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Comparing electoral maps of Canada and the United States is a challenging exercise. The two countries have markedly different political systems: the United States is a presidential democratic republic and Canada is a nominally monarchical state governed through a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. Although both counties are organized as federal rather than unitary states, the individual […] The post Comparing Recent Patterns of Electoral Geography in the United States and Canada (Part 1: State/Province Level) appeared first on GeoCurrents.
The Conservative Party was widely expected to win Canada’s April 28 federal election. As recently as January 2025, the party was polling well ahead of the governing Liberals (see the graph posted below). But after U.S. President Donald Trump began calling Canada the “fifty-first state,” support for the Conservative Party plunged while support for the […] The post A Major Win for the Left in Canada’s 2025 Election – But Not in Alberta or Saskatchewan appeared first on GeoCurrents.
As I argued in the previous Geo-Currents post, the semi-standard world regional model is indispensable for understanding global geography. But as it is also highly flawed, it should be complemented with other models. I have therefore devised an alternative scheme, one designed to more accurately reflected deep cultural affinities. It is highly idiosyncratic and problematic […] The post A Semi-Serious Historically Based Alternative World Regionalization Model appeared first on GeoCurrents.
While the continental model is ostensibly based on physical features, the world regional model is keyed more to geopolitical factors. As a result, it does not generally divide countries among regions. The one exception is France, whose exclaves (overseas departments) are usually placed in Latin America (Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique) and sub-Saharan Africa (Réunion and […] The post Problematic Countries in the World Regional Model appeared first on GeoCurrents.
Despite my harsh criticisms of the continental model expressed in the preceding posts, I do think that it should be taught to young students. In my ideal scenario, first-graders would be shown, ideally by examining a globe, that there are six very large masses of land that are separated, or almost separated, from each other […] The post From Continents to the World Regional Model appeared first on GeoCurrents.
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The drive up to Michigan was something I did for myself, and I visited a number of historical and cultural sites along the way. But I took the trip to drive a kid home for the summer and now I had a passenger for the rest of the ride. So I front-loaded most of the […] The post Taming the Frontier, Part 2 appeared first on Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places.
The first ghetto was established in 1516 in Venice, Italy. Jewish residents were forced to live in a small industrial area by the government and locked in at night. Here is a picture of a ghetto map from I took while there a few weeks ago. According to the sign Jews were only allowed to work as doctors, money lenders or second hand clothing sellers. The ghetto was expanded to two squares, the Ghetto Vecchio (old, which is actually the newer one) and Nuovo (new). After the French took over Venice in 1797, Jews were finally allowed to freely move about the city but this area remained a center of Jewish culture. It still is despite most of Venice’s Jews having been murdered in the Holocaust. There are still a handful of restaurants and places of worship. The origins of the word ghetto are disputed. It could mean foundry, street, little town or “throw away” depending on which theory you choose. Here is a simplified (but also hard to read) map of the area by artist Gianluca Costantini.
