The region of North America includes the United States and Canada, which have similar physical characteristics and a history of colonialism. These two countries comprise more than 13 percent of the world's total landmass. North America is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Pacific Ocean on the west, and the Arctic Ocean to the north.
The population in North America has highly urbanized: approximately 80 percent of the population lives in cities. Most of North America's diverse population consists of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. The United States is the world's largest economy – Canada and the United States enjoy relatively high standards of living.
We begin this unit by exploring North America's physical geography, paying particular attention to its seismically active west coast, its water resources, the potential for sustainable agriculture, and the impact of fossil fuels on the landscape. Next, we explore the pattern of human settlement, the influence of European colonialism, and the institution of slavery. Then, we take a close look at industrial development, urban and suburban growth, patterns of inequality, and globalization.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 4 hours.
Let's begin our examination of North America by studying some maps of the region.
Study these maps of North America so that you are familiar with the locations of the cities, mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers.
North America is divided into several physical regions with distinct landforms. Figure 4.1 illustrates the major regions of North America (we study Mexico, Middle America, South America, and the Caribbean in Unit 5).
The Canadian Shield dominates the northern portion of North America. Geologically, this is the oldest part of North America; it is sparsely populated with poor soil. During the Ice Age, continental glaciation left the bedrock (the Canadian Shield) exposed when it removed the soil from this area and deposited it in southern Canada and the northern United States.
The Appalachian Highlands separate the Atlantic Plain from the Interior Plains. The Rocky Mountains separate the Interior Plains from the Intermontane Plateaus. Years of erosion have made the Appalachians much less rugged than the Rockies, but they have influenced the history and development of the United States in major ways.
The Pacific Mountains form the western border of the Intermontane Plateaus and North America. The west coast of North America lacks a coastal plain because it is an active tectonic plate boundary. Remember from Unit 1 that we generally associate tectonic activity with plate boundaries. Consequently, the west coast is characterized by earthquakes and volcanic activity. The coast is not.
These two maps show the physiographic regions of the United States.
In Figure 4.2, you can see that the Atlantic Plain is in the interior of the North American Plate, about 2,000 miles from its eastern edge.
In North America, temperatures are generally warmer from north to south. Recall that the Earth is a sphere, so places closer to the Equator receive more direct sunlight than places that are farther away. North America ranges in latitude from the southernmost point in the state of Florida in the United States (24.5° N) to the northernmost point on Ellesmere Island in the Nunavut Territory of Canada (83°N).
Use the thematic map of climate in Figure 4.3 to identify the following climates.
In the United States, precipitation generally decreases as we move from east to west due to the Pacific Mountain system, which creates a rain shadow effect. The Pacific Mountains cast a rain shadow that limits precipitation in much of the western half of the United States, including eastern Washington and Oregon, the Great Plains, and the Desert Southwest. Figure 4.4 illustrates the rain shadow effect.
Moist air from the ocean is blown onshore and rises as it follows the slope of the mountains. As the moist air rises, it cools, and the moisture precipitates as rain and/or snow. By the time the air begins to descend on the leeward side, it is dry. We will see that the rain shadow effect impacts other regions too. The East coast lacks a coastal mountain range that would prevent moisture-laden air from reaching the interior.
Read this text for more on the physical geography of North America. Pay attention to how geography impacted settlement and economic development. How did the Ogallala Aquifer make the arid Great Plains agriculturally productive? Pay attention to the environmental damage human activities caused to the natural resources, including groundwater depletion, acid rain from burning fossil fuels, and topsoil erosion.
Watch this video. Pay attention to the roles the St. Lawrence, Hudson, and Mississippi rivers, the Great Lakes, and the Welland, Erie, and Illinois and Michigan canals played in accelerating settlement and trade into the U.S. interior.
Please note these corrections. At 7:08, Rueschhoff meant to say that the Mississippi River generally flows straight south from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. At 7:57, he meant to say that the Rio Grande River serves as the border between the United States and Mexico (not Canada). Note that Rio means "river" in Spanish, so we should call this waterway the Rio Grande.
The United States and Canada share a history of settlement and colonization. The United States declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776 and marked the end of the Revolutionary War when the leaders on both sides signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783. France and Spain, the initial colonizers of the United States, helped their former colony gain its independence from the British.
Canada achieved independence from Great Britain more gradually. In 1867, Britain named this area the Dominion of Canada, a confederation of the four provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.
Great Britain retained control over Canada's foreign affairs, and Canada did not become a fully sovereign country until 1982. The population chose to retain Great Britain's monarch as its symbolic head of state, but Canada has a permanent population, a defined territory, a centralized government, and forms its own relationships with other sovereign countries.
Great Britain imparted a lasting cultural legacy to the United States and Canada. Read this text to learn how Britain, France, and Spain altered the physical and human landscape of North America.
