Urban Land Use Patterns and Processes Notes
Topic 6.1: The Origin and Influences of Urbanization
The presence and growth of cities vary across geographical locations due to physical geography and resources.
Processes that initiate and drive urbanization and suburbanization:
Site and situation influence the origin, function, and growth of cities.
Changes in transportation and communication, population growth, migration, economic development, and government policies influence urbanization.
Site: The place where the settlement is located (e.g., on a hill or in a sheltered valley).
Situation: Describes where the settlement is in relation to other settlements and the features of the surrounding area (e.g., surrounded by forest or next to a large city).
City: A relatively large, densely populated settlement with more folks than a town or village.
Urban: Relating to a city.
Rural: Opposite of urban, sparsely populated areas away from the city.
Early humans were nomads with no permanent home.
Over time, some decided to stay put, and these areas eventually grew into cities.
Early settlements were agricultural villages formed after we learned to grow food.
Typically located in fertile river valleys that would flood yearly, supplying nutrient-rich silt/topsoil.
Farmers produced surplus crops, allowing feeding larger populations and workers for other trades/occupations.
Socioeconomic Stratification: Differentiation of society into classes based on wealth, power, production, and prestige.
Leadership class controlled resources and lives.
The First Urban Revolution: Agricultural and socioeconomic innovations that led to the rise of early cities.
Urban Hearth Areas: Areas like Mesopotamia or the Nile Valley, where large cities first existed.
Diffusion of Urbanization:
Cities evolved spontaneously as agricultural production improved and socioeconomic stratification occurred.
Empires spread techniques and innovation to other areas, “recreating” their city models.
Diffusion of cities in Europe:
The Greek and Roman Empires established cities in Europe, leaving cultural facets as they went.
Rural to urban migration: Movement of people (typically farmers) from rural settlements to urban centers in search of jobs.
Transportation and Communication:
Railroads, streetcars, trolleys, airplanes, buses, automobiles (especially) have helped shape the layout of cities.
Streetcar suburbs: Urban residential settlements developed along the tracks of the electric streetcar, popular in North American cities in the late 19th century.
Second Urban Revolution: Began in the late eighteenth century with the linkage between urbanization and industrialization.
Government Policies:
Redevelopment: Activities intended to revitalize an area that has seen better days.
Topic 6.2: Cities Across the World
The presence and growth of cities vary across geographical locations due to physical geography and resources.
Processes that initiate and drive urbanization and suburbanization:
Megacities and metacities are distinct spatial outcomes of urbanization increasingly located in countries of the periphery and semiperiphery.
Processes of suburbanization, sprawl, and decentralization have created new land-use forms—including edge cities, exurbs, and boomburbs—and new challenges.
Metropolis: A very large and densely populated industrial and commercial city, typically the capital or chief city of a country or region.
Urbanization Rate: The % of a state’s population living in urban areas; currently 55% worldwide and estimated to be 68% by 2050.
Megacities: A very large city, typically with a population of more than 10 million people.
Metacities: Massive sprawling conurbations of more than 20 million people.
Suburbanization: A population shift from central urban areas into suburbs, resulting in urban sprawl; low-density, peripheral urban areas grow.
Sprawl: The expansion of human populations away from central urban areas into low-density, monofunctional, and usually car-dependent communities.
Corporations established “branches” outside urban areas in the suburbs as automobiles became more common.
Edge City: Exists on the fringes of a larger city and acts as a regional hub for recreation, business, or other commercial activity for the suburban population of the larger city.
Boomburbs: A municipality of more than 100,000 people that has been growing at a double-digit pace for three consecutive decades and is not the major city of any metropolitan area.
Exurb: Small communities lying beyond the suburbs of a city often inhabited by wealthier folks.
Infill Development: Developing vacant or under-used parcels within existing urban areas that are already largely developed.
Topic 6.3: Cities and Globalization
The presence and growth of cities vary across geographical locations because of physical geography and resources.
Explain how cities embody processes of globalization.
World cities function at the top of the world’s urban hierarchy and drive globalization.
Cities are connected globally by networks and linkages and mediate global processes.
The Rise of World Cities
Cities became centers of trade for major cities worldwide and seats of power for colonizing nations.
Thus, they became centers of early globalization
World Cities: A major center for finance, trade, business, politics, culture, science, information gathering, and mass media. It serves the whole world and is an important multinational city. Examples: New York, London, and Tokyo.
