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