Chapter 11 Urban Systems and Urban Structures

11.1 An Urbanizing World

• Merging Urban Regions
  • When separate major urban complexes expand along the superior transportation facilities connecting them
  • They create extensive urban regions or conurbations
    • Conurbations
    • Extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities

11.2 Settlement Roots

• Major cities of today had humble origins in the simple cluster of dwellings that was the starting point for human settlements everywhere
• Rural settlements in developing countries are often expressions of subsistence economic systems
• When settlements are not self-contained
  • Become part of a system of towns and cities engaged in urban activities and exchange

11.3 Origins and Evolution of Cities

• Cities and civilization are inseparable
• 8,000 years ago, cities originated in the early culture hearths that first developed sedentary agriculture.
• Centers of cultural, economic, religious, and political life are among humanity’s greatest achievements
• Earliest cities depended on the creation of agricultural surpluses
• The Nature of Cities
  • Whether ancient or modern, all cities must have an economic base
  • All urban settlements exist for the efficient performance of functions required by the society that creates them
  • The totality of people and urban functions constitute distinctive cultural landscapes
• The Location of Urban Settlements
  • Urban centers are functionally connected to other cities and to rural areas
  • Cities exist not only to provide services for themselves, but for others outside of it
  • In order to add new functions as demanded by the larger economy, the city must be efficiently located
• Transportation Epochs
  • Break-of-bulk and head-of-navigation sites demonstrate the importance of transportation to the location of urban settlements
  • When a new transportation system emerges, it changes the optimal locations for urban growth
  • Chicago emerged as hubs of regional railroads that collected and distributed resources from the vast interior of the continent
• The Economic Base
  • Cities depend on close relationships with their hinterlands
  • They provided the market where rural produce could be exchanged for the goods produced
  • they constitute the basic sector of the city’s total economic structure
  • the basic sector makes up the economic base of the community and is essential for
  • health of the local economy
• Increase in total population is equal to the added workers plus their dependents

11.4 The Functions of Cities

• Modern city functions
  • Manufacturing
  • Retailing
  • Wholesaling
  • Transportation
  • Public administration
  • Housing cultural and educational institutions
  • The housing of their own citizens
• Cities as Central Places
  • Central places are nodes for the distribution of economic goods and services to surrounding non urban populations
  • Small cities provide a range of goods and services that suffice for most everyday needs
  • Central place theory
  • A pattern of interdependent small, medium, and larger towns that could together provide the goods and services needed by dispersed rural populations
    • People would have to travel only short distances for low order items

11.5 Systems of Cities

• The Urban Hierarchy
  • The most effective way to recognize how systems of cities are organized is to consider the urban hierarchy
  • Urban hierarchy
    • A ranking of cities based on their size and functional complexity
  • The hierarchy is like a pyramid
  • A few large and complex cities are at the top and many smaller, simpler ones are at the bottom
  • Separate centers interact with the areas around them, but because cities of the same level provide roughly the same services
• World Cities
  • Top of national systems of cities are a relatively few places that may be called world cities
  • Large urban centers are command and control points for the global economy
  • London and New York were the world’s two largest cities in 1950
• Rank-Size and Primacy
  • Considering city systems on a global scale, urban geographers also inquire about the organization of city systems within regions or countries
  • The city size hierarchy is summarized by the rank-size rule
  • The nth largest city of a national system of cities will be 1/n the size of the largest city
• Network Cities
  • History of urban growth includes episodes of intense competition between cities,
  • A new kind of urban spatial pattern, the network city, has begun to appear as nearby cities work together
  • Network city
  • Evolves when two or more previously independent cities with potentially complementary functions develop high-speed transportation corridors and communications infrastructure to facilitate cooperation

11.6 Inside the City

• Defining the City Today
  • Urban settlements come in different sizes, shapes, and types
  • Their common characteristic is that they are nucleated, nonagricultural settlements
  • End of the size scale, urban areas are hamlets or small towns with at most a single short main street of shops
  • Beginning of the size scale are complex multifunctional metropolitan areas or megacities
  • Towns
  • Smaller in size and have less functional complexity than cities, but they still have a nuclear business concentration
  • Suburbs
  • A subsidiary area, a functionally specialized segment of a larger urban complex
  • Central city
  • The principal core of a larger urban area, separately incorporated and ringed by its dependent suburbs
  • Urbanized area
  • A continuously built-up landscape defined by building and population densities, with no reference to political boundaries
  • Metropolitan area
  • A large-scale functional entity, perhaps containing several urbanized areas, discontinuously built up but nonetheless operating as an integrated economic whole
• Classic Patterns of Urban Land Use
  • The Central Business District
  • The radiating mass transit lines focused on downtown gave it the highest accessibility within the growing urban complex
  • Building lots within the emerging central business district (CBD) could command the highest rental and purchase prices
  • The intersection where the major mass transit lines converged was called the peak land value intersection
  • Outside the CBD
  • Industry controlled land next to essential cargo routes
  • Lower-order commercial centers developed at the outlying intersections of the mass transit network
  • Light industries, and high-density apartment structures could afford and benefit from location along high-volume transit routes
  • Least accessible locations within the city were left for the least-competitive bidders
  • Automobile-Based Patterns
  • In the 1940s, automotive transportation became dominant in the movement of people
  • Goods and streetcar systems lost riders and were often converted to bus systems
  • Highway systems were extended outward after World War II
  • As wealthy and middle class families moved away from the city center, the zones shifted outward
  • Regional Differences
  • Only the oldest parts of eastern cities such as Old Quebec and Boston’s Beacon Hill still display remnants of the walking city
  • The density and design of the newer cities have been influenced primarily or exclusively by the automobile and motor truck, not by mass transit and railroads
  • Models of Urban Form
  • Mental maps
    • Help us summarize and make sense of the diverse places we’ve experienced in large cities
  • Concentric zone model
    • Developed by University of Chicago sociologists
    • Explain the structuring of U.S. cities, specifically ethnically diverse, mass transit–based cities like Chicago in the 1920s
    • Each type of land use and each residential group tends to move outward into the next outer zone as the city matures and expands
  • The common starting point of the early models is the distinctive CBD found in every older central city
  • Peripheral model (galaxy model)
    • The major changes in urban form that have taken place since World War II, especially the suburbanization of what were once central city functions

