AP Human Geography - Unit 6: Services & Urban Patterns Notes

Unit 6: Services & Urban Patterns

Services

  • Tertiary Sector: Broad service sector.
  • Quaternary: Data-driven services.
  • Quinary: Decision-making services.

Economic Base of US Cities

  • Basic Industries:
    • Sells goods/services primarily outside the community.
    • Brings new money into the local economy.
  • Non-basic Industries:
    • Sells goods/services primarily within the community.
    • Circulates existing money within the local economy.
  • Post-industrial Repositioning:
    • Cities attempt to redefine themselves after deindustrialization.
    • Technology Corridor: Government invests in technological infrastructure to attract businesses.
    • Technopole: Clustering of technology businesses, often spurred by universities or research institutions.

Urban Hierarchies

  • Christaller’s Central Place Theory:
    • Market Area/Hinterland: Nodal/functional region served by a central place.
    • Range: The maximum distance a consumer is willing to travel for a good or service.
    • Threshold: The minimum population required to support a particular business or service.
    • Nesting (Hexagons): Larger settlements offer services of smaller ones.
    • Consumers access services at the closest location offering the desired service.
    • Hierarchy of Services:
      • Hamlet
      • Village
      • Town
      • City

World/Global Cities

  • Clustering of Services:
    • The entire world is their hinterland.
    • Concentration of corporate headquarters
    • Disproportionate number of wealthy individuals.
    • Luxury services and entertainment options.
    • High global influence
    • High-income inequality.
  • Alpha ++ Cities:
    • NYC, London (formerly Tokyo)
  • Other Alpha Cities:
    • Chicago, LA, SF, Washington DC
    • Paris, Brussels
    • Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, HK

Rank-Size Rule vs. Primate City

  • Rank-Size Rule:
    • The nth largest city is 1/nth the size of the largest city.
    • nth city=1n∗largest citynth\ city = \frac{1}{n} * largest\ city
    • Indicates a more even distribution of wealth and services; common in MDCs (More Developed Countries).
  • Primate City:
    • One city is disproportionately large and influential within a country.
    • Wealth and services are clustered; common in LDCs (Less Developed Countries).

Urban Sizes

  • Megacity: > 10 million residents.
  • Metacity: > 20 million residents.
  • Megalopolis: Blending/overlap of urban areas (e.g., Boston to Washington DC).

Urban Cultural Forms

  • City Beautiful Movement (Burnham)
  • Beaux Arts, Modernism, Postmodernism

Central Business District (CBD)

  • Most accessible location.
  • Former retail hub; current hub for professional services.
  • Bid-Rent Theory:
    • Land value is highest in the CBD due to accessibility.
    • Businesses compete for this space.
  • Intensive Land Use:
    • Skyscrapers, subways, loading docks

Urban Models

  • Concentric Zone (Burgess, 1923):
    • Bid-Rent Theory: Land cost decreases with distance from the CBD.
    • Results in rings of similar activities, housing, and socioeconomic groups based on distance from CBD.
    • Density Gradient: Population density decreases with distance from CBD.
    • High land cost results in more intensive land usage close to CBD
    • Zones/Rings:
      • CBD
        • Increasing residential density (yuppies).
      • Zone of Transition
        • Historically close to railroad hubs, factories, warehouses, and tenements.
        • Point of entry neighborhoods.
        • Factories leave with highways, now gentrified for residences/services
      • Working Class
        • Multi-family housing
        • Lower density due to multi-to-single-family conversion, zones of abandonment.
      • Middle Class/Better Residences
        • Small single-family housing
        • Stable density reinforced through TODs.
      • Commuter Zone
        • Large suburban homes/yards
        • Increased density with in-filling and New Urbanism, multi-family housing for industrial workers.
        • Increasing “city” problems.
  • Sector Model (Hoyt, 1939):
    • Wedges develop from the CBD outward.
    • Wedges adjacent to “related” activities
      • Industry ↔ transport ↔ working-class residential ↔ “disamenities”.
      • High-income residential → “amenities”.
  • Multiple Nuclei (Harris/Ullman, 1945):
    • CBD decentralizing.
    • Other nodes of economic activity attract related activities.
      • Airport ← warehouses, convention center.
      • Industry ← working-class housing.
      • University ← bookstores, coffeeshops.
  • Peripheral/Galactic Model (Harris, 1960):
    • Post-automobile…ring highway added to Multiple Nuclei model.
    • Edge cities (jobs>bedrooms, population increase during day) develop along ring highway.
    • Rival CBD.
    • Often have a focus.
      • Nbrook/Deerfield = Insurance/Pharmaceuticals.
      • Oakbrook = McDonalds
      • Schaumburg = retail, offices
  • European Model:
    • Central city reserved for tourism.
    • Wealth higher in the city, poorer on outskirts.
      • Paris = Bobigny (Algerian Muslims)
      • Ghettoization.
  • Islamic Cities:
    • Islamic courtyards (purdah), Iconoclasm architecture/art, mosques, minarets.
  • Latin American (Griffin/Ford, 1980):
    • Commercial “spine”, extension of CBD
      • Sandwiched by high-income residential.
    • Informal or squatter settlements
      • On outskirts, along disamenities.
    • Most similar to Hoyt’s Sector Model.
  • SE Asian Model (McGee 1967):
    • Port is focus (SE Asia = semi-periphery)
    • CBD (separate clusters = Western, Govt)
    • “Alien” commercial sectors (Chinese/Indian).
  • Sub-Saharan Africa (de Blij 1977):
    • 3 CBDs (Old Colonial, Traditional (indigenous), Informal/periodic market.
    • Ethnic neighborhoods.
    • Mining (periphery resource extraction).
    • Squatter/informal settlements.

