AP Human Geography - Unit 6: Services & Urban Patterns

Unit 6: Services & Urban Patterns

Services

  • Tertiary sector: Broad category of services.
  • Quaternary: Data-driven services.
  • Quinary: Decision-making services.

Economic Base of US Cities

  • Basic Industries:
    • Sells mostly outside the community.
    • Brings new money into the community.
  • Non-basic industries:
    • Sells mostly to the community.
    • Shifts money within the community.
  • Cities try to reposition after deindustrialization (“postindustrial”).
    • Technology corridor: Government invests in tech infrastructure to attract business.
    • Technopole: Clustering of tech businesses, usually spurred by high education.

Urban Hierarchies

  • Christaller’s Central Place Theory:
    • Market area/hinterland (nodal/functional region).
    • Created by range & threshold.
    • Nesting (hexagons): Larger settlements include services of smaller ones.
    • Consumer will choose to access service at the CLOSEST location which offers it.
    • Hierarchy of services: Hamlet, Village, Town, City.

World/Global Cities

  • Clustering of Services in World Cities:
    • Entire world = hinterland.
    • Corporate headquarters.
    • Disproportionate number of wealthy individuals.
    • Luxury services and entertainment options.
    • High global influence.
    • High income inequality.
  • Alpha ++
    • NYC, London (formerly Tokyo)
  • Other “Alpha”
    • Chicago, LA, SF, Washington DC
    • Paris, Brussels
    • Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, HK

Rank-Size Rule vs. Primate City

  • Rank-size rule (RS):
    • Nth city is 1/nth largest.
      • Even distribution of wealth/services = MDC (More Developed Country).
  • Primate City:
    • One city disproportionately large and influential.
      • Wealth/services clustered = LDC (Less Developed Country).

Megacity, Metacity, Megalopolis

  • Megacity: > 10 million people.
  • Metacity: > 20 million people.
  • 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.
  • Former retail hub.
  • Current hub of professional services.
  • Bid-rent theory: Land is expensive because firms desire accessibility and compete for it.
  • Results in “intensive land use”:
    • Skyscrapers, subways, loading docks.

Urban Models

Concentric Zone (Burgess, 1923)
  • Bid-Rent Theory: Land most $$ in CBD, less expensive with distance from 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.
  • 5 Zones/Rings:
    • CBD:
      • Increasing residential density (yuppies).
    • Zone of Transition:
      • Needed to be close to RR hubs, factories, warehouses, tenements, point of entry neighborhoods.
      • Factories leave with highways, now gentrified for residences/services.
    • Working Class:
      • Multi-family housing.
      • Now lower density due to multi to single family conversion, zones of abandonment.
    • Middle Class/Better Residences:
      • Small single-family housing.
      • Now stable density reinforced through TODs.
    • Commuter Zone:
      • Large suburban homes/yards.
      • Increasing density within-filling and New Urbanism, multi-family housing for industrial workers.
      • Increasing “city” problems.
Sector Model (Hoyt, 1939)
  • Wedges develop from CBD outward to edge of metro area.
  • Wedges adjacent to “related” activities:
    • Industry ↔ transport ↔ working class residential ↔ “disamenities”.
    • High income residential → “amenities”.
Multiple Nuclei (Harris/Ulman 1945)
  • CBD decentralizing.
  • Other nodes of economic activity attract related activities:
    • Airport ← warehouses, conv. center.
    • Industry ← working-class housing.
    • University ← bookstores, coffee shops.
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 = Ins/Pharma
    • Oakbrook = McDonalds
    • Schaumburg = retail, offices.
European Model
  • Central City reserved for tourism.
  • Wealth higher in city, poor = 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 residences.
  • 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 (Chgo loses 200k black residents from 2000 – 2010).
    • Zones of abandonment /“depopulation”.

Redevelopment Efforts

Urban Renewal (mid-20th century)
  • Public housing projects (ex. 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 Redevelopment (late 20th century – current)
  • Government 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 government (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