This article is about the concept of region in geography. For other uses, seeRegion (disambiguation).
Two or three-dimensionally defined space, mainly in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences
Ingeography,regions, otherwise referred to asareas,zones,lands orterritories, are portions of theEarth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and the environment (environmental geography). Geographic regions and sub-regions are mostly described by their imprecisely defined, and sometimes transitory boundaries, except in human geography, wherejurisdiction areas such as national borders are defined in law. More confined or well bounded portions are calledlocations orplaces.
Apart from theglobalcontinental regions, there are alsohydrospheric andatmospheric regions that cover theoceans, and discreteclimates above theland andwater masses of the planet. Theland and water global regions are divided into subregions geographically bounded by large geological features that influence large-scale ecologies, such asplains and features.
As a way of describing spatial areas, the concept of regions is important and widely used among the many branches of geography, each of which can describe areas in regional terms. For example,ecoregion is a term used inenvironmental geography, cultural region incultural geography, bioregion inbiogeography, and so on. The field of geography that studies regions themselves is calledregional geography. Regions are an area or division, especially part of a country or the world having definable characteristics but not always fixed boundaries.
Global regions are distinguishable from space, and are therefore clearly distinguished by the two basic terrestrial environments, land andwater. However, they have been generally recognized as such much earlier by terrestrialcartography because of their impact on human geography. They are divided into the largest of land regions, known ascontinents and the largest of water regions known asoceans. There are also significant regions that do not belong to either classification, such asarchipelago regions that arelittoral regions, orearthquake regions that are defined ingeology.
Continental regions are usually based on broad experiences in human history and attempt to reduce very large areas to more manageableregionalization for the purpose of the study. As such they are conceptual constructs, usually lacking distinct boundaries. The oceanic division into maritime regions is used in conjunction with the relationship to the central area of the continent, using directions of thecompass.
Some continental regions are defined by the major continental feature of their identity, such as theAmazon basin, or theSahara, which both occupy a significant percentage of their respective continental land area.
To a large extent, major continental regions are mental constructs created by considering an efficient way to define large areas of the continents. For the most part, the images of the world are derived as much from academic studies, from all types of media, or from personal experience of globalexploration. They are a matter of collective human knowledge of their own planet and are attempts to better understand their environments.
Regional geography is a branch of geography that studies regions of all sizes across theEarth. It has a prevailing descriptive character. The main aim is to understand or define the uniqueness or character of a particular region, which consists of natural as well as human elements. Attention is paid also to regionalization, which covers the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions.
Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape human interaction with various discrete environments. It encompasseshuman,political,cultural,social, andeconomic aspects among others that are often clearly delineated. While the major focus of human geography is not the physical landscape of the Earth (seephysical geography), it is hardly possible to discuss human geography without referring to the physical landscape on which human activities are being played out, andenvironmental geography is emerging as a link between the two. Regions of human geography can be divided into many broad categories:
The field ofhistorical geography involves the study of human history as it relates to places andregions, or the study of how places and regions have changed over time.
D. W. Meinig, a historical geographer of America, describes many historical regions in his bookThe Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. For example, in identifying European "source regions" in early American colonization efforts, he defines and describes theNorthwest European Atlantic Protestant Region, which includes sub-regions such as the "Western Channel Community", which itself is made of sub-regions such as theEnglishWest Country ofCornwall,Devon,Somerset, andDorset.
In describing historic regions of America, Meinig writes of "The Great Fishery" off the coast of Newfoundland and New England, an oceanic region that includes theGrand Banks. He rejects regions traditionally used in describing American history, likeNew France, "West Indies", theMiddle Colonies, and the individual colonies themselves (Province of Maryland, for example). Instead he writes of "discrete colonization areas", which may be named after colonies but rarely adhere strictly to political boundaries. Among other historic regions of this type, he writes about "Greater New England" and its major sub-regions of "Plymouth", "New Haven shores" (including parts of Long Island), "Rhode Island" (or "Narragansett Bay"), "the Piscataqua", "Massachusetts Bay", "Connecticut Valley", and to a lesser degree, regions in the sphere of influence of Greater New England, "Acadia" (Nova Scotia), "Newfoundland and The Fishery/The Banks".
A tourism region is a geographical region that has been designated by a governmental organization ortourism bureau as having common cultural or environmental characteristics. These regions are often named after a geographical, former, or current administrative region or may have a name created fortourism purposes. The names often evoke certain positive qualities of the area and suggest a coherent tourism experience to visitors. Countries, states, provinces, and other administrative regions are often carved up into tourism regions to facilitate attracting visitors.
Natural resources often occur in distinct regions. Natural resource regions can be a topic of physical geography or environmental geography, but also have a strong element of human geography and economic geography. A coal region, for example, is a physical or geomorphological region, but its development and exploitation can make it into an economic and a cultural region. Examples of natural resource regions are theRumaila Field, the oil field that lies along the border or Iraq and Kuwait and played a role in theGulf War; theCoal Region of Pennsylvania, which is a historical region as well as a cultural, physical, and natural resource region; theSouth Wales Coalfield, which like Pennsylvania's coal region is a historical, cultural, and natural region; theKuznetsk Basin, a similarly important coal mining region in Russia;Kryvbas, the economic and iron ore mining region of Ukraine; and theJames Bay Project, a large region of Quebec where one of the largest hydroelectric systems in the world has been developed.
