Geography and Politics of the United States in the Year 2000

Abstract

The future as a productive subject of scholarly inquiry has only recently been recognized by geographers. The discipline's concern with man's spatial behavior and structure in a social, economic, and political vein suggests that teaching, research, and planning efforts can be funneled in these directions. Predicting future events and processes in the social sciences and in most areas of geography is difficult, probably more so in political geography than in many other fields. For this reason studies of a political nature represent a ready challenge and opportunity to examine present political worlds and suggest the likelihood of future political events, problems, and processes. This study, which focuses on the United States, identifies six developments and characteristics that are expected to be representative of the nation's political geography by the year 2000. Specifically, it is believed that by that date boundaries will have less meaning, the city will become the focus of political attention (as opposed to the state), new political cultures will emerge accompanied by new voting patterns, centralized authority at the national level will continue, and political considerations will play a key role in environmental planning and protection.