Economic geography : resource use, locational choices, and regional specialization in the global economy / Brian Joel Locbly Berry, Edgar C. Conkling, D. Michael Ray.

A number of major concerns have troubled the world throughout the contemporary period. As the end of the twentieth century approaches, we are still contending with the seemingly intractible problems of population growth in the Third World, a shrinking store of non-renewable resources, a deteriorating physical environment, and widening disparities between rich countries and poor and between prosperous people and impoverished masses within countries. Although these issues persist, they are assuming new forms in the wake of several recent world events. Wars and revolutions, the emergence of a powerful oil cartel, and the rise of dynamic new economic regions have made the world's peoples even more interdependent than before. This has complicated old problems and created new ones. Given the spatially related nature of these problems, the systems approach used in this book seems an appropriate method for dealing with them.