Sometimes a region associated with a religion is given a name, likeChristendom, a term with medieval and renaissance connotations of Christianity as a sort of social and politicalpolity. The termMuslim world is sometimes used to refer to the region of the world where Islam is dominant. These broad terms are somewhat vague when used to describe regions.
The word "region" is taken from theLatinregio (derived fromregere, 'to rule'), and a number of countries have borrowed the term as the formal name for a type of subnational entity (e.g., theregión, used inChile). In English, the word is also used as the conventional translation for equivalent terms in other languages (e.g., theобласть (oblast), used in Russia alongside a broader termрегион).
The following countries use the term "region" (or itscognate) as the name of a type of subnational administrative unit:
Belgium (in French,région; in German,Region; theDutch termgewest is often mistakenly translated as "regio")
The Canadianprovince ofQuébec also uses the "administrative region" (région administrative).
Regions of England (not the United Kingdom as a whole) used to be administrative units until 2011. Since then they're only used for statistical purposes.[6]
In Spain the official name of theautonomous community ofMurcia isRegión de Murcia. Also, some single-province autonomous communities such asMadrid use the termregión interchangeably withcomunidad autónoma.
Twolän (counties) in Sweden are officially called 'regions':Skåne andVästra Götaland, and there is currently a controversial proposal to divide the rest of Sweden into largeregions, replacing the current counties.
The government of thePhilippines uses the term "region" (inFilipino,rehiyon) when it is necessary to group provinces, the primary administrative subdivision of the country. This is also the case inBrazil, which groups its primary administrative divisions (estados; "states") intograndes regiões (greater regions) for statistical purposes, while Russia usesэкономические районы (economic regions) in a similar way, as doesRomania andVenezuela.
The traditional territorial divisions of some countries are also commonly rendered in English as "regions". These informal divisions do not form the basis of the modern administrative divisions of these countries, but still define and delimit local regional identity and sense of belonging. Examples are:
Functional regions are usually understood to be the areas organised by the horizontal functional relations (flows, interactions) that are maximised within a region and minimised across its borders so that the principles of internal cohesiveness and external separation regarding spatial interactions are met (see, for instance, Farmer and Fotheringham, 2011;[7] Klapka, Halas, 2016;[8] Smart, 1974[9]). A functional region is not an abstract spatial concept, but to a certain extent it can be regarded as a reflection of the spatial behaviour of individuals in a geographic space. The functional region is conceived as a general concept while its inner structure, inner spatial flows, and interactions need not necessarily show any regular pattern, only selfcontainment. The concept of self-containment remains the only crucial defining characteristic of a functional region. Nodal regions, functional urban regions, daily urban systems, local labour-market areas (LLMAs), or travel-to-work areas (TTWAs) are considered to be special instances of a general functional region that need to fulfil some specific conditions regarding, for instance, the character of the region-organising interaction or the presence of urban cores, (Halas et al., 2015[10]).
In military usage, a region is shorthand for the name of a militaryformation larger than anArmy Group and smaller than aTheater. The full name of the military formation is Army Region.[11] The size of an Army Region can vary widely but is generally somewhere between about 1 million and 3 million soldiers. Two or more Army Regions could make up a Theater. An Army Region is typically commanded by a fullGeneral (US four stars), aField Marshal orGeneral of the Army (US five stars), orGeneralissimo (Soviet Union); and in theUS Armed Forces anAdmiral (typically four stars) may also command a region. Due to the large size of this formation, its use is rarely employed. Some of the very few examples of an Army Region are each of the Eastern, Western, and southern (mostly in Italy) fronts in Europe duringWorld War II. The military map unit symbol for this echelon of formation (seeMilitary organization andAPP-6A) is identified with six Xs.
Media geography is a spatio-temporal understanding, brought through different gadgets of media, nowadays, media became inevitable at different proportions and everyone supposed to consumed at different gravity. The spatial attributes are studied with the help of media outputs in shape of images which are contested in nature and pattern as well where politics is inseparable. Media geography is giving spatial understanding of mediated image.
^Susan Smith-Peter, "The Six Waves of Russian Regionalism in European Context, 1830–2000", inRussia's Regional Identities: The Power of the Provinces, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Gisela Erbsloh and Ani Kokobobo (London: Routledge, 2018), 14–43.
^Halas, M; Klapka, P; Tonev, P; Bednar, M (2015). "An alternative definition and use for the constraint function for rule-based methods of functional regionalisation".Environment and Planning A.47 (5):1175–1191.Bibcode:2015EnPlA..47.1175H.doi:10.1177/0308518X15592306.S2CID143263476.
Bailey, Robert G. (1996)Ecosystem Geography. New York: Springer-Verlag.ISBN0-387-94586-5
Meinig, D.W. (1986).The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume 1: Atlantic America, 1492-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press.ISBN0-300-03548-9
Moinuddin Shekh. (2017) " Mediascape and the State: A Geographical Interpretation of Image Politics in Uttar Pradesh, India. Netherland, Springer.
Smith-Peter, Susan (2018)Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Leiden: Brill, 2017.ISBN9789004353497
