Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land Use

This unit focuses on the origins and influences, particularly site and situation, of urban settlement. Some of the development understanding for this unit includes:

• Spatial distribution of the world's largest cities, comparing them across regions and analyzing patterns of connectivity and accessibility

• Patterns of development and make inferences about their economic and political influences at regional, national, and international levels of scale

• Hierarchy of urban settlements on the landscape, applying the rank-size rule and central place theory at regional and national scales to evaluate mobility patterns and economic and political relationships

• Patterns of change over time and modern challenges to sustainability from urban growth