Global Cities drive globalization through networks and linkages in transportation, business services, and communication systems.
Transportation Services: Activities designed to assist a person to travel from one place to another to obtain services or carry out life's activities
Business Service: A service that is delivered to business customers by business units (e.g., delivery of financial services to customers of a bank, or delivery of goods to the customers of a retail store).
A communications system is an integrated system of communications hardware.
Topic 6.4: The Size and Distribution of Cities
The presence and growth of cities vary across geographical locations because of physical geography and resources.
Identify the different urban concepts such as hierarchy, interdependence, relative size, and spacing that are useful for explaining the distribution, size, and interaction of cities
Principles that are useful for explaining the distribution and size of cities include rank-size rule, the primate city, gravity, and Christaller’s central place theory
Urban Hierarchy: A ranking of settlements (hamlet, village, town, city, metropolis) according to their size and economic functions.
Geographers use two ideas that help explain urban hierarchy
Rank Size Rule
Primate City Rule
The Rank Size Rule is a theory of how large the population of the different major cities are in a country should be. The Rank Size Rule, inspired by Zipf’s Law Applied to Distribution of Cities (1935), says if all cities in a country are placed in order from the largest to the smallest, each one will have a population 1/nth the size of the largest city in the country.
The rank size rule is more common in more developed countries than in less developed ones.
The United States loosely follows the rule
Primate City Rule: A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the largest settlement has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.
Among the best known examples of primate cities are the alpha world cities of London and Paris. Other major primate cities include Athens, Baghdad, Bangkok, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lima, Manila, Mexico City, Seoul, Tehran, and Vienna
Christaller’s central place theory
The “central place theory” states that in any given region there can only be one large central city, which is surrounded by a series of smaller cities, towns, and hamlets. The central city provides goods and services that meet the needs of the people living in the smaller communities; furthermore, the people living in the smaller communities provide part of the labor supply and market required by the city.
Threshold: The smallest market area necessary for the goods and services to be economically viable.
Range: The maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service.
Gravity Model: Holds that the interaction between two places can be determined by the product of the population of both places, divided by the square of their distance from one another. The primary implication of this model is that distance is not the only determining factor in the interaction between two cities.
Topic 6.5: The Internal Structure of Cities
The presence and growth of cities vary across geographical locations because of physical geography and resources.
Explain the internal structure of cities using various models and theories.
Models and theories that are useful for explaining internal structures of cities include the Burgess concentric-zone model, the Hoyt sector model, the Harris and Ullman multiple-nuclei model, the galactic city model, bid-rent theory, and urban models drawn from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Burgess concentric-zone model: In 1925, E.W. Burgess presented an urban land use model, which divided cities in a set of concentric circles expanding from the downtown to the suburbs. This representation was built from Burgess's observations of a number of American cities, notably Chicago.
The Hoyt sector model: Focuses on residential patterns explaining where the wealthy in a city choose to live. He argued that the city grows outward from the center, so a low-rent area could extend all the way from the CBD to the city's outer edge, creating zones which are shaped like pieces of a pie。
Harris and Ullman multiple-nuclei model: is a city that does not have one central area, but instead has several nodes that act as regional centers for economic or residential activity within one larger city. Los Angeles, with its many distinct neighborhoods, is a prototypical example of this type of city.
the galactic city model: is also known as the peripheral model. The model is based on the city of Detroit, Michigan and is made up of an inner city, with large suburban residential and business areas surrounding it. These areas are tied together by transportation nodes, like beltways, to avoid traffic congestion.
bid-rent theory: states that the closer land is to the CBD, the more competition there will be for the land, since businesses wish to maximize profit. Commerce is more likely to locate themselves in the the inner core of the city -They're willing to pay the high rent -
The Latin American City Model combines elements of Latin American Culture and globalization by combining radial sectors and concentric zones. Includes a thriving CBD with a commercial spine. The quality of houses decreases as one moves outward away from the CBD, and the areas of worse housing occurs in the disamenity sectors.
The Southeast Asian City Model is similar to the Latin American (Griffin-Ford) City Model in that they each feature high-class residential zones that stem from the center, middle-class residential zones that occur in inner-city areas, and low-income squatter settlements that occur in the periphery.
African cities often have 3 CBDS Colonial, Traditional and Periodic Market Zone
Sub-Saharan Africa is the least urbanized area of the world, but the most rapidly urbanizing
No large cities to match Cairo-
Kinshasa, Nairobi, Harare, Dakar, Abidjan were
Topic 6.6: Density and Land Use
The attitudes and values of a population, as well as the balance of power within that population, are reflected in the built landscape.
