General terms:

• Urban: densely populated city

• Central Business District: commercial & business center of a city (downtown)

• Metropolitan: a densely populated urban core and its surrounding connected areas

• Urbanization: the shift from rural to urban areas

Influences on Urbanization:

• Site: exact location or feature of a place

  • Harbor: Istanbul

  • Island: Paris

  • Port cities: coastal or river

• Situation: surrounding features of a place

  • Along a trade route: Beijing, Istanbul (Silk Road)

  • Command land between bodies of water: Baghdad, Mesopotamia

• Transportation: Public Transit/ Highways

• Government policies: Incentives for businesses (rebates, tax credits)

Types of Urban Areas:

• World Cities: cities that function at the top of the world’s urban hierarchy

  • NYC, London, Paris, Tokyo

• Megacity: population over 10M

• Metacity: population over 20M

• Sprawl: unplanned rapid expansion of development

  • Suburbanization: a pop. shift from historic core cities into residential suburban areas

    • addresses housing needs

    • allows for commuters

  • Edge City: a city that grows outside the traditional CBD with jobs & services

  • Exurbs: a wealthy region beyond the suburbs with connections to an urban area

  • Boomburbs: a suburban area experiencing significant growth in population & prosperity

Urban Model Concepts:

• Rank Size Rule: pop. of cities are more evenly spread out

  • usually 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, …

    

  • pro: industries spread out & variety of services

  • con: Rule not always consistent

• Primate City: lead city in a country due to size & influence

  • Pros: central capital with vast resources

  • Cons: disproportionate allocation of resources

  • Bangkok, Thailand

    

• Bid-Rent Theory:

  • land closer to the CBD is more expensive

  • suburbs- larger homes away from CBD

    

• Christaller’s Central Place Theory:

  

  • Hexagonal patters that explain distribution of goods & services across a region

  • Impacted by:

    • Population size

    • Distance: Assumes people will always purchase goods from the closest place offered

Urban Sustainability: reducing a city’s negative impacts on the environment, livability (QOL), strong infrastructure

• Walkability: City layouts and infrastructure built to safely walk.

• Smart Growth: Urban planning strategy that concentrates on compact design & walkable cities to avoid sprawl

  • New urbanism: A smart growth design which promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighborhoods containing a wide range of housing & job types (mixed land use)

  • Slow Growth Cities: use smart growth strategies to decrease outward growth/sprawl

    • Zoning laws, Farmland Protection Policy, Greenbelts, infilling

• Greenbelt: protected undeveloped land around urban areas

  • Parks, farmland, “green spaces”

  • London, Toronto

• Gentrification: renewal of a lower-class neighborhood to a middle or upper class one.

  • Pros:

    • improved property value &tax revenue

    • Economic development

    • Infrastructure improvements

    • Decreases crime rates

  • Cons:

    • Higher rent displace residents

    • leads to homelessness

    • placelessness

Urban Issues:

• Gentrification

• Redlining: banks refusal to grant loans to ethnic races

• Blockbusting: realtors get individuals to sell their house for cheaper in fear of black people moving in

  • “White Flight”: white people moving out of cities due to black people moving in

    • More white people in suburbs and black people in the cities today

• Crime Rates: Poor urban areas have more crime

• Environmental injustice: high pop. cities have high amounts of pollution

• Disamenity zones: locations not connected to city services

• Zones of abandonment: places abandoned due to lack of jobs, housing, value

  • Brownfields: abandoned areas that were used for industrial activities

    • typically have unsafe chemicals in the area

• De facto segregation: while it is not encouraged by the law, segregation still occurs in the real world due to people

Range and Threshold:

• Range: maximum distance people will travel for a good or service

  • High: sports games, fine dining, specialty hospital

  • Low: coffee shop, groceries, gas station

• Threshold: size of pop. needed to support business & make a profit

  • High: concert, specialized stores

  • Low: Big Box Stores (Walmart), Gas station