11.7 Social Areas of Cities

• Early models of U.S. cities are evident in the observed social segregation within urban areas
• Social Status
  • Social status of an individual or a family is determined by income, education, occupation, and home value
  • May differ due to cultures
  • Social status divisions are often perpetuated by political boundaries between separate municipalities or school districts nowadays
• Family Status
  • Singles, young professionals without children, and older people whose children have left home live close to the city center
  • Arrangement that emerges is a set of concentric circles divided according to family status
• Ethnicity
  • Ethnicity is a more important factor in residential location than social or family status
  • Some ethnic groups, cultural segregation is both sought and vigorously defended
  • Certain ethnic or racial groups, especially African Americans, have had segregation forced on them
  • This occurs through housing discrimination or real estate agents who “steer” people of certain racial and ethnic groups into neighborhoods that the agents think are appropriate
• Institutional Controls
  • They have strongly influenced the land-use arrangements and growth patterns of most U.S. cities
  • Have been designed to assure an orderly pattern of urban development
  • Are based on broad applications of the police powers of municipalities to ensure public health, safety, and well-being
  • Nonmarket controls on land use are designed to minimize incompatibilities

11.8 Changes in Urban Form

• Suburbanization and Edge Cities
  • Two most prominent patterns of change were metropolitan growth and, within metropolitan areas, suburbanization
  • When developers were converting open land to urban uses at the rate of 80 hectares (200 acres) an hour Suburban expansion reached its maximum
  • Edge cities now exist in all regions of the urbanized United States
• Central City Decline
  • The dominance of the CBD was based on its being the focus of urban mass-transit
  • Redistribution of population caused by suburbanization resulted in both spatial and political segregation of social groups
  • These newer “automobile” metropolises placed few restrictions on physical expansion
• Central City Renewal and Gentrification
  • Central cities hit their low point in the 1970s when New York City went bankrupt
  • Pundits proclaimed the end of cities as the latest digital communications technologies would eliminate the need for face-to-face interaction
  • Some of the new office workers chose to live in central city neighborhoods that offer residential revival called gentrification
  • By purchasing and renovating houses in struggling neighborhoods, immigrants have helped revitalize many inner-city neighborhoods

11.9 World Urban Diversity

• The West European City
  • Western European cities are unique historically and culturally share certain common features
  • Residential streets of the older sections tend to be narrow, and front, side, or rear yards or gardens are rare
  • European cities also enjoy a long historical tradition
• Eastern European Cities
  • Russia and the former European republics of the Soviet Union, once part of the communist world, make up a separate urban class
  • Post-communist cities share many of the traditions and practices of West European cities
  • The planned city of the communist era is compact, with relatively high building and population densities
• Rapidly Growing Cities of the Developing World
  • Fastest-growing cities and the fastest-growing urban populations are found in the developing world
  • Influences of the Past
  • Cities in developing countries' legacies and purposes influence their urban forms
  • The product of colonialism, established as ports or outposts of administration and exploitation
  • Urban structure is a product not just of the time when a city was founded, or who the founders were, but also of the role it plays in its own cultural setting
• Urban Primacy and Rapid Growth
  • The population of many developing countries is disproportionately concentrated in their national and regional capitals
  • Squatter Settlements
  • Most developing-world cities are ringed by vast, high-density squatter settlements
  • A substantial proportion of the population of most developing world cities is crowded into squatter settlements built by their inhabitants
  • Latin American City Model
  • At the center is the:
    • Traditional market area
    • Key government and religious buildings
    • Modern CBD
  • Outward from the center is a commercial spine that features high-status establishments and terminates at a suburban mall
  • Squatter settlements are found at the urban periphery and in disamenity zones
    • Near dumps
    • In flood-prone areas
    • steep slopes
  • Planned Cities
  • Some national capitals have been removed from their earlier primate city sites and relocated outside the core regions of their countries
  • Other relocations have been planned or announced for example:
    • South Korea’s primary government administrative agencies 150 kilometers (93 miles) to the southeast of Seoul
  • A number of developing countries have also created or are currently building some new cities
    • This is because they want to draw population away from overgrown metropolises

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