Inner-City Social Issues

  • How to fix deteriorating housing/urban decay/blight?
  • Causes of Urban Decay:
    • Waves of new immigrants, impoverished minority groups, disinvestment by absentee landlords.
      • Redlining (prejudicial lending).
      • Blockbusting.
      • White flight → eroding tax base (Detroit).
      • Black flight (Chicago loses 200k black residents from 2000 – 2010).
    • Zones of abandonment /“depopulation”.

Redevelopment Efforts:

  • Urban Renewal (mid-20th century):
    • Public housing projects (e.g., Cabrini Green).
      • Ghettoization (concentrates poverty in isolated communities).
      • Loses public support/funding cut.
      • Disrepair and mismanagement (broken elevators).
      • High crime, drugs, gangs.
      • Seen as failure, demolished beginning in 1990s.
  • Public/Private Redev. (late 20th century – current):
    • Govt gives incentives for private developers to create mixed-income communities.
      • Seen as “land grab” by middle/upper-classes of valuable locations.
      • Poor displaced, unable to secure placement in new communities, vouchers given to move elsewhere.
      • Developers pay to avoid offering affordable set-aside housing units.
      • Neo-liberalism.
  • Market-based urban redevelopment (1970s – current):
    • Gentrification (middle-class owners replace low-income renters in distressed inner-city neighborhoods).
      • Like proximity to amenities/CBD, walkability, low prices in distressed areas, vintage architecture.
      • Transit-oriented development (TOD) – brings density, affordability to gentrifying areas.
      • Results:
        • Crime ↘, rents, property values, services ↗.
        • Poor/elderly displaced.
        • Ethnic/racial change.
  • Brownfields: Lack of redevelopment in areas seen as environmentally contaminated by prior industrial use.
    • US Steel South Works (87th and Lakefront)

Public Transit

  • Makes urban living possible.
  • BUT fares don’t cover costs, requires public funding.
  • Service reduced, fares ↗, ridership decreases

Differentiation within the “urban area”

  • Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs)/metro area.
    • “The city”/central city/municipality
      • Traditional growth through “annexation”.
    • Suburbs
      • “Inner” – inside ring highway
      • “Outer”, the even farther = “exurbs”
  • Multiple layers of local govt. (City, Township, County, special districts like water, sanitation, school districts).
    • Redundant, costly

Suburban Challenges/Solutions:

  • Traditional single-use zoning separates residential, commercial, and industrial functions.
    • Creates dependence on autos.
    • High per capita pollution.
    • Lack of walkability.
    • Placelessness.
    • Urban sprawl.
  • Smart Growth/Slow Growth
    • New Urbanism (mixed-use zoning to create higher density, walkable communities).
      • Reduce pollution, sustainability.
      • Usually located by commuter train hubs
    • Greenbelts (UK)
      • Restricts development at edge of urban area
      • Encourages un-filling, vertical development

Development of Cities Timeline:

  • Agricultural Villages (circa 8,000 BC)
    • Hunting-gathering to settled farming
  • Cities/First Urban Revolution (3500 BCE)
    • Fertile Crescent/Mesopotamia/Sumer
    • Social stratification
  • The Middle Ages (500-1300 AD)
    • Silk Road (Samarkand), Africa Gold/Salt trade (Timbuktu)
  • Era of European exploration (1400-1700 AD)
    • Coastal cities (rise of London)
  • Second Urban Revolution (mid-1700s)
    • 2nd Agricultural Revolution, Industrial Revolution
  • Industrial Cities Improve (late 1800s – current)
    • City reforms, sanitation, City Beautiful Movement
  • Borchert’s Model of Urban Evolution: links American urbanization to the dominant transport. mode of era
    • Sail-Wagon Epoch (1790-1830)
    • Iron Horse Epoch (1830-70)
    • Steel Rail Epoch (1870-1920)
    • Auto-Air-Amenity Epoch (1920-70)
    • Satellite-Electronic-Jet Epoch (1970-?)
    • City’s importance depends on SITUATION