Chapter 11 Urban Systems and Urban Structures

11.1 An Urbanizing World

  • Merging Urban Regions
    • When separate major urban complexes expand along the superior transportation facilities connecting them
    • They create extensive urban regions or conurbations
      • Conurbations
      • Extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities

11.2 Settlement Roots

  • Major cities of today had humble origins in the simple cluster of dwellings that was the starting point for human settlements everywhere
  • Rural settlements in developing countries are often expressions of subsistence economic systems
  • When settlements are not self-contained
    • Become part of a system of towns and cities engaged in urban activities and exchange

11.3 Origins and Evolution of Cities

  • Cities and civilization are inseparable
  • 8,000 years ago, cities originated in the early culture hearths that first developed sedentary agriculture.
  • Centers of cultural, economic, religious, and political life are among humanity’s greatest achievements
  • Earliest cities depended on the creation of agricultural surpluses
  • The Nature of Cities
    • Whether ancient or modern, all cities must have an economic base
    • All urban settlements exist for the efficient performance of functions required by the society that creates them
    • The totality of people and urban functions constitute distinctive cultural landscapes
  • The Location of Urban Settlements
    • Urban centers are functionally connected to other cities and to rural areas
    • Cities exist not only to provide services for themselves, but for others outside of it
    • In order to add new functions as demanded by the larger economy, the city must be efficiently located
  • Transportation Epochs
    • Break-of-bulk and head-of-navigation sites demonstrate the importance of transportation to the location of urban settlements
    • When a new transportation system emerges, it changes the optimal locations for urban growth
    • Chicago emerged as hubs of regional railroads that collected and distributed resources from the vast interior of the continent
  • The Economic Base
    • Cities depend on close relationships with their hinterlands
    • They provided the market where rural produce could be exchanged for the goods produced
    • they constitute the basic sector of the city’s total economic structure
    • the basic sector makes up the economic base of the community and is essential for
    • health of the local economy
  • Increase in total population is equal to the added workers plus their dependents

11.4 The Functions of Cities

  • Modern city functions
    • Manufacturing
    • Retailing
    • Wholesaling
    • Transportation
    • Public administration
    • Housing cultural and educational institutions
    • The housing of their own citizens
  • Cities as Central Places
    • Central places are nodes for the distribution of economic goods and services to surrounding non urban populations
    • Small cities provide a range of goods and services that suffice for most everyday needs
    • Central place theory
    • A pattern of interdependent small, medium, and larger towns that could together provide the goods and services needed by dispersed rural populations
      • People would have to travel only short distances for low order items

11.5 Systems of Cities

  • The Urban Hierarchy
    • The most effective way to recognize how systems of cities are organized is to consider the urban hierarchy
    • Urban hierarchy
      • A ranking of cities based on their size and functional complexity
    • The hierarchy is like a pyramid
    • A few large and complex cities are at the top and many smaller, simpler ones are at the bottom
    • Separate centers interact with the areas around them, but because cities of the same level provide roughly the same services
  • World Cities
    • Top of national systems of cities are a relatively few places that may be called world cities
    • Large urban centers are command and control points for the global economy
    • London and New York were the world’s two largest cities in 1950
  • Rank-Size and Primacy
    • Considering city systems on a global scale, urban geographers also inquire about the organization of city systems within regions or countries
    • The city size hierarchy is summarized by the rank-size rule
    • The nth largest city of a national system of cities will be 1/n the size of the largest city
  • Network Cities
    • History of urban growth includes episodes of intense competition between cities,
    • A new kind of urban spatial pattern, the network city, has begun to appear as nearby cities work together
    • Network city
    • Evolves when two or more previously independent cities with potentially complementary functions develop high-speed transportation corridors and communications infrastructure to facilitate cooperation

11.6 Inside the City

  • Defining the City Today
    • Urban settlements come in different sizes, shapes, and types
    • Their common characteristic is that they are nucleated, nonagricultural settlements
    • End of the size scale, urban areas are hamlets or small towns with at most a single short main street of shops
    • Beginning of the size scale are complex multifunctional metropolitan areas or megacities
    • Towns
    • Smaller in size and have less functional complexity than cities, but they still have a nuclear business concentration
    • Suburbs
    • A subsidiary area, a functionally specialized segment of a larger urban complex
    • Central city
    • The principal core of a larger urban area, separately incorporated and ringed by its dependent suburbs
    • Urbanized area
    • A continuously built-up landscape defined by building and population densities, with no reference to political boundaries
    • Metropolitan area
    • A large-scale functional entity, perhaps containing several urbanized areas, discontinuously built up but nonetheless operating as an integrated economic whole
  • Classic Patterns of Urban Land Use
    • The Central Business District
    • The radiating mass transit lines focused on downtown gave it the highest accessibility within the growing urban complex
    • Building lots within the emerging central business district (CBD) could command the highest rental and purchase prices
    • The intersection where the major mass transit lines converged was called the peak land value intersection
    • Outside the CBD
    • Industry controlled land next to essential cargo routes
    • Lower-order commercial centers developed at the outlying intersections of the mass transit network
    • Light industries, and high-density apartment structures could afford and benefit from location along high-volume transit routes
    • Least accessible locations within the city were left for the least-competitive bidders
    • Automobile-Based Patterns
    • In the 1940s, automotive transportation became dominant in the movement of people
    • Goods and streetcar systems lost riders and were often converted to bus systems
    • Highway systems were extended outward after World War II
    • As wealthy and middle class families moved away from the city center, the zones shifted outward
    • Regional Differences
    • Only the oldest parts of eastern cities such as Old Quebec and Boston’s Beacon Hill still display remnants of the walking city
    • The density and design of the newer cities have been influenced primarily or exclusively by the automobile and motor truck, not by mass transit and railroads
    • Models of Urban Form
    • Mental maps
      • Help us summarize and make sense of the diverse places we’ve experienced in large cities
    • Concentric zone model
      • Developed by University of Chicago sociologists
      • Explain the structuring of U.S. cities, specifically ethnically diverse, mass transit–based cities like Chicago in the 1920s
      • Each type of land use and each residential group tends to move outward into the next outer zone as the city matures and expands
    • The common starting point of the early models is the distinctive CBD found in every older central city
    • Peripheral model (galaxy model)
      • The major changes in urban form that have taken place since World War II, especially the suburbanization of what were once central city functions

