The above image is a panoramic shot of the beach in Washington Park in Michigan City, Indiana. The photo was taken August 17, 2002 and is a mosaic of several separate photos stitched together. To the left is a powerplant which dwarfs the historic lighthouse and catwalk to the right. The lighthouse is indicative of an older economic geography (though it still functions) while the power plant is indicative of the contemporary hunger for power. In between, the beach represents the tourism industry, which has long been vital to the economic geography of Michigan City. The power plant so dominates the scene, that is is surprising that it, rather than the lighthouse or the beach is not the center of attention. Yet, it is beaches and historic lighthouses that are of cultural value to tourists and therefore of economic value to tourist towns. Of course both residents and tourists would most likely be unhappy if they lacked electricity in their homes and motel rooms! Both power generation and tourism are economic activities with environmental costs. While technology has diminished much of the pollution from fossil fuel power plants they still release large amounts of carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. Beach goers may carelessly leave behind pop bottles in the sand, but even more worrisome for the tourism industry are beach closures due to high counts of bacteria in the water. While the many of the storefronts in downtown Michigan City are empty, the misnamed Lighthouse Place outlet mall located on the site of a former boxcar factory bustles with activity as does a "riverboat" casino.
A high resolution Quicktime VR version of the above image is available The file is very large (607 KB) and will take quite awhile to download on a modem connection.

The Michigan City Lighthouse and catwalk.

The graph and concentric circles are representative of a variety of different models in economic geography including Von Thunen's model of agricultural location and the concentric zone model of the city.