Chapter 6: Urbanization

• Cities are a reasonably new development in history

• The site of many early cities had access to a navigable waterway

  • To transport goods and people

• Good soil is also important

Situation

• Relative location of a city (surrounded by other cities, trade networks and transportation systems)

Older cities were much more spacious and looked more cohesive, and they had a lot more detailed architecture

The buildings looked all connected, rather than a bunch of separate ones

Urbanization

• Changes in transportation, communication, population growth, migration, economic development, and government policies lead to moving to cities (urbanization)

• People either move to cities from rural places or other urban places

• Push and pull factors like job opportunities or conflict

US cities would produce less emissions if we focused on public transport, we would spend less money on cars, traffic would decrease, but roads would also be less necessary (possibly leading to more space being taken by buildings– I guess cities would just grow in general)

World Cities

• Control globalization

•  Connected by economic factors, communication, media, and politics

• NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong (etc)

Culture diffuses more virally through the internet when it is accessible, rather than from people in power

London is rated higher than Washington D.C because business activity, and human capital (higher intellectual value) were higher percentages than political engagement and/or cultural experience (even though London has cultural experience too)

CBD and MSA

• CBD is central business district, but main street was usually named based on where economic and political development was more prevalent

• MSA (metropolitan statistical area) includes city but also surrounded areas since they are also affected by there being a big city (connected)

Expanding Urban Areas

The attitudes and values of a population, as well as the balance of power within that population, are reflected in the built landscape

The great sorting– self selecting where they want to live based on political beliefs

• Makes it difficult to govern

Suburbanization

• Suburbs are outside of the cbd

• Incorporated cities with their own governance that is different from the city

• Cost effective because high economy of scale

• Larger and cheaper homes

Interstate Highways

• Have made it easier to live outside the central city, and travel to work

• Many returning ww2 soldiers used money from GI bill to purchase homes 

Boomburb

• Explosive growth over 10 year time period

• Almost size of real city, but almost an “accidental” city

• Usually residential

Edge cities

• More economic than residential

• Businesses are following people out of the CBD

Exurbs

• Prosperous low-density residential areas beyond the suburbs

• Wealthier, more educated, less diverse

Annexation

• A fiscal squeeze is when a city can’t afford demands for urban infrastructure and increasing demands

Expanding urban areas are costly to maintain, and less environmentally friendly

Stopping Sprawl

• Smart growth policies try to create more compact urban areas, and contiguous urban areas (little bit by little bit close to the city, instead of going far away to expand)

• They try to keep rural land for agriculture, recreation, and wildlife

• Urban growth areas are self-imposed limits to show how far they will go with expansion (example portland oregon)

• Green belts are rings of conserved land outside of cities that will not be developed

• Infill developments are new businesses being developed in older/vacant buildings, or underdeveloped places within the city

Mixed Use Buildings

• Skyscrapers were made possible by iron frame building (relatively new)

• Physics don’t work to build high with brick and wood etc

• Elevators make skyscrapers more inhabitable

• Central heat and air (or boiler system) are necessary to live on a high floor

• Skyscrapers are usually mixed use buildings (residential, commercial, and sometimes industrial)

  • Retail pay highest rent at ground floor

  • Professional Offices make up the middle levels, pay lower rent

  • Apartments at the top levels pay high rent

Central Place Theory

• Services determined settlement

• Central city in the middle, then towns (biggest subdivision) with specific service areas for them, villages (second biggest subdivision) with specific service areas, and hamlets (smallest) with their own

• Made of hexagons

Range and threshold

• Range - maximum distance people are willing to travel for services

• Threshold - minimum number of customers for a business to survive

• Low order goods - don’t need lots of customers since they are very close to things and available, less costly products, people aren’t willing to travel far to them (doesn’t mean low quality, example starbucks)

• High order goods - people will travel long distances for them, they require a lot more people to stay open (example football stadium)

Market Analysis

• Find census tract, find zip code where ⅔-¾ of your customers live, census tract data (how long people would travel)

• Google also sells our data (where we live, where we’re driving)

• Some places need minimum income requirement

Bid rent theory - there are only targets in suburbs because they need lots of space, and cost of land is cheaper outside of the city

City has changed over time as people have moved out to closish areas

Gravity Model

• Consumer behavior reflects 2 patterns

• More people = more customers

• Longer travel = less customers

Direct relationship is as x increases, y increases (x=y)

Indirect relationship (-x=y)

Rank Size Rule

• Ranking settlements largest to smallest makes a hierarchy called RSR (rank size rule)

  • The 2nd largest will have ½ the population of largest

  • 3rd will have ⅓

  • 4th will have ¼

• 1/n let n=numbered city

Primate Cities

• Countries have a large city (primate city) that doesn’t follow RSR

• It has over double the population of the second largest

Higher population equals more jobs, but more expensive land costs

• What are range and threshold in the context of Central Place theory, and how do those topics connect to higher and lower order goods?