While France colonized areas that would become the United States, it has had a much greater impact on Canada. English and French are the official languages of Canada. Most Francophones or French-speaking Canadians live in the province of Quebec, which includes areas French fishermen and fur traders settled in the 1500s.
The thematic map in Figure 4.5 shows the French territory of North America in blue. The modern political boundaries are outlined in white. Quebec is a province with predominantly French place names, such as Montreal and Quebec.
The French influence evolved into a Québécois identity which was strong enough for Quebec to push for secession or independence from Canada in 1980 and 1995. See Quebec's location in Figure 4.6. The Quebec provincial government remains committed to preserving the Québécois cultural identity and established French as its sole official language in May 2021.
Read this article, where the author fears this law could hinder the indigenous population and non-French speakers from receiving key government services.
Both the United States and Canada actively encouraged their citizens to populate their western frontier. The Homestead Act of 1862 in the United States and the Dominions Land Act of 1872 in Canada provided settlers with land in exchange for cultivating and population these territories. The governments completed transcontinental railroad lines to increase western access. Gold booms of California (1849) and British Columbia (1858), and Canada's liberal immigration policy also fostered westward migration and territorial expansion (see Figures 4.6 and 4.7 for maps of British Columbia and California).
Large numbers of immigrants from western, southern, and eastern Europe joined these groups in search of good agricultural land and resources.
These westward migrations were devastating to the indigenous populations who lived in North America. In addition to the number of lives lost due to forced displacement, disease, and war, the European newcomers threatened their very culture.
The map in Figure 4.8 helps visualize this loss of culture by showing the myriad languages spoken in North America before the Europeans made contact during the 15th century. Today, the people who live in these regions struggle to retain this important cultural heritage.
The United States and Canadian governments have engaged in their own versions of Russification as they tried to indoctrinate groups of indigenous children into their European-based culture. The impact of the residential boarding schools they created continues as Canada and the United States take steps to acknowledge their roles in what some call a version of cultural genocide.
In 2008, Canada created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to document the history and lasting effects of the Canadian Indian residential school system on indigenous students and their families. In 2015, the Commission released a summary report of its findings and "94 Calls to Action" to "redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation".
In 2021, the U.S. Senate introduced the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. They referred the legislation to the Committee on Indian Affairs, but no further action has been taken.
Beyond these commissions, both countries have begun locating the burial sites associated with these schools, exhuming the bodies, and returning them to their respective tribes. Watch these two videos, which highlight the loss of cultural heritage in terms of food and language.
Sean Sherman, an Ogalala Lakota, is a chef from the Pine Ridge Reservation in southeastern South Dakota.
Watch this video. Lindsay Morcom, an Algonquin, is a linguist at Queens University Canada in Kingston, Ontario.
Although the pattern of industrialization in North America followed a similar path to what occurred in Europe, the process did not begin until the late 1700s. Economic activity was shaped by access to raw materials and waterways for transport. Like Europe, this shift had a profound effect on the human landscape, fostering rural-to-urban migration and the development of core industrial areas.
Despite its recent decline, manufacturing remains an important component of the U.S. economy that many people depend on for employment. Read this text for more on the impact of industrialization on the landscape of North America during the past 300 years.
Economists argue that North America is in a period of deindustrialization due to the decline of manufacturing (the secondary sector). Using the British-Australian economist Colin Grant Clark's economic model (see Figure 4.9), this begins when the number of people employed in the primary sector equals the number working in the tertiary sector.
Here is how Clark defines these economic sectors.
Manufacturing does not play the role it once did in North America. However, the cities where manufacturing occurred now attract the tertiary and quaternary sectors. For example, the corridors of the old manufacturing core (Boston-New York City-Philadelphia, Pittsburgh-Detroit-Chicago, and Montreal-Toronto) are now home to healthcare, real estate, and information technology companies.
The San Francisco-Los Angeles and Vancouver-Seattle-Portland corridors in western North America also attract these tertiary and quaternary sectors. While these economic activities are not tied to natural resources, many continue to center their activities in these historic manufacturing cores. Those that have chosen to disperse are often located near space-age development sites, such as Houston, Texas, and Cape Canaveral, Florida. Others have positioned themselves near research universities or along major transportation corridors.
The themes of colonization, immigration, rural-to-urban migration, industrialization, core-periphery, and deindustrialization have all contributed to the rise of high-density settlements. Although cities do not focus on manufacturing as they once did, they continue to have a lasting impact on the human and physical geography of North America. The pattern of urban growth often follows a radial pattern that coincides with transportation routes that radiate from the original center of what had previously been a walking city.
When the streetcar was invented in 1888, people now had the ability to navigate their cities beyond the limitations of what was within walking distance of their homes. They could travel to jobs, shops, and services they wanted to access. Their only limitation was how far they had to walk to get to the stop for the streetcar.
Streetcars meant cities were no longer confined to small, densely-populated areas. Populations began to expand beyond the city center, a trend that continued as transportation opportunities increased and edge cities developed.
