Urbanization Part 1

Urban game follow ups:

• Can't change what mother nature has given us 

• Hard to fit and organize because of pace and change

• solutions /strategies: Grid system, zoning (Functional region), sectors 

• Other connections 

  • Urban planning is inherently local

  • Central place theory 

  • Bid rent; growing vertically 

  • Sequent occupance 

  • People moving into city reflects migration/push and pull factors 

  • Pop growth due to migration

  • Tech, such as infrastructure and energy

  • Sustainability (environmental, economic)

Definitions 

• Urban cities have grown and sprawled by density, area, 

• Urban area = city and surround subs

• Subs = less densely populated residential and commercial areas surrounding a city

• Metropolitan - city and surrounding areas that are influenced economically and cultural;y  by the city

• Urbanization- the process of the development of dense concentrations of people into settlements (AKA growth of cities)

History

• The Neolithic era (about 10,000 yrs ago) led to the rise of permanent settlements, which eventually became cities (Mesopotamia, S. Asia, China). These early settlements were basically market places, and also performed religious rituals like burials. More defensible because they were smaller, and easier to collect taxes and provide services because people lived closer together

• Bronze age - ancient urban settlements developed in eastern mediterranean as city states

• Peak roman empire - worlds most populous city, roads and aqueducts encouraged settlements. After its fall, most of the world's major cities were clustered in China until the 11th century.

• Feudalism in Europe emerged in the medieval period as a system to stabilize society. These medieval towns became centers of trade/services and were walled towns. 

• Despite many years in which settlements existed, only a small part of humans were living in cities prior to the Industrial revolution. Leads to rural to urban migration throughout the world. Industrialization continues to drive urbanization

• 55% of the world's population lives in cities, by 2050 75% of the world will be urban.

Overview: 

• Cities are a result of their site and situation

• Location and physical features of a place (landforms, climate, water, availability, soil quality, natural resources) -- flat land promotes building, water fosters trade, natural resources, elevated land is more defensible (athens, greece), natural harbors

Settlements emerge as a result of site and situation factors.

Central place theory

• Illustrates urban distribution, size, and hierarchy 

• Central place - market center where people exchange goods 

• Market area - region surrounding the central place. (Centripetal)

• Range - distance people are willing to travel to get a good or service.

• Threshold - min # of people (customers) needed to support a service (make it economically sustainable) (Think price tag -- Nordstrom vs target) People often think of range in terms of time but its actually distance

• Assumes a relatively flat and featureless plain.

• Hexagon is the best shape

Central place theory predicts:

• Many small settlements w small threshold/range services 

• Fewer large settlements, services with large thresholds/ranges

Rank size: If all cities in a country are placed in order from the largest to the smallest, each one will have a population half the size of the preceding city.

Primate: biggest city

Size of states

Review: Gravity Model

• can predict the movement of people and goods

  • migration and trade

• measures the force of attraction between any two points

  • strong gravitational pulls increase areas threshold

  • large diverse pop. attract increase numbers of diverse people

  • size and distance is what is used to calculate gravity model

limitations of gravity model

• assumes

  • uniform topography

  • uniform political boundaries

  • uniform consumer preferences

  • no man made boundaries

• historically limited by distance decay (no longer matters) modern tech. is reducing this impact in some areas.

Daily Urban Systems

• Cities as well as mega regions (daily urban systems) represent functional (nodal regions). These can be considered market areas for some services.

What about businesses that do not have a fixed, permanent location

• periodic markets and pop-up shops have emerged as flexible alternatives, allowing vendors to reach diverse customer bases while adapting to changing urban dynamics. Also reflects local culture.

• sharing services (Ex: transportation and logging industries, which is made possible and accelerated by mobile apps and the internet)

Cities provide consumer, business, and public services and goods. They function and grow as a result of:

• transport. and comm. of networks

• population growth and migration

• economic development, and gov policies

When I hear “public”, think government, meaning “funded by tax” payer dollars

Borcherts Model of Transportation Epochs

• argued that improved transportation technologies were the primary driver of American city growth. (Cities moved further West

  • sail/wagon (Early industrial rev.)

  • iron horse (Early industrial rev.)

