Geography and Public Policy

Individuals, corporations, and governments use the land surface of the United States to produce goods - food, houses, land mines, automobiles, software, cigarettes and paper clips - and to provide services - educations, freedom, health, safety, and welfare. In doing so, they construct artifacts that collectively comprise landscapes

Landscapes can be viewed as a political statement that reflect both a consensus and a compromise reached by those employed in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government about;

• the role and responsibility of a national government and

• the appropriate national goals and collective behaviors

Consensus and compromise results in incentives - carrots - for some behaviors and disincentives - big sticks - for other behaviors

This course offers a description of the behavior of individuals, corporations, and governments in the United States operating under the rule of law

It is illustrative rather than comprehensive, looking at land use and the goods and services stemming from land use in the United States as political statements that reflect a past and a present whilst providing a basis for the future

I will draw attention to the primary documents that arise during the incessant, and often acrimonious, national debates about what goods should be produced and what services should be provided - the outcome of which is usually termed federal policy - rather than the secondary literature.

The aims of the course are

• to describe how federal policy gets made and how policy influences the subsequent behaviors of governments, corporations, and individuals in producing goods and providing services, actions that produce landscapes

• to introduce students to a variety of electronic sources that are available to carry out research

• to give students the opportunity to improve their writing skills