Cultural Landscapes

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to (per CED LOs PSO-3.B and PSO-3.C):

• Define the cultural landscape per the CED as a combination of physical features, agricultural and industrial practices, religious and linguistic characteristics, evidence of sequent occupancy, and other expressions of culture (per EK PSO-3.B.1).
• Identify the six CED-named components of the cultural landscape and give an example of each.
• Distinguish traditional from postmodern architecture as the CED's two named architectural categories (per EK PSO-3.B.1).
• Explain how attitudes toward ethnicity, gender (including women in the workforce), ethnic neighborhoods, and indigenous communities and lands shape the use of space (per EK PSO-3.C.1).
• Read a cultural landscape (a single photograph or street view) and identify three or more cultural traits visible in it.

Per CED EK PSO-3.B.1, "cultural landscapes are combinations of physical features, agricultural and industrial practices, religious and linguistic characteristics, evidence of sequent occupancy, and other expressions of culture including traditional and postmodern architecture and land-use patterns." This is one of the longest single Essential Knowledge statements in the entire CED. The list is the test — you should be able to recall every component.

The cultural landscape, defined by Carl Sauer

The concept comes from Carl Sauer, founder of the Berkeley school of cultural geography. In his 1925 essay "The Morphology of Landscape," Sauer argued that the natural landscape, when occupied by a culture, becomes the cultural landscape. The cultural landscape is the visible, mappable evidence of the culture-environment relationship. Photographs, satellite images, and field observations become primary sources for cultural analysis.

Sequent occupancy

The CED specifically names sequent occupancy — the layering of cultural traces from successive groups that have occupied the same place. The concept was developed by geographer Derwent Whittlesey in the 1920s. A modern American city may show indigenous place-names (Manhattan, Chicago, Seattle), Spanish or French street grids (the French Quarter in New Orleans), Anglo-American building stock from the 19th century, and recent immigrant signage all in the same neighborhood. Each layer is partly visible; nothing is fully erased.

Traditional vs postmodern architecture

The CED explicitly names "traditional and postmodern architecture and land-use patterns." Traditional architecture follows long-established local conventions for materials, form, and decoration — the New England saltbox house, the Japanese minka, the West African mud-brick compound. Postmodern architecture, dominant in elite design from roughly the 1970s onward, deliberately mixes styles, references multiple historical periods, and re-introduces ornament, color, and historical quotation that strict modernism rejected.

Per CED EK PSO-3.B.1, the cultural landscape combines exactly these layers. Mastery of this list is testable on the AP exam.

Plus the CED's catch-all clause: "and other expressions of culture including traditional and postmodern architecture and land-use patterns."

Per CED EK PSO-3.C.1, "attitudes toward ethnicity and gender, including the role of women in the workforce; ethnic neighborhoods; and indigenous communities and lands help shape the use of space in a given society." This EK names three specific lenses geographers apply when reading cultural landscapes.

Four cases that show CED EK PSO-3.B.1 layers and PSO-3.C.1 identity dynamics together.

Mexico City · Sequent Occupancy

Aztec → Spanish colonial → modern

Mexico City's cultural landscape is a textbook sequent-occupancy case. The Templo Mayor (Aztec) sits beside the Catedral Metropolitana (Spanish colonial, built using Aztec stones) on the Zócalo (modern civic plaza). Each cultural era left visible architecture. The street grid still follows the original Tenochtitlan causeways.

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Rome · All Six CED Layers Visible

~3,000 years of continuous occupation

Walking through central Rome you see the Tiber (physical), olive groves on the outskirts (agricultural), the post-WWII industrial zones (industrial), Vatican basilicas and parish churches (religious), Italian and Latin signage (linguistic), and Roman, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, fascist, and contemporary architecture stacked together (sequent occupancy). One city, all six layers.

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Australia · Indigenous Lands

~3% of land returned to indigenous title

Australia's landscape shows two coexisting land tenure systems: the Anglo-Australian property system (rectangular cadastre, freehold title) and traditional Aboriginal connection to country, increasingly recognized through native title legislation since 1992. Restored Aboriginal place-names (Uluru, Kata Tjuta) have replaced colonial-era ones (Ayers Rock, the Olgas) on official maps.

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Saudi Arabia · Gender and Public Space

Women's workforce participation rising rapidly

Saudi Arabia's cultural landscape encodes strong gender norms. Many public spaces (restaurants, mosques, banks) historically had separate male and female sections. Recent reforms (women driving, working in retail, mixed-gender entertainment venues) are visibly reshaping commercial districts. The CED's specific mention of "the role of women in the workforce" applies almost uniquely well here.

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1. The CED list of cultural landscape components is long: physical features, agricultural practices, industrial practices, religious markers, linguistic markers, sequent occupancy, traditional architecture, postmodern architecture, land-use patterns. Which of these is most readable from a single photograph? Which is hardest to see without historical context?
2. Sequent occupancy implies that no culture fully erases its predecessors. Pick a city you know. What traces of an earlier culture are still visible there? Are some layers more protected than others?
3. Per EK PSO-3.C.1, ethnic neighborhoods help shape the use of space. Pick one ethnic neighborhood (Koreatown LA, Chinatown SF, Little Havana Miami). What three cultural traits make it visibly different from adjacent neighborhoods?
4. The CED explicitly mentions "the role of women in the workforce" as a force that shapes the use of space. Identify one specific way that increased female workforce participation has changed urban or commercial landscapes in the past 50 years.
5. Indigenous communities and lands are named in EK PSO-3.C.1. Why is the spatial logic of indigenous land tenure often fundamentally different from the spatial logic of settler-colonial property systems? Use one specific example.

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP HG codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2020, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in CountryReports' own voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.

AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the College Board. The College Board was not involved in the production of this material and does not endorse it. Standards statements above are paraphrased; codes refer back to the official College Board CED, the NCSS C3 Framework, the Common Core State Standards, and other cited frameworks.