  • steel rail (Mid)

  • auto-air amenity (cars and planes) (Newer industrial rev)

  • High tech (space shuttles, self driving cars etc.) (Newer)

Population Growth and Migration

• Rural to Urban migration (Today mostly in LDC’s) fuels city growth

  • pop growth in rural areas reduces opportunities

  • rural residents who work solely on agriculture are increasingly impacted by climate change

  • as a result of these push factors, many are pulled to the city.

• Historically, settlements at railroad terminals, or along the routes, grew as the transportation tech. became more widespread

• today post industrial tech job growth are creating new and bigger cities

Sidebar: Economic Sectors

• Primary (extractive activities -- agriculture fishing, mining)

• Secondary (industrial activities that process raw materials/manufacture a finished good)

• tertiary (post-industrial →provide service to a person or business

  • Quaternary - acquiring, processing, and sharing info (Ex: journalism)

  • Quinary - Decision making (Ex: Politics)

Economic Development of Gov. Policies

• Basic economic activities: sell or export primarily to consumers outside the settlement (Ex: commercial farm)

• Nonbasic economic activities: Enterprises whose customers live in the same community (Ex: barber or pizza shop)

• Often, cities are home to a specific business or industry, consumer service, or public function (Ex: Washing DC - gov/military; Cancun - tourism)

• a communities unique collection of basic industries defines its economic base (and this can change over time)

• Basic economic activities bring money to local economy, thus stimulating the provision of more non-basic economic activities

• An agglomeration is a local economy in which large numbers of companies and industries and services cluster together for common interest.

• Governments can heavily influence urbanization, often through economic development policies

  • tax/financial incentives (Amazon picking its place for second HQ)

  • creation of industrial or office/business parks

Bostons Advanced Economic Activities

• growth pole (techno pole) refers to the concentration of highly innovative and technically advanced economic activities that stimulate development in linked businesses and industries

• Bostons economic base of biotechnology leads to returns for other

• infrastructure improvements

• zoning and land use plans

• security

importance of attracting talent

• some cities have a higher % of individuals with special talents/skills

• attracted to cities with most job opp., and financial incentives

• also gravitate toward cities that offer more cultural diversity

Tertiary economic activities in LDC countries

• Tertiary economic activities in MDC’s housed their back office staff in the same office building as their management staff (or nearby buildings)

• increasingly, rising rents as well as improved telecommunications have induced many business move routine work to lower-rent buildings elsewhere, even other countries

• developing countries specialize in to two distinctive businesses services: Offshore financial services and back-office functions

  • offshore financial services - offer tax free or very low taxes and privacy

  • back - office functions - insurance claims processing, payroll, transcription work, clerical activities

• The presence of supportive laws, weak regulations, and low wage workers who can speak English also draws these business services from MDC’s. India is a popular location for businesses to outsource their call center work because of low wages, workers who speak English, and their location in a different time zone. Offshore financial services are mostly micro states or dependencies, and most micro states are small islands.

Hierarchy of Business services in global cities

• Global cities (AKA world cities) are major urban centers that act as key nodes in the global economy and have significant influence on world trade as well as cultural and political global affairs

  • at the center of the flow there are typically financial institutions, HQ’s of large corporations, and lawyers, accountants, and other professional service (Quaternary, quinary)

• Global cities are divided into 3 main levels: alpha, beta, and gamma

  • rankings based on a combination of economic, political, cultural, infrastructure, communications, and transportation factors.

Consumer and Public services in global cities

• retail services with extensive market areas

• lots of wealth

• centers of national and international power

• Most are national capitals

• structures for national legislature and offices for gov. agencies located in global cities

• Offices for groups having business with the government such as representatives for foreign countries, trade associations, labor unions, and professional organizations

• modern transportation and communication enables decentralization reinforces status/primacy of global cities in global economy.

Note: with central place theory, there are more lower-order global cities and few higher-order global cities

Mega cities

• Developed countries have a higher % of urban residents, but developing countries have more of the very large urban settlements.

Mega Polis

• A mega polis is a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas, such as the continuous area of urbanization in the NE of US

• Can span multiple counties

• down towns contain distinctive identity, but peripheral areas overlapNor

Note: While developed countries are generally more urban as a %, most of the worlds largest settlements are in developing countries

Another note: Nearly all of the worlds fastest growing cities are located in the developing world. The % of people living in urban areas mirrors a country’s level of development. (But the gap is closing between people living in urban and rural areas).