Why defining the world's regions is more art than exact science

Countries & Cities · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Regional geography seeks to understand the unique blend of natural and human elements that define specific places. Once the dominant paradigm in the field, this approach has faced intense scrutiny for its lack of unifying theory. Today, it remains a vital, if debated, lens for viewing our complex, interconnected world.

Regional geography operates on two primary pillars rooted in German tradition: the idiographic study of specific spatial individuals, such as countries or continents, and the typological study of spatial types, like mountain or coastal landscapes. Unlike systematic geography, which isolates a single geofactor on a global scale, regional geography examines the interaction of various cultural and natural factors within a defined area. This approach was central to the geographical sciences from the late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century, championed by figures like Alfred Hettner in Germany, Paul Vidal de la Blache in France, and Richard Hartshorne in the United States.

The paradigm faced a significant turning point during the 1950s, when the quantitative revolution brought sharp criticism from scholars like G. H. T. Kimble and Fred K. Schaefer. Detractors argued that the field was overly descriptive and lacked the rigorous theoretical foundation required for modern science. By the 1990s, mainstream scholarship had largely moved away from using regional geography as a basis for geomorphological studies, a shift noted by researchers like Karna Lidmar-Bergström. Despite these challenges, the field has persisted, with some geographers attempting to reintroduce regionalism since the 1980s through more complex definitions of scale and interaction.

The lack of a unifying theory remains a point of contention, particularly when defining global boundaries. For instance, the distinction between cultural regions and continents—such as the differences between North and South America or the shifting definitions of Europe and Asia—often depends on the criteria used by the observer. This ambiguity highlights the inherent difficulty in delineating space. While the city-region approach has gained traction since the mid-1980s to better capture urban-rural dynamics, the fundamental question of how we categorize the Earth's surface continues to be a subject of intellectual debate rather than settled fact.

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