Answer: Along with physical factors, human factors – economic, social, cultural and political – strongly influence where people live.
1. Economic factors
- Agriculture: fertile, irrigated plains support dense populations, e.g. the Ganga plain, the Nile valley, eastern China.
- Industrialisation: industrial regions provide jobs and attract large numbers of people, e.g. the Great Lakes region (U.S.A.), the Ruhr (Germany), the Mumbai–Pune belt.
- Mining: mineral deposits attract people even to harsh areas, e.g. Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie (Australian desert), Kimberley (South Africa), Jharia (India).
- Urbanisation: cities offer employment, education, health care and amenities, so they are densely populated, e.g. Tokyo, Mumbai, New York.
- Transport and communication: areas along roads, railways, rivers and coasts with ports are more populated than inaccessible interior areas.
2. Social and cultural factors
- Religious and cultural centres attract people to settle, e.g. Varanasi, Pandharpur, Mecca, Jerusalem.
- Availability of education and health facilities attracts population.
- Social tensions, caste or ethnic conflicts can force people to leave an area.
3. Political factors
- Government policies such as setting up industrial estates, SEZs and new towns attract people (e.g. Navi Mumbai, Chandigarh).
- Wars, political instability and partition cause displacement of people and depopulation of areas (e.g. refugees from Syria, Partition of India in 1947).
- Restrictions on immigration (e.g. in Australia earlier) keep population low even where land is available.
4. Historical factors
- Areas settled for a long time, such as river valley civilisations (Indus, Nile, Huang He), still have dense populations.
Conclusion: with advances in technology, human factors have become more important than physical factors in deciding the distribution of population.
