An Urbanizing World

Defining Urban Areas

• Urban area is a concentration of people living at a relatively high density and perhaps engaging in some forms of work.

Conceptualizing Cities

• A city is a legally defined entity, a municipality.

  • They are incorporated places, typically bigger than a town or village, with fixed boundaries and a locally elected government.

• A metropolitan area, includes urban and non-urban (rural) areas that are functionally connected to the city.

• In some cases, people live in one urban area but commute to another to work or shop;

  • if these urban areas are deemed functionally connected in such a way, the entire zone; including the urban areas of two or more municipalities—and the intervening rural area may be considered a metropolitan area.

Urbanization in More and Less Developed Regions of the World

• In the more developed countries, Industrial Revolution was partly caused by the increase in migration of people from rural to urban areas.

• In less developed countries, urban centers acted as magnets for the rural poor population. This migration hindered rural areas growth.

Megacities and Megaregions

• Megacities are metropolitan areas with population of more than 10 million.

• Facts regarding megacities;

  • in 1950 there were just two megacities: New York and and Tokyo

  • by 1975 there were four major cities: New York, Tokyo, Mexico City and Shanghai.

  • by 2014 there were 28 megacities, number is expected to rise to 40 by 2030

    • with most megacities located in less developed world

• Approximately 10 percent of the population of the world’s urban population lives in megacities, and they are of interest to geographers for two main reasons.

  1. Tokyo, London and New Jersey; play significant roles in controlling the global economy.

  2. many of the megacities are seen as representative of the global urban future because they are located in less developed countries and beset with problems of inadequate infrastructure, congestion, pollution, crime and poverty.

The Origins and Growth of Cities

Urban Origins

• Civilizations create cities, and cities mold civilizations.

• Four urban hearth areas arose from:

  1. Mesopotamia - between Tigris and Euphrates River is modern day Iraq.

  2. Northern Egypt - adjacent to the Nile River

  3. Indus River Valley - modern day Pakistan

  4. Huang Yellow River Valley - modern day China

• Cities may have developed in one area in response to a set of changes and out of necessity in another area. Most cities of the world likely originated in connection to one or more of the following four ways.

  1. earliest cities located in hearth areas - and reflected production of agricultural surplus.

  2. cities played role of a marketplace for exchange of local products.

     • emerged as trading centers.

  3. cities may have started as defensive or administrative centers

  4. some cities arose as ceremonial centers for religious activities.

Pre-Industrial Cities

• Cities in different parts of the world and at different times, reflect a wealth of cultural variations.

• Before the Industrial Revolution, most cities were concerned with marketing, commercial activities, and craft industries and served as religious and administrative centers.

• Political, cultural, and social changes followed the economic change from pre-agricultural to agricultural societies.

The Urban Revolution and Industrial Cities

• Industrial Revolution brought urban revolution.

• Economic changes led to a series of technological advances, particularly in the areas of agriculture and manufacturing, which led to appearance of the industrial city.

• In search of employment, many of the rural population moved to cities.

  • Due to these movements, new sources of energy had been harnessed, which could power machines.

    • These new machines spurred new and much greater scaled industrial enterprises which required labor.

• Not all cities turned into industrial ones. Industrial city location was determined primarily by the proximity of away raw materials for the industrial processes.

• Placement of factories, homes, shops, transportation routes, etc.; made a confusing and unpleasant place.

  • Factories made the hallmark of the industrial city, with their smokestacks belching black smoke as an apparent sign of “progress”.

  • This housing was often of very poor quality, overcrowded, and heavily polluted;

    • factory smoke choked the air, effluent polluted the local water supply,

    • garbage and refuse lay uncollected in open spaces and on the streets, and human sewage was dumped into the city drains because centralized sewerage systems could not be built fast enough to accommodate the speed of urban growth.

• At the same time, cities constructed great monuments of the industrial age, including elaborate railroad stations, bridges, industrial exhibition halls, government buildings, and skyscrapers.

The Location of Cities

• Many factors contribute to the location of any particular city.

• A city’s site refers to its physical location and the characteristics of that location, such as being at the head of a bay or estuary, at a strategic river crossing, etc.

• The city’s situation refers to its location relative to others. In other words, we often think of how accessible a city is, which is a direct reference to its situation.

  • Remote, isolated, and inaccessible cities are situationally poor; cities that are well connected to others are situationally advantaged.

  • In general, cities are located in accessible areas, typically along a coast or at the confluence of two rivers, etc., and not typically in mountainous, desert, or tundra regions.

  • This is because interconnectedness is important, they usually are not isolated from one another.

Global Cities

• Global Cities are primarily contribute to managing economic and both management activities and business services, but the importance of political, cultural, and environmental aspects is also being recognized.

• Properties and Importance of Global Cities:

  • they are key centers for financial institutions, such as banking, insurance, specialized investment organizations, and stock exchanges.

  • they contain the headquarters of large corporations, many of which are transnational companies.

  • they are typically home to national and/or subnational governments and/or supranational organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank.

  • culturally, they are commonly heterogeneous, serving as home to diverse ethnic identities, linguistic groups, and cultural traditions.

  • they are transportation and communications center, with efficient intra-urban movement and various interregional and international links.