Explain how low-, medium-, and high-density housing characteristics represent different patterns of residential land use.
Residential buildings and patterns of land use reflect and shape the city’s culture, technological capabilities, cycles of development, and infilling.
Something important to remember is that most cities were actually not planned out…..
Early cities had most folks walking or on horseback (hence typically narrow streets)
After the Industrial Revolution, mechanized transportation with growth outward provided access to the city center to folks living further out.
Perceived Density – the density based on what people think instead of relying on “real” numbers.
The further you get from a city center, the less dense the population and the more single-family homes you encounter with larger and larger lots.
Cycles of development in a city begin with the expansion of transportation systems.
These transportation systems allowed folks to migrate to the suburbs and continue moving further away.
These “stations” allowed more residential areas to spring up thus changing suburban areas
Topic 6.7: Infrastructure
The attitudes and values of a population, as well as the balance of power within that population, are reflected in the built landscape.
Explain how a city’s infrastructure relates to local politics, society, and the environment.
The location and quality of a city’s infrastructure directly affects its spatial patterns of economic and social development
Infrastructure – cities must generate revenue to keep up with the demand to supply services to their residents
That’s why they try to attract large businesses, sports franchises, convention centers, etc…
Cities went through a change of being manufacturing centers (blue collar) and becoming more “white collar” or “professional” resulting in more, higher paying (typically service based) jobs.
The higher paid professionals may move into areas that were once settled by blue collar workers (forcing them out) through gentrification and infilling.
Gentrification describes urban renewal that leads to the displacement of the occupying demographic. It is commonly associated with rising property values in previously low-income urban areas, which may force current residents to move away.
Infilling occurs where open space presents an economic opportunity for landowners to build small multi-family housing units, placing more people into existing city blocks.
Topic 6.8: Urban Sustainability
The attitudes and values of a population, as well as the balance of power within that population, are reflected in the built landscape.
Identify the different urban design initiatives and practices.
Sustainable design initiatives and zoning practices include mixed land use, walkability, transportation-oriented development, and smart-growth policies, including New Urbanism, greenbelts, and slow-growth cities.
Explain the effects of different urban design initiatives and practices
Praise for urban design initiatives includes the reduction of sprawl, improved walkability and transportation, improved and diverse housing options, improved livability and promotion of sustainable options. Criticisms include increased housing costs, possible de facto segregation and the potential loss of historical or place character
Built Environment - touches all aspects of our lives, encompassing the buildings we live in, the distribution systems that provide us with water and electricity, and the roads, bridges, and transportation systems we use to get from place to place
Smart Growth - is an approach to development that encourages a mix of building types and uses, diverse housing and transportation options, development within existing neighborhoods, and community engagement.
Typically has many goals……
Smart Growth Goals
Mixed land use – different types of development (residential, business, and commercial) that brings variety to residents
Compact Design - makes more efficient use of land that’s already developed
Infill Development – builds on unused and underutilized land with the development patterns
Walkable neighborhoods - safe, practical, and convenient for the residents
Variety of Transportation – public transportation, safe roadways and bridges, biking/hiking trails
Variety of Housing Opportunities/Choices – availability for all income levels
Preservation of the Natural Environment – provides places for recreation, tourism, and agriculture
New Urbanism - is a form of growth that is designed in order to limit the amount of urban sprawl and preserve nature and usable farmland. This way of making neighborhoods provides connection between people, others, and businesses.
new UrbanismHas 10 principles!
Walkability – most amenities within a 10-minute walk
Connectivity – interconnected street grid that disperses traffic and eases walking
Mixed Use and Diversity – mixed use neighborhoods/buildings. Multi-store building with businesses on the ground floor and residential homes above
Diverse Housing – assorted types, sizes and prices
Quality architecture and urban design – beauty, human comfort, and a sense of space
Traditional neighborhood structure – has an obvious central area with a park, high density development, and decreasing density away from the center. Integrates environmental concerns with community design
Increased density – More buildings, residences, and shops close together for walking convenience
Smart transportation – public transportation for travelling longer distances.
Sustainability – energy efficiency, reduced use of nonrenewable energy, local production, and less dependence on automobiles.
