ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 argued that geography is one of the key arenas through which individual lives across space are constructed. However, those same individual lives considered in aggregate also express a series of recognizable geographies. This empirical perspective of spatial distribution (1.3)—in this case of the global population—is this chapter’s focus. The results of such an exercise are always snapshots that temporarily freeze process. Nevertheless, these pictures present challenges taken up by subsequent chapters, namely to explain the patterns through engagement with those temporarily hidden processes. Furthermore, whilst observed spatial distributions may not determine demographic behavior, they do provide vital contextual elements of the geographical arena of life course experience within which such behavior occurs (2.3.3). In summary, one recognizes the importance of the following questions long posed by Population Geographers:
Where are the people?
Why do they live there?
What types of spaces are these habitations?
