What are physical characteristics of a site?

Understanding the site is the first step towards designing or substantially renovating a house that will minimise its impact on the environment, minimise the use of resources and be comfortable and healthier to live in.

You will need to distinguish between macro (regional or large-scale) effects and micro (site-specific) effects.

You will need to understand site characteristics that are specific to the site (such as topography and landscape features) and broader local or regional effects such as regional climate.

In addition to physical aspects such as sun, wind or ground stability, look closely at the land title and check whether it has any notices or restrictions on it that will affect construction on the site. These may include:

• covenants or encumbrances, which can limit what you can do on a site. Covenants may place restrictions around things like the building materials or colour schemes used on a building. They can also apply to the land around a building, by limiting the height of trees or prohibiting clotheslines that are visible from the street, for example. Covenants often apply to new suburbs or developments.
• easements, which typically cover a local authority or a neighbour running an underground gas, water, stormwater or sewerage pipe through a property. This limits the use of the land where the pipe runs through.
• a Section 72 notice describing a natural hazard (such as flooding) that the site is at risk of. Where a title has this notice, the building consent authority is exempted from liability for damage arising from the natural hazard; the Earthquake Commission (Toka Tū Ake EQC) can decline to provide cover, depending on the nature of the hazard; insurance companies may decline to offer cover or may exclude cover for the relevant hazard.

In addition, it will be necessary to understand relevant Resource Management Act and District Plan requirements.

Broadly defined, place is a location. The word is used to describe a specific location, such as the place on a shelf, a physical environment, a building or locality of special significance, or a particular region or location. The term can be used for locations at almost any geographic scale, depending on context.

Although location and place are sometimes used interchangeably, geographers assign the terms specific and different meanings. New education standards are now in effect, but in 1984, the National Council of Geographic Education (NCGE) and the Association of American Geographers (AAG) broke the discipline of geography into five major themes, which some continue to use to help teach geography: location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and region. Location either refers to the actual latitude and longitude coordinates (absolute location) of something on Earth’s surface, or it describes something’s position in reference to something else (relative location). Place, on the other hand, refers to the physical and human characteristics of a spot on the map. In other words, location focuses on where; place focuses on what it is like there.

Place also includes descriptions of a site’s features and environmental conditions. The physical and human characteristics of a place make it unique. Physical characteristics include the natural environment, such as landforms, elevation, water features, climate, soil, natural vegetation, and animal life. Human characteristics include the size and density of the population, the ethnic and religious makeup of the population, language patterns, and other aspects of the culture. Human characteristics also include the built environment, such as houses, roads, and other infrastructure.

The study of a place often focuses on creating a better understanding of how the physical and human aspects of a location interrelate and interact. Geographers can also use place to compare and contrast different locations. Geographers can compare the physical and human characteristics of the Sahara and Antarctica, for instance, to better grasp the characteristics of each place, how the natural and human worlds interact, and how places vary across the world. In the case of the Sahara and Antarctica, they are both intense deserts, but one (the Sahara) is hot while the other (Antarctica) is cold. Although both are harsh, sparsely populated environments, nomadic groups have called the Sahara home for thousands of years, but it is only in recent times that people, mainly researchers, have started exploring and living in Antarctica.

The geographically informed person must understand the genesis, evolu­tion, and meaning of places. Places are locations having distinctive features that give them meaning and character that differs from other locations. Therefore, places are human creations, and people’s lives are grounded in particular places. We come from a place, we live in a place, and we preserve and exhibit fierce pride over places. Places usually have names and boundaries and include continents, islands, countries, regions, state, cities, neighborhoods, villages, and uninhabited areas.

Therefore, Standard 4 contains these themes: The Concept of Place and The Characteristics of Places.

Places are jointly characterized by their physical and human properties. Their physical characteristics include landforms, climate, soils, and hydrology. Things such as language, religion, political systems, eco­nomic systems, and population distribution are examples of human characteristics. Places change over time as both physical and human processes change and thus modify the characteristics of a place. Places change in size and complexity as a result of new knowledge, ideas, human migrations, climatic changes, or political conflicts. Places disappear and are renamed (e.g., Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the Spanish rebuilt Tenochtitlan and renamed it Mexico City, and St. Petersburg changed to Leningrad and then reverted back to St. Petersburg).

Knowing the physical and human characteristics of their own places influences how people think about who they are. Personal, community, and national identities are inextricably bound with a person’s and a population’s experiences in those places. Knowing about other places influences how people understand other peoples, cultures, and regions of the world. Such knowledge not only broadens a person’s world perspective and allows a better understanding of places with which they have a strong personal identity.

Students must understand how physical and human characteristics give meaning to places. They must also understand that these characteristics vary from place to place and change over time. Understanding these themes enables students to comprehend and appreciate the similarities and differences in places in their own communities, states, and countries, as well as across Earth’s surface.

