thumb|Earth's City Lights by DMSP, 1994-1995 (large)

thumb|The relationship between the three branches of geography

Human geography, also known as anthropogeography, is a branch of geography that studies how people interact with places. It focuses on the spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, people, lifestyles, and their environments. Examples include patterns like urban sprawl and urban redevelopment. It looks at how social interactions connect with the environment using both qualitative (descriptive) and quantitative (numerical) methods. This multidisciplinary field draws from sociology, anthropology, economics, and environmental science, helping build a more complete understanding of how human activity shapes the spaces we live in.

History

The Royal Geographical Society was founded in England in 1830. The first professor of geography in the United Kingdom was appointed in 1883, and the first major geographical intellect to emerge in the UK was Halford John Mackinder, appointed professor of geography at the London School of Economics in 1922. provide explanations rather than descriptions, put forward alternatives and solutions, and be politically engaged, rather than using the detachment associated with positivists. (The detachment and objectivity of the quantitative revolution was itself critiqued by radical geographers as being a tool of capital). Radical geography and the links to Marxism and related theories remain an important part of contemporary human geography (See: Antipode). Critical geography also saw the introduction of 'humanistic geography', associated with the work of Yi-Fu Tuan, which advocated a much more qualitative approach to methodology.

The changes under critical geography have led to contemporary approaches in the discipline, such as feminist geography, new cultural geography, settlement geography, and the engagement with postmodern and post-structural theories and philosophies.

Fields

The primary fields of study in human geography focus on the core fields of:

Cultures

Cultural geography is the study of cultural products and norms – their variation across spaces and places, as well as their relations. It focuses on describing and analyzing the ways language, religion, economy, government, and other cultural phenomena vary or remain constant from one place to another and on explaining how humans function spatially.

thumb|Terraced rice agriculture in Asia

  • Subfields include: Social geography, Animal geographies, Language geography, Sexuality and space, Children's geographies, and Religion and geography.

Development

Development geography is the study of the Earth's geography with reference to the standard of living and the quality of life of its human inhabitants, the study of the location, distribution, and spatial organization of economic activities across the Earth. The researcher's methodological approach strongly influences the subject matter investigated.

Economies

thumb|Economic Geography: [[Shan people|Shan street bazaar, market in Myanmar]]

Economic geography examines relationships between human economic systems, states, and other factors, and the biophysical environment.

  • Subfields include: Marketing geography and Transportation geography

Emotion

Food

Health

Medical or health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care. Health geography examines the spatial relationships and patterns between people and the environment. This is a subdiscipline of human geography, researching how and why diseases are spread and contained.

Histories

Historical geography is the study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and "real" geographies of the past. Historical geography studies a wide range of topics. A common theme is the study of past geographies and how places or regions change over time. Many historical geographers study geographical patterns through time, including how people have interacted with their environment and created the cultural landscape.

Politics

Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and how political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures.

Subfields include: Electoral geography, Geopolitics, Strategic geography and Military geography.

Population

Population geography is the study of ways in which spatial variations in the distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations are related to their environment or location.

Settlement

Settlement geography, including urban geography, is the study of urban and rural areas with specific regard to spatial, relational, and theoretical aspects of settlement. That is the study of areas which have a concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority of economic activity is in the secondary sector and tertiary sector.

Urbanism

Urban geography is the study of cities, towns, and other areas of relatively dense settlement. Two main interests are site (how a settlement is positioned relative to the physical environment) and situation (how a settlement is positioned relative to other settlements). Another area of interest is the internal organization of urban areas, including how different demographic groups are distributed and the layout of infrastructure. This subdiscipline also draws on ideas from other branches of Human Geography to see their involvement in the processes and patterns evident in an urban area.

Subfields include: Economic geography, Population geography, and Settlement geography. These are clearly not the only subfields that could be used to assist in the study of Urban geography, but they are some major players.