Urbanization and City Patterns

Chapter 10 and 11
(Note: This covers 2 chapters.)
(I am testing both chapters.)
 Urban Center Definitions
Urbanization: (increase in) the number and percentage of
people living un urban settlements. (Urbanized Population)
Driving factors:
Jobs
Services
Convenience/Proximity (distance and access to services)
Primate City: a large city, dominating the country
Usually more than twice the next largest city
Often, dominant economic, political and cultural center
Jobs, services, convenience migration
These are often megacities, and may dominate regions.
 Where have urban areas grown?
3% urban in 1800,
now 50%+ and growing

Change in extent, density, heterogeneity

MDCs:
Ag. Mfg. Services,
Urbanization is effectively completed.
London, Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles
LDCs:
Migration from country in search of jobs,
Local population growth often outstrips job availability.
Delhi, Jakarta, Mexico City, Mumbai (Bombay).
 Historical growth: the rise of cities
Models:
Technical (ex: Thebes-Nile River, Mesopotamia)
Irrigation: make canals, surplus crops drive pop. growth
Religious (ex: Aztecs)
Religious activities bring people together.
Political (ex: London)
Trade (Silk Road cities)
War (every city with a fort, shield wall or barrier:
Paris,)
Multiple factors:
Technology, religion, politics, war, agriculture, and trade
 City Hearths:
Mesoamerica:
Aztec, Toltec Empires
Andes
Incan Empire
Nile Valley
Pharohic Dynasties
Tigris-Euphrates Rivers:
Mesopotamia
Huang Ho River Valley:
Han Chinese, many successive dynastic cycles
Indus Valley
 Cities and Religion
Many rulers used religion to maintain power.
Belief systems shaped cities and architecture.
Cosmomagical (Cosmological) Cities:
Sacred symbolic center, aka Axis Mundi
Near seat of power and granary
Forbidden City in present Beijing
Imperial Palaces in Kyoto, Nara
Mayan city temples
Orientation toward the 4 cardinal directions
City layout reflecting cosmologial form
Sometimes architectural forms, such as solar observatories
Align the world to mirror aspects of heaven or the universe
 City Formation
Spontaneous
Free time specialization
Inventions arts and crafts, trade, storage
Square for trade, wall for defense, temple for
prayer, fort for powerful
Learned traits from other city patterns
Good ideas are copied.
Chang-an Nara, Kyoto, Roman colonies, etc.
Figure 10.7, Map, p. 283
 Cities and globalization
Global cities: global economy control centers.
Ex: London, NY City, Tokyo
Globalizing cities: are modified by globalizing
economies and cultures
Ex: any city not politically isolated from the world.
Even Timbuktu has had some globalizing influences.
The degree of globalization depends on accessibility and desire.
 Urban Ecology: Location
Trade
Natural trade advantages (site and situation)
Defense
Natural barriers to attack (site and situation)
Food Supply
e.g. city states: city + controlled countryside
hinterland
Risks
e.g. floods, quakes, hurricanes
 Defense advantages
Site: characteristics of a place
Bluffs, rivers, islands, protected harbors, mesas,
etc.
Local barriers of a city.
Situation: relative location of locations
Far from enemy, intervening marshes,
mountains, seas, etc.
Barriers (outside the city site) between cities or states
Ex: marshes and distance from Germany and Moscow
 Trade: Site and situation
Trade sites:
Route branches, portages, end of navigable rivers, fords,
river mouths, bays, estuaries, etc.
Trade situations:
Closer to other cities
Berlin, Paris, London, Milan, etc.
Along trade routes
Singapore, Detroit, Venice (historical), Los Angeles
Access to nearby friendly ports
Mexico City, Beijing
Access to resources or production regions (agriculture/mfg.)
Hong Kong, New Orleans, Chicago
 Central Place Theory: Threshold and Range

Threshold: minimum population required to survive.

Range: maximum distance people travel for a service.

http://teacherweb.ftl.pinecrest.edu/snyderd/APHG/Unit%206/
urbannotes_files/image002.jpg
 Central Place Theory
All things being equal, go
to closest service.
Over time, patterns
become hexagonal as
competition increases.
Ex: Europe (night image)
In grid patterns, start
seeing grid central city
patterns, too.
Ex: Midwest
 Globalizing City Problems
Squatter settlements
Insufficient income illegal housing, with poor/no services
Informal sectors
All cities have them, all economies have them, all countries have them.
Apartheid (There is a city model for this in the text.)
Isolation of undesired ethnicities in all aspects of life
Central planned economy cities
Economic inefficiencies are costly, and quality is lower.
They may be as environmentally problematic as hyper-capitalist cities.
(Central planning can miss local problems.)
Hyper-capitalist cities (e.g. transition from communist)
Business growth can result in illegally appropriated land.
Illegal pollution is a larger problem.
Laws may be less strictly enforced, and can be circumvented.
Not limited to post-communist cities See Singapore.
 Chapter 11: Inside the City
Look at this as the other half of a single topic.
Differences between cities are also found as
differences within cities.
Patterns often repeat at different scales.
 Models of urban structure
1. Concentric Zone: Concentric rings: CBD, transition zone,
independent worker houses, better houses, commuter zone.
Like VonThunens concentric ring agricultural model
2. Sector: initial land use patterns expand in wedges from the
center. (think of this as being like wedges of different pizzas.)
3. Multiple Nuclei: Initial nuclei form around basic activities,
and land uses are attracted to those nuclei of development.
Nuclei: CBD, harbor, university, airport, park, railroad
yards, manufacturing, military bases, etc.
4. Peripheral Model: Ring cities and a ring road (next page)
 4. Peripheral Model
urban area with inner city
and suburbs connected by
a ring road
suburbs become edge
cities.
Examples:
Washington DC
Los Angeles CA
(Add the beltway!)
 SJ Map
Colonial mission
Circles
Sectors
Nuclei
(Google Earth)
 Inner cities: distinctive problems
Deterioration and Blight (housing & services):
Housing ages.
Rent < maintenance skip it.
Rent < bills, etc abandon / raze / sell
Urban renewal (& public, private, or both types of housing):
Demolition of old housing dislocates people,
High rises can provide poor environments if not careful.
Renovation ( & gentrification):
Pay for renewal,
gentrification dislocates lower classes, usually affecting
ethnicities.
 Land use influences