Quality of Life – The above principles describe the overall purpose of New Urbanism
Greenbelts - a belt of parkways, parks, or farmlands that encircles a community.
Beautify areas and promote healthy lifestyles while separating urban areas
Slow Growth City – a city that changes its zoning laws to decrease the rate the city spreads outward attempting to avoid the negative effect of sprawl
Zoning – classification of land according to restrictions on its use and development
There are some negatives to urban design initiatives
higher density may result in more crime thus decreasing property values
Affordable housing may decrease
Property owners may face restrictions on what they can do with their property
Existing communities may be disrupted by the “improvements”
New development may result in segregation. Low income folks may be forced out
Historical places may be destroyed or impacted to make room for the new and improved development
Sprawl may actually increase
Topic 6.9: Urban Data
The attitudes and values of a population, as well as the balance of power within that population, are reflected in the built landscape.
Explain how qualitative and quantitative data are used to show the causes and effects of geographic change within urban areas
Quantitative data from census and survey data provide information about changes in population composition and size in urban areas.
Qualitative data from field studies and narratives provide information about individual attitudes toward urban change.
Topic 6.10: Challenges of Urban Changes
Urban areas face unique economic, political, cultural, and environmental challenges.
Explain causes and effects of geographic change within urban areas.
As urban populations move within a city, economic and social challenges result, including: issues related to housing and housing discrimination such as redlining, blockbusting, and affordability; access to services; rising crime; environmental injustice; and the growth of disamenity zones or zones of abandonment.
Squatter settlements and conflicts over land tenure within large cities have increased.
Responses to economic and social challenges in urban areas can include inclusionary zoning and local food movements.
Urban renewal and gentrification have both positive and negative consequences.
Functional and geographic fragmentation of governments—the way government agencies and institutions are dispersed between state, county, city, and neighborhood levels—presents challenges in addressing urban issues.
Mortgage - is a type of loan you can use to buy or refinance a home.
Redlining a discriminatory real estate practice in North America in which members of minority groups are prevented from obtaining money to purchase homes or property in predominantly white neighborhoods.
Blockbusting - a process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that black families will soon move into the neighborhood. *White Flight - The move of white city-dwellers to the suburbs to escape the influx of minorities. *Housing affordability – the maximum a buyer can afford to pay for a house or apartment *Affordable housing means someone can afford to pay rent/buy a home *Housing Choice Voucher Program – a federal government program to help very low income families, the elderly, *And the disabled with affordable, decent, safe, and sanitary housing *Access to Services – City governments supply services (police, fire, sanitation, etc.) *Cities also supply social services such as public welfare and participation in the federal government’s housing choice programs. Access to these social services depends on:
Where the folks who need them live
Where the services are located
How much it costs to get to and use the services
*Urban Crime – typically two main categoriessubculture of violence and 2) subculture of poverty. Common to both types is the belief that certain groups carry sets of norms and values that make them more likely to engage in crime
*Obviously, crime of any type makes it a challenge to live anywhere but especially in urban areas that folks may not have the means to move away from?
*environmental injustice - defined as the disproportionate exposure of communities of color and the poor to pollution, and its concomitant effects on health and environment, as well as the unequal environmental protection and environmental quality provided through laws, regulations, governmental programs
*Squatter settlements - Settlements built illegally in and around the city by people who can't afford proper housing. Most of inhabitants moved from countryside- result of rural-urban migration. Badly built and overcrowded-often don't have basic services (sewer, electricity)
*Inclusionary Zoning - also known as inclusionary housing, refers to municipal and county planning ordinances that require a given share of new construction to be affordable by people with low to moderate incomes. The term inclusionary zoning indicates that these ordinances seek to counter exclusionary zoning practices, which aim to exclude low-cost housing from a municipality through the zoning code.
*Local Food Movements – designed to increase the availability of healthy foods for less affluent folks
*Urban renewal and gentrification have both positive and negative consequences.
*Urban renewal - Program in which cities identify blighted inner-city neighborhoods, acquire the properties from private owners, relocate the residents and businesses, clear the site, build new roads and utilities, and turn the land over to private developers.
*Gentrification - primarily refers to the process by which an urban or suburban neighborhood transitions from housing people of mostly low-income status to housing middle class families.