11.7 Social Areas of Cities

  • Early models of U.S. cities are evident in the observed social segregation within urban areas
  • Social Status
    • Social status of an individual or a family is determined by income, education, occupation, and home value
    • May differ due to cultures
    • Social status divisions are often perpetuated by political boundaries between separate municipalities or school districts nowadays
  • Family Status
    • Singles, young professionals without children, and older people whose children have left home live close to the city center
    • Arrangement that emerges is a set of concentric circles divided according to family status
  • Ethnicity
    • Ethnicity is a more important factor in residential location than social or family status
    • Some ethnic groups, cultural segregation is both sought and vigorously defended
    • Certain ethnic or racial groups, especially African Americans, have had segregation forced on them
    • This occurs through housing discrimination or real estate agents who “steer” people of certain racial and ethnic groups into neighborhoods that the agents think are appropriate
  • Institutional Controls
    • They have strongly influenced the land-use arrangements and growth patterns of most U.S. cities
    • Have been designed to assure an orderly pattern of urban development
    • Are based on broad applications of the police powers of municipalities to ensure public health, safety, and well-being
    • Nonmarket controls on land use are designed to minimize incompatibilities

11.8 Changes in Urban Form

  • Suburbanization and Edge Cities
    • Two most prominent patterns of change were metropolitan growth and, within metropolitan areas, suburbanization
    • When developers were converting open land to urban uses at the rate of 80 hectares (200 acres) an hour Suburban expansion reached its maximum
    • Edge cities now exist in all regions of the urbanized United States
  • Central City Decline
    • The dominance of the CBD was based on its being the focus of urban mass-transit
    • Redistribution of population caused by suburbanization resulted in both spatial and political segregation of social groups
    • These newer “automobile” metropolises placed few restrictions on physical expansion
  • Central City Renewal and Gentrification
    • Central cities hit their low point in the 1970s when New York City went bankrupt
    • Pundits proclaimed the end of cities as the latest digital communications technologies would eliminate the need for face-to-face interaction
    • Some of the new office workers chose to live in central city neighborhoods that offer residential revival called gentrification
    • By purchasing and renovating houses in struggling neighborhoods, immigrants have helped revitalize many inner-city neighborhoods

11.9 World Urban Diversity

  • The West European City
    • Western European cities are unique historically and culturally share certain common features
    • Residential streets of the older sections tend to be narrow, and front, side, or rear yards or gardens are rare
    • European cities also enjoy a long historical tradition
  • Eastern European Cities
    • Russia and the former European republics of the Soviet Union, once part of the communist world, make up a separate urban class
    • Post-communist cities share many of the traditions and practices of West European cities
    • The planned city of the communist era is compact, with relatively high building and population densities
  • Rapidly Growing Cities of the Developing World
    • Fastest-growing cities and the fastest-growing urban populations are found in the developing world
    • Influences of the Past
    • Cities in developing countries' legacies and purposes influence their urban forms
    • The product of colonialism, established as ports or outposts of administration and exploitation
    • Urban structure is a product not just of the time when a city was founded, or who the founders were, but also of the role it plays in its own cultural setting
  • Urban Primacy and Rapid Growth
    • The population of many developing countries is disproportionately concentrated in their national and regional capitals
    • Squatter Settlements
    • Most developing-world cities are ringed by vast, high-density squatter settlements
    • A substantial proportion of the population of most developing world cities is crowded into squatter settlements built by their inhabitants
    • Latin American City Model
    • At the center is the:
      • Traditional market area
      • Key government and religious buildings
      • Modern CBD
    • Outward from the center is a commercial spine that features high-status establishments and terminates at a suburban mall
    • Squatter settlements are found at the urban periphery and in disamenity zones
      • Near dumps
      • In flood-prone areas
      • steep slopes
    • Planned Cities
    • Some national capitals have been removed from their earlier primate city sites and relocated outside the core regions of their countries
    • Other relocations have been planned or announced for example:
      • South Korea’s primary government administrative agencies 150 kilometers (93 miles) to the southeast of Seoul
    • A number of developing countries have also created or are currently building some new cities
      • This is because they want to draw population away from overgrown metropolises

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