• What is the rank size rule for describing the urban hierarchy? How do primate cities break the pattern of RSR?

• What are some of the major site and situation factors that led to the development of early cities?

• What are some of the factors that contributed to suburbanization in the US and what are the major types of suburbs (BOOMburbs, Edge cities, and Exurbs)?

• What are world cities and what places them at the top of urban hierarchy? How are they related to meta- and mega-cities?

The idea of CBD is much less used outside of the US

• Usually more focused on historical buildings

• the suburbs in Paris have higher crime rates, poorer quality schools, and less access to commerce compared to communities closer to the CBD

Attitudes and values AND power structure influence how cities are built

Griffin Ford Latin American City

• Based on Mexico City 1980

• Highlights inequality within the city

• Still has a CBD, Industrial Zones, and Residential Zones BUT includes squatter settlements due to extensive population growth

• Over time, slums may gain electricity

Sub Saharan African City

• Influenced by colonialism

• Includes colonial cbd, traditional cbd, and market zone

• Ethnic neighborhoods inner circle

• Then manufacturing zones

• Then satellite townships (outskirts, but still considered part of the area)

Se Asian Port City

• 1967

• Cbd is NOT focal point

• Instead– old colonial port zone

• Then commercial districts

• Then western commercial zones (alien)

• Also residential zones, government zone

• Squatter areas

Entrepot - port or city (center) where goods are imported and exported, or collected and distributed

Challenges of Urban Changes

Civil Rights and Geography

• Brown VS Board (1954)

  • Schools and everything in the south were segregated

  • Overturned plessy versus ferguson which said “separate but equal” opportunities

• Jim Crow Laws

  • Based on blackface show

  • Racism and white supremacy

  • Basically said everything needed to be segregated

• Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56)

  • Claudette Colvin was 15 and didn’t get up

  • Then Rosa Parks got arrested

  • MLK then started protest

  • Boycott against segregated public transport

Housing Policy

• Redlining - banks drew red lines around places where they would not loan money, doesn’t matter how much money you had

• Blockbusting - real estate agents persuading owners to sell property cheaply because of the fear of people of another race or class moving into the neighborhood– profiting by reselling at a higher price

De jure policies are by federal law

Gentrification

• The restoration of neglected urban areas by the middle and upper classes

• Can result in the displacement of lower-income people

• Cities offer tax incentives to developers, but long-time businesses don’t get them

Environmental Racism

• Communities of color are more likely to live near solid waste facilities, energy generation, or other industrial areas

• Byhalia Pipeline in Memphis

• Community involvement can lead to more political participation is the community

Challenge and Opportunities that cities face

Urban Sustainability

• Suburban sprawl (people are further away from cbd,they have to drive cars, more co2 and pollution), sanitation, energy use etc

• Prone to heat waves and flooding because of all of the concrete (hard surfaces repel water and retain heat)

• Urban Heat Island effect - mass of warm air generated by urban areas due to building materials and human activities

Redlining and temperature

• Formerly redlined areas have less tree cover today than areas that weren’t redlined– they have more paved surfaces like roads and parking lots that absorb and radiate heat

• The formerly redlined areas are much less desirable since they are hotter

Broadfields

• Previously developed land not currently in use

• May be contaminated

• Factories, gas stations, landfills, dry cleaning etc

Smart Growth Policies 

• Review: green belts, mixed use development, infilling

• New Urbanism - another urban design movement that promotes walkable neighborhoods

  • Reducing cars on the road by making it “human scale” instead of car dependent

Fragmentation of governments presents challenges with issues like climate change and sanitation

On Balance

• Every choice that urban planners make has consequences

  • Praise for urban design initiatives includes reduction of sprawl, improved walkability and transportation, etc

  • Criticisms include increased housing costs