "VIP" tour from an expert of the nature and geography of the area. He pointed out some very interesting and unique features of the swamp, and how it has been affected by human presence and interference. There was one area of the swamp that was densely covered with pine trees, for example. It looks nothing like a forest one would expect to find in Appalachia, but rather one that you would find in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. An unsuspecting visitor would notice the sudden change in environment and tree species (it is rather hard to miss), but may not question whether it is what we would consider "natural." We tend to divide the world into things that are "natural" and "cultural." (Gregory 2009)

The truth is that by most definitions, it is not natural. Our guide pointed out that the whole of Appalachia at one time was clear-cut for the timber industry, and that there are very few forests that have been mostly unaltered by man. When this particular area was clear-cut, these non-native pine trees were planted in neat rows and columns for later harvesting, but were never actually harvested. An effort to replant native species has been started, but the dominant force is still the evergreens. He also pointed out that before the clear-cuts happened, the ground was covered in a thick, unpassable muck full of decaying flora and fauna that had been crafted over thousands or millions of years, but now the bare earth is visible, because this muck had been cleared away with the timbering industry. Rather than letting things regrow 'naturally' from the underbrush, it was all stripped and burned away.

Right before we got to the pine area, however, our guide pointed out that the area looked a lot different than it did a short three or four years ago, because Hurricane Sandy did much damage to the relatively young trees in the area. He said "it's not bad, it's not ugly, it just looks different now." He was referring to the fact that because Sandy was a natural phenomenon, it was not a bad thing that those trees had been downed. Likewise, I have heard of similar things happening in protected wilderness areas that have been seen as natural rather than destructive. When natural wildfires occur in protected forests and the flames are not controlled, or when a beaver colony cuts down hundreds of trees to dam up a creek and create a massive lake. These things are considered natural phenomena and should be left alone. If the beavers want to build a dam, cut down a forest and flood an entire habitat area, or if mother nature decides to cast down her destructive force with heat and fire, these are perfectly acceptable parts of our "natural world." However, when humans cut trees to build houses or dam a river to create a water reservoir, it is seen as 'unnatural' and is condemned. But aren't we humans just mammals who have evolved and learned how to use our earth to our benefit? These are just the two sides of the story. I am not announcing my viewpoint or condemning others, but rather sparking an interesting question of why humans are not considered "natural."

 Holloway, Sarah L. Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print. 

 Gregory, Derek. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2009. Print.

Blog Critique: Week 1

For week 1's critique, I will be focusing on Eric Dorphner's blog on the geographic concept of time. 

Eric's blog effectively demonstrates both the Human Geography and the Physical Geography concepts of time and how they relate to the world in which we live. The views as a "physical dimension" and "social change" relate to human/social geography and physical geography perspectives respectively. 

This blog focuses primarily on the human perspective, and how the world changes with the "modernization" of our social lives. Clifford describes this best in the text when he says “We live in a world we call ‘modern’. Being Modern is to ‘move with the times’, to be ‘up to date’ to be a user of the newest gadgets or ideas” (Clifford, 141). This is especially evident in the places we visited on the first field trip, and how the advances of technology have left remnants of a time that has passed and how people have lived, and also physical scars on the earth. He alluded briefly to the iron furnace, and how that is now just something that remains from a much different world. One aspect that was not mentioned in the blog post was how the earth has reclaimed the area around the iron furnace, with time. And amount of time that for us humans is fascinatingly long, but for the earth is just a short snippet. The forests in the area were cut down to burn in the iron furnace, but with the march of time, the forests have grown back. Unsuspecting passersby would never stop to think about how the landscape looked much different just a short century ago, but time has slowly crept on and reclaimed the forest. 

He goes on to mention that time has rendered the iron furnace obsolete, with the advances of technology and the "modernization" of our world, which relates directly back to the windmills we visited. In my opinion, this also relates directly to the quarry, and how the advances of technology and the demand for cleaner energy has left that huge scar on the earth that would not be there otherwise. 