• 4th Grade
• 8th Grade
• 12th Grade

• The student knows and understands:

  • The Concept of Place

    1. Places are locations having distinctive characteristics that give them meaning and distinguish them from other locations

    Therefore, the student is able to:

    A. Describe the distinguishing characteristics and meanings of several different places, as exemplified by being able to

    • Identify and describe categories of characteristics that define a loca­tion as a place (e.g., weather characteristics, population density, ar­chitectural styles, landforms, vegetation, cultures, types of industry).
    • Identify and describe the defining characteristics of the student’s community as a place.
    • Describe how certain places may have meanings that distinguish them from other places (e.g., cemetery, historical park or battlefield, religious shrines or temples, state or national parks).

  • The Characteristics of Places

    2. Places have physical and human characteristics 

    Therefore, the student is able to:

    A. Describe and compare the physical characteristics of places at a variety of scales, local to global, as exemplified by being able to

    • Describe and compare the climatic conditions at different places in the United States (e.g., deserts, mountains, rainy regions of the Pacific Northwest).
    • Describe and compare the vegetation in different places in the world (e.g., deserts, mountains, rain forests, plains).
    • Describe and compare the physical environments and landforms of different places in the world (e.g., mountains, islands, valleys or canyons, mesas).

    B. Describe and compare the human characteristics of places at a variety of scales, local to global, as exemplified by being able to

    • Describe and compare the types of clothing, housing, and trans­portation used in different countries located at different latitudes in the world.
    • Describe and compare the human characteristics of rural versus urban locations in the United States (e.g., single family homes ver­sus apartment buildings, different languages and cultures in urban areas).
    • Describe and compare the types of grocery and food items from different countries in the local supermarket.

• The student knows and understands:

  • The Concept of Place

    1. Personal, community, and national identities are rooted in and attached to places

    Therefore, the student is able to:

    A. Explain how personal, community, or national identities are based on places, as exemplified by being able to

    • Describe and explain the factors that contribute to the identity of being from a specific place (e.g., a “New Yorker,” a “Southerner,” a “Texan,” a postal code such as 90210).
    • Explain how a place-based identity results from the characteris­tics of a place (e.g., environmentally conscious Inuit of Northwest Canada, seafaring traditions of Gloucester Harbor, Massachusetts, nomadic herders in the eastern steppes of Mongolia).
    • Explain how place-based identities can sometimes result in stereo­types of people from a specific place (e.g., fitness-conscious people from Colorado, cowboys from Wyoming or Texas, miners from Appalachia, coffee-drinking people from Seattle).

  • The Characteristics of Place

    2. Physical and human characteristics of places change

    Therefore, the student is able to:

    A. Explain the ways that physical processes change places, as exemplified by being able to

    • Describe and explain how places near a river may change over time (e.g., flood plains, alluvial soils, new channels).
    • Explain the ways in which islands and coastal places may change as a result of sea level rise.
    • Explain how changes in climate may result in changes to places (e.g., drought and stressed vegetation, more precipitation and increased vegetation, warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons at higher latitudes).

    B. Explain the ways that human processes change places, as exemplified by being able to

    • Describe and explain how the introduction of a new industry or the closing of an existing industry could change the characteristics of a place.
    • Explain how the construction of a new bridge between two cities or creating a new traffic pattern could result in changes in those places.
    • Explain the ways in which a battle can change a place (e.g., the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, the invasion of Normandy during World War II, the Battle of Salamis in ancient Greece, the American War for Independence).

• The student knows and understands:

  • The Concept of Place

    1. The effects of place-based identities on personal, community, national, and world events

    Therefore, the student is able to:

    A. Explain how and why place-based identities can shape events at various scales, as exemplified by being able to

    • Explain how place-based identities contribute to patterns of fan support for sporting events (e.g., the World Cup, Olympic competi­tions, the US National Football League).
    • Explain how neighborhood place-based identities can shape politics in urban areas (e.g., ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, university communities).
    • Explain how regional identities can be the basis for nationalistic movements within a country (e.g., Catalonians or the Basques in Spain, Native Hawaiians in Hawaii, the end of Indonesian occupa­tion in East Timor).

  • The Characteristics of Places

    2. The interaction of physical and human systems result in the creation of and changes to places

    Therefore, the student is able to:

    A. Explain how physical or human characteristics interact to create a place by giving it meaning and significance, as exemplified by being able to

    • Describe and explain how community identities are formed by the characteristics of a place (e.g., New Orleans as a port city and as an enclave for French cultural heritage; New York as the centers for US finance, fashion, and art; Hong Kong as a port and financial center in China).
    • Describe and explain the reasons why the Himalayas are home to many Buddhist monasteries (e.g., Tashichhodzong or Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan).
    • Explain how human mythology can create special meaning and significance to a place (e.g., Uluru [Ayers Rock] in Australia as part of the Aboriginal creation story, Delphi as the navel of the Earth in Ancient Greece, the construction of Stonehenge in England).

    B. Explain how physical or human characteristics interact to change the meaning and significance of places, as exemplified by being able to

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