Changing Places 3

External flows cause places to change:

Places are constantly changing because all the factors that create their character are constantly changing.

Historically, the character of a place was heavily affected by the endogenous factors of that place, e.g. mining towns developed in places with natural resources.

The original character of many places has changed because of the exogenous influences that have occurred over time, e.g. flows to and from places of things like people, resources, money and ideas.

In recent history, flows of people, money, resources and ideas between places have increased. This is because of improvements to transport, which have made it easier for people and goods to be transported, and communications, which allow people to communicate with anyone else on the planet instantly. These flows have caused more places to become more strongly connected to each other, and over increasing distances; globalisation.

Demographic change is caused by shifting flows:

Demographic characteristics are to do with who lives in a place and what they're like. It includes factors like age, gender, education level, religion, birth rates, ethnicity and population size.

The demographic characteristics of places can change due to the effects of changing external flows:

• Flows of people can change any of the demographic characteristics of a place, e.g. the age or gender balance.
• Flows of money and investment, either by governments or businesses, can change the demographic characteristics of places, e.g. governments can invest money in specific places in order to attract people to live there.
• Flows of ideas and resources; ideas such as the use of birth control can flow to new places and affect their demographic characteristics, e.g. by reducing the birth rate and affecting the population size.

These flows also affect the cultural characteristics of a place:

The cultural characteristics of places are to do with how people live their lives.

The cultural characteristics of places can…