Clifford, Nicholas J. Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print.

Geography and Time-Space Compression

Time is a concept that has become a sort of fascination in our society today. From the world of science fiction contemplating the repercussions of the ability to go backwards or forwards in time and change human history, to the obsession over filling our schedules down to the second, or worrying about how much time it is going to take to get to work.
Geographers are interested in time in the sense of studying its effects on the planet Earth and its peoples, and how the concept of time has changed, and how our perception of time and distance has seemingly shrunk through the process of globalization.

"Contemporary globalization is a classic example of how the concepts of time and space are linked together. The idea of globaliztion has dominated much thinking in human geography and beyond in the last decade or so. It is self-evidently a spatial term since it references and announces a specific geographical scale of activity, the 'global.' But the spatial-scale reference makes sense only in relation also to time." (Holloway, 2009)

While I was intrigued by all the stops on our field trip, a couple stood out to me. The first one was the Forks of Cheat church and cemetery. Buried on that spot of earth were dozens of persons, many of whom probably spent their entire lives in what would be considered today a very small area. They were confined by the technology of the time. While we made the trek in around twenty-thirty minutes from downtown Morgantown to the church, during the time that many of these persons lived, the same trek would have taken several hours or even over a day on horseback or carriage. Somebody who lived in that area in the eighteenth or nineteenth century most likely did not visit Morgantown or Uniontown very often, perhaps a couple times a year. Today on that same small area of land, many folks commute to Morgantown on a daily basis to earn their living and support their families. Just a short hundred or two hundred years ago, all that one needed to survive and support themselves and their families was right there on that tiny piece of earth. Many had no reason to leave.

The other spots that really stood out to me was at the quarry and the iron furnace. Energy is one of our most precious commodities today, and we will go to any lengths to get it. They were mining for limestone, which is one of the essential materials needed for scrubbers on coal-fired power plants. However, the horizon over the quarry was dotted with windmills.

While energy is our most precious commodity today, a hundred or two hundred years ago, the world was much different. A very valuable commodity was iron, which was used for many things, but at the turn of the nineteenth century, iron was being used to fuel the steel industry in Pennsylvania. The iron furnace is just a remnant of that past economy, but still an important one. The people that once worked literally around the clock burning the precious wood that the forest generated. During this time, people lived there on site, burned wood from that site, and shipped the final product just down the river to Pittsburgh or the surrounding steel mills and other consumers. The steel industry fueled our nation's economy of the time, enabling everything from the first skyscrapers to the automobile, but everything happened on a very local scale. Coal and iron came from northern West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, which were sent to the steel mills in the Pittsburgh area. It all happened on a very small spatial scale by today's standards. I think Derek Gregory summed the idea up quite well in the Dictionary of Human Geography, 5th edition:

"An increase in the social life and a diminution in the constraining effects of distance on human activities. Processes of htis kind have along and varied history, but when David Harvey (1989b) first proposed the term, his primary purpose was to deisnate the product of what Marx sawas the compulsion to 'annihilate space by time' under Capitalism. [...] Harvey showed how this extraordinary volatility - the accelerating rhythm of social change - is connected through the restless expansion of capital accumulation to far-reaching transformation in the structures of an increasingly global space-economy." (Gregory, 2009)

Where we once saw the economy riding on the backbone of a localized area, we now see very globalized or nationalized processes. In the same time it took to ship iron from northern West Virginia to Pittsburgh, we can ship from anywhere in the country. In order to power the steel factories, we need the coal from one part of the country, and the limestone from another, and the iron from yet another place. And inside that factory, the machines may come from another country across the globe, and the paper from a paper mill somewhere. People commute much further distances than they once did, and relocating for said work is much easier than it once was.

 Holloway, Sarah L. Key Concepts in Geography. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications, 2009. Print. 

 Gregory, Derek. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 5th ed. Malden: Blackwell, 2009. Print.