Filtering: (a housing use/reuse pattern): Large houses

subdivided, age, occupied by successive immigrant
waves.
Red-Lining: (illegal denial of credit): drawing lines on a
map to identify areas in which loans will not be given.
Public housing: units reserved for low income
households, who pay reduced rates (e.g. 30% of their
income) for rent.
 Underclass:

(inner city text reference, only there?)

peoples trapped in an unending cycle of
economic and social problems.
Why?
 Culture of poverty:
Single Parents:
2/3 of children by unwed mothers, 90% one parent, inadequate child
care, deadbeat dads
Poor Education:
Lack of motivation, less parental support, school drug use, etc. low
academic success
High Crime Rate:
drug use, gang violence over drug turf, more visible drug distribution than
in suburbs
Segregation:
(chain migration), separation in poor regions by recent immigrants, lower
classes, some ethnicities
Economics:
insufficient local taxation poorer services, (schools, parks, transit,
refuse, libraries, etc.)
 Partial Solutions:

Renovation (ex: urban renewal projects)

Problems
Benefits
Annexation
Problems
Benefits
(who wins, who loses?)
 Suburbs

The Great American Dream (days gone by)

(Alternatively, the Great Escape)
House
Yard
Garage
Shopping
Close Satellite workplace (Services and Industry)
 Edge cities
Peripheral residences, gas station, & other services develop
over time.
Established shopping centers and malls,
Then light manufacturing centers,
Often developed around nuclei of attraction.
These become edge cities.
Alternate explanation
(extension of central place theory)
original communities grow with increasing pop. density.
 Density gradient
Change in density with distance
Once high, with CBD and nearby regions
densely populated.
Decay and urban blight suburban flight,
smaller cities farther out
 Suburban Segregation
Segregation by income
Upper & middle class housing, separated, zone no apartments,
min. acreage (more sale profit)
Jobs are often suburban, but the poor workforce is often urban.
Need a transportation match for increased employment.
 Suburban Sprawl
Progressive spread of development over the landscape. (Why?)
Home ownership, lifestyle, Fed. auto subsidies, &
Costs:
Inefficient costly development, less farmland, less truck
farming, patchwork development, higher utility costs, &.
Effects:
Increased dependence on transportation.
If inadequate, means, then less travel.
Lower class isolation.
 Transportation

Loss of rail transit,

partial recovery,
90% interstate automobile subsidies,
of land transit and parking, congested
Public transport:
Cheaper, less polluting, more energy efficient (if there are
MANY commuters per bus). Separate rail services avoid
delays of rush hour.
Under-funded in the US compared to the EU.
Arguably cheaper than building more roads.
Less pollution (tie to resources in previous chapters.)
 Government Fragmentation:

Services in an urban area often cross multiple municipal

boundaries,
e.g. transit, water, e-, schools.
Costs are higher, when handled separately, and confusion
abounds.
Some cities cooperate, forming combined governments.
This leads to
 Inter-governmental Cooperation Approaches
Metropolitan Governments: coordination of service provision
Councils of Government:
cooperative agency with local government reps, often used for overall
planning.
Federations:
two tiered structure, higher level control over taxation, assessment,
and borrowing, local service responsibility
Consolidations:
City and county governments work together, sometimes formally
separate, sometimes unified.
This cooperation also facilitates better growth strategies
 Smart Growth:
(Planning concept)
Legislation and regulation with limiting suburban sprawl, and
preserving (open space, e.g.) farmland
reduce infrastructure costs,
Encourages
Compact development,
Infill
possibly greenbelts
limits annexation / development outside the city limits
(other means and outcomes)
 Questions?
(Pause, query, wait)
 (Time permitting) Tie back to:
Population
Migration
Cultures
Ethnicities
Manufacturing
Services
Language
Site and Situation
 Tie back: Migration
Urban to suburban for quality of life, usually
middle to upper middle class.
Near CBD: If poor transportation or high
costs, migrate closer to work, prices
permitting
Chain Migration ethnicity concentrations