AP®GeographyCollege BoardHuman GeographyExam QuestionsThinking GeographicallySpatial Concepts

Spatial Concepts (College Board AP® Human Geography): Exam Questions

13 mins13 questions
11 mark

Which of the following statements best describes the concept of place?

  • New Orleans is a vibrant mix of culture and the home of jazz, cajun food, and joy.

  • New York, situated on the East Coast of the United States, has a humid continental climate.

  • Paris is located near a river, making the city accessible.

  • People settled in New York due to the natural harbor location.

  • Canada sits North of the United States

Choose your answer

21 mark

Which of the following is not an example of a flow?

  • Migration

  • Trade

  • Culture

  • Resources

  • Diffusion

Choose your answer

31 mark

Linear, centralized, random, and grid, refer to which spatial concept? 

  • Network

  • Flow

  • Space

  • Pattern

  • Place

Choose your answer

41 mark

The idea that connections between two places decrease as they get further from each other is known as what?

  • Distance decay

  • Absolute location

  • Spatial concepts

  • Space vs Place

  • Time-space compression

Choose your answer

51 mark
Five globes decrease in size, representing transport evolution: horse-drawn coaches, steam trains, propeller aircraft, jet aircraft, and cyberspace information.

The image above refers to which description of a spatial concept from the following?

  • The way that geographical ideas and concepts are connected and how they are spread across different aspects of space.

  • Connections between places decrease as they get further away from each other.

  • The idea that distance decreases between places, as they become more interconnected through transport, communication and ideas.

  • The connections between space, environment and history, and people’s relationships to those places.

  • The way that travel time reduces between different places.

Choose your answer

61 mark

The concept of time-space compression was developed by who?

  • David Harvey

  • Karl Marx

  • Gillian Rose

  • Johann Heinrich von Thunan

  • Halford Mackinder

Choose your answer

71 mark

Which example best illustrates relative location? 

  • The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA

  • 40.6892° N, 74.0445° W

  • The West Coast of the United States

  • Fifth Avenue, New York.

  • The 5th floor

Choose your answer

81 mark

Which of the following best describes friction of distance?

  • The names of places.

  • The exact location of something, using longitude and latitude coordinates.

  • As transport, communications and transfer of ideas increase, the world feels like it’s getting smaller.

  • The concept of journey time and the increased physical, temporal and economic costs related to it.

  • As things move further away from each other, they become less connected

Choose your answer

91 mark

Which of the following is not an example of a spatial association?

  • The Equator and Tropical Rainforests

  • Malaria distribution and mosquito distribution

  • Diet type and regional environment

  • High crime in a lower-income area

  • Migration from pull factors

Choose your answer

101 mark

Edward Relph is known for coining which spatial concept?

  • Sense of Place

  • Time-Space Compression

  • Time Space Convergence

  • Distance decay

  • Diffusion

Choose your answer

111 mark

‘Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things’. 

  • Waldo Tobler, The First Law of Geography

Which spatial concept does the quote above relate to? 

  • Distance decay

  • Time space compression

  • Relative location

  • Pattern

  • Diffusion

Choose your answer

121 mark

 You receive some information regarding the location where you are meeting a friend. They provide you with the relative location. Which of the following is the information you’d likely receive?

  • The coordinates 

  • The floor and room number

  • The building across the street from the church.

  • The address

  • Descriptive longitude and latitude

Choose your answer

131 mark

Which of the following is a good example of a grid pattern?

  • Houses along a railroad track

  • City blocks

  • Scattered farmhouses

  • A 17th-century European village

  • Houses along a river

Choose your answer