Site And
Situation
Site
• The Site of a settlement describes the physical
nature of where it is located.
• Factors such as water supply, building
materials, quality of soil, climate, shelter and
defence were all considered when settlements
were first established.
• For instance the site of Sydney, in Australia,
initially took advantage of the excellent
natural harbour and surrounding fertile
farmland.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
1 - Protection / Defence
It was especially important to protect settlements from those who
wished to attack. A good vantage point to watch for this was a hill,
and many castles and forts were built on hills to watch for attackers.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
2 – Plenty of Water
Washing, drinking and cooking all need water, and it was vital
to have an adequate supply especially during the summer.
Rivers are also good for transport. Springs, wells and rivers
provided supplies.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
3 – Not Too Much Water
It was important then and is still important to ensure that
settlements are not built on areas that will flood, or are
marshy (paludoso) (as the settlement will sink). This isn't
always possible to see, particularly if the floods only
occur every few years, or there isn't a flood whilst
building the settlement.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
4 – Rivers
Rivers can be useful supplies of water in themselves, or
agents of flooding. But what is important about rivers as
a site factor is that they can be crossed, either by bridge
or ford (guado). A river that couldn't be crossed would
have been a problem for early settlements, if they
couldn't escape across a river during an attack. Rivers can
now be crossed by building bridges, but these are
expensive.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
5 – Building Materials
Either wood or stone was needed to build early
settlements, so a forest, wood or hillside with
crags was needed to provide the materials. This is
not so important today, as houses are built of
brick and slate, which are easily provided.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
6 – Supply of Wood
Not as important today, but early
settlements would need wood for fuel.
It was therefore vital that the
settlement was near trees.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
7 – Flat Land
It is extremely difficult to build a settlement on land with
a gradient (such as a hillside) and so land should be flat
wherever possible. This should not be confused, as it
often is, with low-lying land: the top of a high hill or
plateau could be flat too. It is possible to build a
settlement now on a gradient, but it is much more time
consuming and expensive.
Variation 1:
SITE FACTORS
8 – Shelter (riparo)
It is important the direction that the settlement
faces, and this is geographically known as aspect.
In early settlements, it was important that
agricultural land faced south so that the sun
shone directly on the land. Building a settlement
in a valley provided a way to keep out of harsh
winter winds.
Aspect
• Aspect relates to the direction in which the land
faces.
• In the Northern Hemisphere the best slopes to locate
on are those that face south, as they will receive the
most sunshine, and therefore be best for agriculture.
• This can be seen clearly in many of the valleys of the
Alps, where settlements have located on the southfacing slopes.
Shelter
• Shelter is also very important, particularly from
the cold northerly winds and prevailing
southwesterly winds in the UK.
• A good example of settlements being sheltered by
their natural surroundings are the many springline settlements found along the base of the chalk
escarpments of the North and South Downs.
• These settlements would also have benefited from
the good water source and fertile farmland
nearby.
Water Supply
• A supply of water was probably the single
most important factor in deciding where a
settlement might be located.
• Not only do rivers provide a source of clean
drinking water, they also provided a food
source through fishing, and a transport route.
• Most of the world's largest cities are located
on rivers, especially the point at which they
reach the sea, as this was often the first point
that explorers landed.
Dry Point Sites
• Water is vital to a settlement and is the most
common factor behind their location.
• A dry point site is one that is slightly raised
from the surrounding area, meaning that it is
less likely to flood.
• Ely in Norfolk is a good example of this.
Wet Point Sites
• This refers to any site that has access to water,
usually through being beside a river.
• Towns would either grow up along the river or
clustered near the point at which the river enters the
sea.
• Examples of wet point sites include the towns and
villages of the Welsh valleys, which tend to extend
along the flat valley floor, rather than up the steep
valley sides.
• Spring line settlements in the North and South
Downs are also good examples of wet point sites.
Defence
• In medieval times defence was one of the most
important factors influencing the site of a settlement.
• The relief (shape) of the land often proved to be the
best form of defence.
• Edinburgh castle sits on the top of a glacial crag, in an
almost perfect position to defend itself, with very little
chance for the attackers.
• In Italy, there are many walled hill-top villages, whilst
the Maoris in New Zealand built their settlements
(called Pa's) on the top of steep hills to prevent being
attacked.
Defence
• The other common natural feature used for
defence is water, and in particular rivers.
• Both Shrewsbury and Durham are very good
examples of where a meander of the river has
formed an area of land bounded (circondata)
by water on three sides.
• This provided both cities with excellent
defences, as they only had a thin neck of land
to defend.
Resources
• The idea of resources covers a huge number of
different things.
• For early settlers the most important resources
were fuel, building materialsand food.
• Settlements grew in areas where wood was
plentiful, stone easily accessible and good soil
allowed agriculture to be developed.
• Since those early days of settlement many different
resources have become the focal points for the
growth of urban areas.