*Positives? Revitalizes an economically rundown area, improves the housing stock, increases a city’s tax base, and allows folks to live near their jobs
*Negatives? It displaces lower-income folks and negatively affects the city’s social fabric (It’s “coolness”)
*Fragmentation of Government – there is a huge variation in the number and sizes of municipalities and their governments throughout regions
*This also affects how folks in urban areas have access to the government
*Some governments struggle with fiscal imbalances , which occurs when a government must spend more than it receives in taxes (goes into debt)
*Fiscal Zoning ( regulating local land use to enhance the tax base) can be used to attempt to address budget shortfalls.
Topic 6.11: Challenges of Urban Sustainability
*Urban areas face unique economic, political, cultural, and environmental challenges.
*Describe the effectiveness of different attempts to address urban sustainability challenges.
*Challenges to urban sustainability include suburban sprawl, sanitation, climate change, air and water quality, the large ecological footprint of cities, and energy use.
*Responses to urban sustainability challenges can include regional planning efforts, remediation and redevelopment of brownfields, establishment of urban growth boundaries, and farmland protection policies.
*Ecological Footprint - measure of the human pressures on the natural environment from the consumption of renewable resources.
*In a city, temperatures are higher, fog/smog more common, and the levels of pollution are higher
*Urban Heat Island – lots of folks using energy, lots of cars, lots of buildings produce a lot of heat!
*Urban Water Usage and Runoff – water use is extremely high in urban areas (lots of folks)
*Lots of concrete and asphalt roads alter rainwater runoff patterns. Not enough ground to soak the precipitation in so it runs off faster……..this water runs through drainage canals, sewers, etc carrying pollution with it into our waterways
*We use vast amounts of energy in urban areas. That’s where people are………
*The pollution we have produced in the past can result in brownfields - a property which has the presence or potential to be a hazardous waste, pollutant or contaminant.
*We must clean these contaminants in a process called brownfield remediation if the land is to be usable again
*Farmland Protection Policy Act (FPPA) - The purpose of the law is to “…minimize the extent to which Federal programs contribute to the unnecessary conversion of farmland to nonagricultural uses
*Essential Terms
*African City Model
*Bid-rent theory
*Blockbusting
*Boomburbs
*Brownfields
*Burgess Concentric-Zone model
*Christaller’s Central Place theory
*De Facto segregation
*Ecological footprint
*Edge cities
*Exurbs
Gentrification
*Gravity Model
*Greenbelts
*Griffin-Ford Latin America city model
*Harris and Ullman Multiple-Nuclei model
*Housing discrimination
*Hoyt Sector model
*Infilling
*Megacities
*Metacities
*Mixed land use development
*New Urbanism
*Periphery
*Primate city
*Rank-size rule
*Redlining
*Semi Periphery
*Site factors
*Situation factors
*Slow-growth cities
*Smart-growth policies
*Southeast Asian City Model
*Squatter settlements
*Galactic city model
*Suburbanization
*Suburban Sprawl
*Urban Hearths
*Urbanization
*Urban hierarchy
*Urban Models
*Urban renewal
*World Cities/Global Cities
*Zones of abandonment
*Essential Questions
*How does site influence the origin, function, and growth of cities?
*How does situation influence the origin, function, and growth of cities?
*How has transportation facilitated urbanization and suburbanization?
*How has communication facilitated urbanization and suburbanization?
*Describe Borchert’s epochs of urban growth.
*How do improvements in agriculture and transportation influence urbanization?
*How does population growth influence urbanization?
*How does migration influence urbanization?
*How does economic development influence urbanization?
*How do government policies influence urbanization?
*What is a squatter settlement?
*What factors contribute to the formation of squatter settlements?
*What are consequences of the rapid growth of squatter settlements?
*What is rank-size rule?
*What is the law of the primate city?
*What is Christaller’s central place theory?
*Describe the gravity model.
*Describe the Burgess concentric-zone model.
*Describe the Hoyt sector model.
*Describe the Harris-Ullman multiple-nuclei model.
*Describe the galactic model.
*Describe the Latin American urban model.
*Describe the African urban model.
*How does the infrastructure of cities affect economic development and interconnection within a metropolitan area?
*What are some examples of sustainable development within urban areas?
*What are examples of quantitative data about the demographic composition and population characteristics of cities?
*What are some examples of qualitative data regarding the demographic composition and population characteristics of cities?
*How does housing and insurance discrimination affect cities?
*How does housing affordability affect cities?
*How does access to food stores and public services affect cities?
*What are disamenity zones?
*What are zones of abandonment?
*What is gentrification?
*What land use and environmental problems are associated with the growth and decline of urban communities?