AP Human Geography

Welcome to human geography! The best social science class at Summit.

AP human geography presents high school students with the curricular equivalent of an introductory college-level course in human geography or cultural geography. Content is presented thematically rather than regionally and is organized around the discipline’s main subfields: economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, and urban geography. The approach is spatial and problem oriented. Case studies are drawn from all world regions, with an emphasis on understanding the world in which we live today. Historical information serves to enrich analysis of the impacts of phenomena such as globalization, colonialism, and human–environment relationships on places, regions, cultural landscapes, and patterns of interaction. (From AP course description).

Specific topics with which students engage include the following:

▶problems of economic development and cultural change

▶ consequences of population growth, changing fertility rates, and international migration

▶ impacts of technological innovation on transportation, communication,industrialization, and other aspects of human life

▶ struggles over political power and control of territory

▶ conflicts over the demands of ethnic minorities, the role of women in society, and

the inequalities between developed and developing economies

▶ explanations of why location matters to agricultural land use, industrial development, and urban problems

▶ the role of climate change and environmental abuses in shaping the human landscapes on Earth