Advanced Placement Human Geography

Advanced Placement Human Geography is organized around seven basic instructional units, drawn directly from the College Board curricular guidelines:

1. Geography – its nature and perspectives
2. Population
3. Cultural patterns and processes
4. Political organization of space
5. Agricultural and rural land use
6. Industrialization and economic development
7. Cities and urban land use 

The first unit introduces the students to geography as a field and to its key concepts, methods, and skills, including “how to use and think about maps and spatial data, how to understand and interpret the implications of associations among phenomena in places, how to recognize and interpret at different scale the relationships among patterns and processes, how to define regions and evaluate the regionalization process, and how to character and analyze changing interconnections among places.” The second unit focuses on population, including density, distribution, growth, and movement. The third unit examines cultural concepts, patterns, processes, practices, and landscapes. The fourth unit focuses on territory and the political organization of space, including the emergence of nation-states and alternative political-territorial arrangements. The fifth unit explores agriculture and rural land use, emphasizing different agricultural regions and revolutions. The sixth unit focuses on the processes and patterns of industrialization and economic development. The seventh unit examines urban land use and the origin and evolution of cities over time.