Geography

Geography topics:

  • sustainability
  • affordable housing
  • standard of living
  • quality of life
  • longshore drift
  • food chains
?

Sustainability

Sustainable living encompasses a broad range of aims including the use of renewable resources, energy efficiency, use of public transport, accessible resources and services. Whitehill Bordon is an example of an Ecotown in the UK, given government funding for sustainable measures and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi is an example of a sustainably planned city.

1 of 5

Affordable Housing

On Monday, the prime minister donned builders' boots to promote his government's "unashamedly ambitious" strategy for providing England with hundreds of thousands of affordable homes. On Tuesday, his government quietly published statistics on how many affordable homes were actually started in the six months since April.

2 of 5

Standard of Living

Standard of living is generally measured by standards such as real (i.e. inflation adjusted) income per person and poverty rate. Other measures such as access and quality of health care, income growth inequality and educational standards are also used. Examples are access to certain goods (such as number of refrigerators per 1000 people), or measures of health such as life expectancy. It is the ease by which people living in a time or place are able to satisfy their needs and/or wants.

Standard of living refers to the level of wealth, comfort, material goods and necessities available to a certain socioeconomic class in a certain geographic area. The standard of living includes factors such as income, quality and availability of employment, class disparity, poverty rate, quality and affordability of housing, hours of work required to purchase necessities, gross domestic product, inflation rate, number of vacation days per year, affordable (or free) access to quality healthcare, quality and availability of education, life expectancy, incidence of disease, cost of goods and services, infrastructure, national economic growth, economic and political stability, political and religious freedom, environmental quality, climate and safety. The standard of living is closely related to quality of life.

3 of 5

Quality of Life

The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income. Instead, standard indicators of the quality of life include not only wealth and employment, but also the built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging.

4 of 5

Longshore Drift: Coasts

Longshore drift consists of the transportation of sediments (generally sand but may also consist of coarser sediments such as gravels) along a coast at an angle to the shoreline, which is dependent on prevailing wind direction, swash and backwash. This process occurs in the littoral zone, and in or within close proximity to the surf zone. The process is also known as longshore transport or littoral drift.

Longshore drift is influenced by numerous aspects of the coastal system, with processes that occur within the surf zone largely influencing the deposition and erosion of sediments. Longshore currents can generate oblique breaking waves which result in longshore transport.

5 of 5

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Geography resources:

See all Geography resources »