Urban Geography
VII . Cities and Urban Land Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13–17%
A . Development and character of cities
1 . Origin of cities; site and situation characteristics
2 . Forces driving urbanization: growth and diffusion of city landscapes and urban lifestyle.
3 . Borchert’s epochs of urban transportation development: studies cities in the U.S. and linked historical changes to urban evolution.
-Stage 1: cities growth spurt during the "sail-wagon era" of 1790-1830, mostly near ports and waterways for transportation.
-Stage 2: "iron horse cities" were born and grew around the rivers and canals during the early industrial years of 1830-1870,
when the railroad and steam boats were rapidly spreading.
-Stage 3: "steel rail epoch" cities of 1870-1920 hit their growth spurt during the Industrial Revolution and, because of the steel
industry, these industrial cities blossomed, particularly around the Great Lakes.
-Stage 4: cities created around 1920 and were intricately linked to car and air travel, leading to a maze or road networks and
the rapid spread of suburbs. Large growth of these cities in the U.S. South.
4 . World cities: powerful cities that control a disproportionately high level of the world's economic, political, and cultural activities.
-EXAMPLES: New York, Tokyo, Paris
megacities: have a high degree of centrality and primacy, thereby exerting high levels of influences and power in their country's
economies. These cities have over 10 million inhabitants.
-EXAMPLES: Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City
5 . Suburbanization processes: growth of suburb neighborhoods and commuter families, and the continued flight of wealthier
classes out of the inner city.
B . Models of urban hierarchies: reasons for the distribution and size of cities
1 . Gravity model: mathematical formula that describes the level of interaction between two places, based on size of their
populations and their distance from each other.
2 . Christaller’s central place theory: Created in the 1930s by Walter Christaller as a means of studying the geographical patterns of
urban land use, specifically looking to explain and predict the pattern of urban places across the map. HEXAGONs
-threshold: minimum number of people needed to fuel a particular function's existence in a central place.
-range: maximum distance a person is willing to travel to obtain a good or service.
3 . Rank-size rule: states that the nth largest city's population size in a region is 1/n the size of the region's largest city's population.
-EXAMPLE: Largest city population is 1,000,000 and the 4th largets city is 250,000 people.
4 . Primate cities: disproportionately large city in a country that also dominates economic, political, and cultural functions.
-EXAMPLE: Buenos Aires is nearly 10 times the size of Rosario, the 2nd largest city.
C . Models of internal city structure and urban development: strengths and limitations of models
1 . Burgess concentric zone model: first model to explain and predict urban growth. As cities grow and expand, new rings are added
and older rings change their function and character. RINGs
-bid-rent curve: predicts that land prices and population density decline as distance from the CBD increases.
2 . Hoyt sector model: urban land-use zones of growth based on transportation routes and linear features like roads, canals,
railroads, etc.. Similar land uses and socioeconomic groups clumped in geometric sectors outward from the CBD along
transportation routes.
3 . Harris and Ullman multiple nuclei model: suggests that growth occurred independently around several major focal points, like
airports, universities, highway interchanges, and ports.
4 . Galactic city model: mini edge city that is connected to another city by beltways or highways.
5 . Models of cities in Latin America: CBD is most important. Wealth typically decreases as one moves outward from the downtown
area. Squatter settlements in rings outside of the CBD.
North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia
D . Built environment and social space
1 . Types of residential buildings
2 . Transportation and utility infrastructure
3 . Political organization of urban areas
4 . Urban planning and design (e.g., gated communities, New Urbanism (movement to bring together trends in healthy living, sustainable growth, and urban development), and smart-growth policies)
5 . Census data on urban ethnicity, gender, migration, and socioeconomic status
6 . Characteristics and types of edge cities (self-sufficient, urban villages that often develop at highway exits and are part of a larger metropolitan complex, example: Schaumburg): boomburgs, greenfields, uptowns
E . Contemporary urban issues
1 . Housing and insurance discrimination, and access to food stores
-blockbusting: real estate agents and developers used racism to "bust up" a block by bringing in a minority family into a
predominantly white neighborhood and then profiting from all of the real estate turnover that followed.
-racial steering: real estate agents would intentionally or unintentionally steer people to buy a home in a neighborhood based
on their race, which contributed to racially segregated housing patterns.
-redlining: when banks refuse to give loans to certain minority-occupied neighborhoods that were "redlines," a practice which
further entrenched these spaces into urban poverty.
2 . Changing demographic, employment, and social structures
3 . Uneven development: urban development that is not spread equally among a city's area, leaving some areas richly developed
and others continually poor and decrepit.
-cumulative causation: money flows to areas of greatest profit, places where development has already been focused, rather
than to places of greatest need.
zones of abandonment
disamenity: very poorest parts of cities that in extreme cases are not connected to regular city services and are controlled by gangs
and drug lords.
gentrification: process wherein older, urban zones are "rediscovered and renovated" by people who move back into the inner-city
from the suburban fringes.
4 . Suburban sprawl and urban sustainability problems: land and energy use, cost of expanding public education services, home financing and debt crises
5 . Urban environmental issues: transportation, sanitation, air and water quality, remediation of brownfields, and farmland protection