People with automobiles who could afford to leave the old, urban areas began migrating further away from the city center. New suburban developments established their own job and shopping opportunities, which meant residents no longer needed to rely on the old city's central business district (CBD).
The original city centers of the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and St. Lawrence River areas, including Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., are now connected by a series of surrounding edge cities, suburbs, highways, and railways to form a densely-populated corridor known as the Northeast Megalopolis.
Read this text for more on how cities have evolved in North America.
Canada also has an eastern megalopolis. The Quebec City – Windsor corridor extends along the St. Lawrence River, the north shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, from Quebec City to Ottawa, and Toronto to Windsor. The thematic map in Figure 4.10 indicates this densely-populated, heavily-industrialized region of Canada spans 1,200 km. We find these urban corridors all over the world.
Urban sprawl has a number of environmental, social, and economic consequences. Our text cites the New Urbanism approach, which addresses some of these, but its implementation has not always been successful or gained widespread traction.
Suburban developments continue to appear in previously untouched open spaces and land once cultivated for agriculture. Suburban growth exacerbates environmental problems, such as pollution, the loss of permeable surfaces, and an increase in the heat island effect. Figures 4.11 and 4.12 illustrate the impact buildings and pavement have on water flow and air temperature.
Watch this video where Eric Sanderson, a landscape ecologist, recommends a natural history approach to making cities more livable and sustainable. Using GIS technology, historical maps, and other documents, Sanderson and his team recreated the natural environment of Manhattan Island before European colonization.
They explored what Mannahatta looked like when the Lenape people were its only residents and saw an opportunity for combining the past and present to influence the New York City of the future.
Urban and suburban living pose additional social and economic challenges. Inequalities are often clearly evident in these settings in addition to rural areas. The income gap between rich and poor has grown substantially, particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Figure 4.13 shows a thematic map that uses Gini coefficients, a tool Corrado Gini, an Italian statistician and sociologist, created to indicate global income inequality. While issues remain with regard to interpreting this data, Gini coefficients do provide a general overview of income equality.
A Gini coefficient of zero means everyone has the same income. A higher Gini coefficient indicates more unequal incomes. For example, the southern part of Africa has high coefficients, but they are low in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, where income inequality is low. In North America, income inequality is higher in the United States than it is in Canada.
Read this short text which explains the geographic variation of income inequality in Canada and the United States. Finlayson recognizes the roles race, ethnicity, and historical development play in the spatial pattern of poverty and income inequality.
For example, she observes the southern United States has a higher percentage of people in poverty than in other parts of the country. Similarly, in Canada, provinces with high percentages of indigenous people have high-income inequality. Spatial patterns of income inequality are also apparent at the local level.
Why does income inequality vary geographically? Why do clusters of census divisions with similar levels of poverty and wealth exist? Income determines where people can afford to live. Where people live determines where their children attend school, the goods and services they can access, where they go for entertainment and recreation, their job prospects, and many other factors that shape their lives.
Your address can limit or expand your options. Aging, housing options, stagnant wages, and higher costs can make the situation worse. Globalization has exacerbated income inequality as more people make less and fewer people make more.
Figure 4.14 is a thematic map of the percentage of people in poverty in Canada's largest city, Toronto. Note the dark orange-red patch in the southern part of the city. This area of high poverty was once a suburb of Toronto and home to its middle class. The areas with lower percentages of poverty are lighter in color and found to the north. The Forest Hill neighborhood is home to some of Toronto's wealthiest people.
It is important to remember the strong connections that exist within North America. It is not surprising that the United States and Canada engage in more trade with each other than any other country. Their border follows the 49th parallel, 49° N latitude, and is the longest international border in the world at 8,891 km. It dates to the Oregon Treaty of 1846 between the United States and Great Britain. It also includes 119 land border crossings, 30 railroad crossings, and 13 international ferry crossings.
Figure 4.15 helps visualize how many crossings exist by only showing those in the eastern states. They are many physical locations for trade between these two North American countries.
The USMCA (United States, Mexico, Canada Agreement) strengthens this North American connection by making trade easier among these countries.
Read this text on the effects of USMCA and North America's participation in global trade organizations. Note that the G8 became the G7 when its leaders removed Russia after it invaded the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine in 2014.
In 2022, the United States and Canada were the first and eighth largest economies in the world based on GDP. The thematic map in Figure 4.16 puts these North American countries in context. Read this article to learn what the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does and does not tell us about a country's economic health.
Read this article which explains that having a high GDP does not necessarily mean individuals are prosperous and healthy. Despite its high GDP, the United States has high levels of inequality. Not everyone can access the opportunities a high GDP indicates. Nevertheless, those who live elsewhere are often attracted to countries with a high GDP. As in Europe, many who seek a better life want to move to North America despite the negative, xenophobic backlash many immigrants have experienced in the United States.
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.