The Prospect for Geography in the 1990s

Geography now exhibits a better balance among competing emphases than it has enjoyed at any period since the second world war. The last several decades have witnessed a healthy resurgence of physical geography. Human geography has been enriched by a broad array of methodological tools and innovative perspectives. Both human and physical geographers are reclaiming geography s birthrights of regional expertise and research. The challenge the discipline faces in the 1990s in the need to increase geography s effectiveness by augmenting the number of geographers obtaining advanced degrees, strengthening undergraduate curricula in colleges and universities, and adopting larger-scale modes for investigating major geographic problems. Substantively, geographers would be wise to give priority to regional approaches, to ecological problems, and to building a corps of practitioners who will address practical problems. A better balance between anaysis and synthesis would broaden the discipline s appeal and constitutencies.