Mining
• The coal mines of South Wales, Tin mines
of Cornwall and large mining projects as
seen at Carajas in Northern Brazil, have
all encouraged the rapid growth of
settlements aimed at housing the
workers and providing them with all that
they require.
Food, Oil, And Metals
• The farming area of East Anglia is one example of
how small settlements will locate in areas
conducive to good agriculture.
• Settlements in Alaska and the Middle East have
grown rapidly on the back of the oil industry.
• Settlements in South Africa have grown after the
discovery of large deposits of precious metals such
as gold. The most famous settlement to grow due
to finding gold is San Francisco, after the gold rush
to California in 1849.
Site
Characteristics
Route Centres
• Route centres are often called Nodal Points.
• Anywhere where two routes meet has great
potential for settlement.
• Often these are formed by the meeting of two
valleys, but settlement nowadays will grow where
two main roads meet.
• In the UK, York is a good example of a route centre.
• Birmingham also enjoys a very good location, where
many routes join up, and this is one of the reasons
for its growth to become one of the largest cities in
the UK.
Bridging Points
• Just as water is very important for drinking, fishing,
irrigation and navigation, so the ability to cross the rivers
is also very important.
• Many towns and cities have built up at points where it
was easiest to cross a large river.
• Exeter is one such example, crossing the river Exe.
• However one of the best examples is Paris in France.
• The original town was based on the tiny Ile dela Cite,
which is an island in the middle of the River Seine.
• This island meant they could build two small bridges
across the river rather than one large one.
Benefits
• The new settlement also benefited from all
the other advantages associated with being
beside a river, as well as becoming a route
centre due it being one of the only places to
cross the river.
• Nowadays the island has been engulfed by the
huge city that Paris has become, however it
does still have many bridges going to it and is
the point where the huge Notre Dame
Cathedral is built.
The Confluence Has 2 Rivers
• Just as two valleys, or roads, make a nodal
point for settlement growth, so do two rivers
joining.
• One such example is found in Khartoum in
Sudan, where the Blue and the White Nile
meet.
Situation
• The situation of a settlement is the description of the settlement
in relation to the other settlements and physical features around
it.
• The situation of a settlement is the most important in determining
whether it grows to become a large city or stays as a small town
or village.
• In the UK, Birmingham is an example of a city with an excellent
situation.
• It is located central to the country, with excellent links by road to
the North and South to London.
• As cities begin to fulfil different functions their importance can
increase or decrease.
• Their situation plays an important part in deciding which of these
will occur.
Variation 2: SITUATION
The location of a settlement in relation to the
surrounding area.
E. g. ‘near a bridging point’ or ‘on a route centre’.
Variation 4: FORM
The shape of the settlement.
There are six forms shown on your handout which will now be covered in detail.
Add any extra notes to your sheet.
Variation 3: FUNCTION
The purpose for which the settlement grew
up.
E. g. port, ecclesiastical centre, regional centre, industrial centre, newtown, etc.
Variation 4: FORM
1 – Isolated
This is usually a farmhouse found
either in areas of extreme
adverse physical conditions or in
areas of pioneer settlement
where land was divided into
planned lots.
Variation 4: FORM
2 – Dispersed
This consists of 2 - 3 buildings, perhaps
forming a hamlet, and separated from the
next small group of buildings by 2 - 3 km.
Variation 4: FORM
3 – Nucleated
Buildings grouped together, originally for
defensive purposes as well as for social and
economic reasons. Usually found around a crossroads
Variation 4: FORM
4 – Loose Knit
When houses are built near each other and are obviously in
the same settlement, but there is spaces between them
.
Similar to the nucleated type, but the
buildings are not so close together. They are
spread out around the settlement.
Variation 4: FORM
5 – Lineated
The buildings in this type of settlement are
strung out along a road, river, dyke or canal
in a line.
Variation 4: FORM
6 – Planned
These are near enough to large cities to house the workforce. Tend
to contain small crescent shaped estates (complesso abitativo,
tenuta) with individual buildings on.
Urban
Hierarchies
There are many different types of settlement, but these can
roughly be divided into rural and urban settlements.
Rural Settlements: Settlements that are found in the
countryside (rural areas) and contain less than 10,000
residents.
Urban Settlements: Settlements that contain more
than 10,000 residents.
Isolated Building (or dwelling): A single building. An
isolated building is normally a farm.
Hamlet: A small group of houses, normally about 5 to 10.
There is often no services in a hamlet.
Village: A settlement of up to 10,000 people. Villages will
have some services in them like small shops, a primary
school, a doctors surgery, bus routes.
Town: A settlement of
over 10,000 people that has not be designated
a city.
City: A large town, in the UK a town becomes a city when it has a
cathedral in it.
Capital City: The main administrative centre within a country and the
home of the national government.
Primate City: The largest and most important city within a country.
The primate city will often have double the population of the next
most important city.
Most of the time the primate city is also the capital city, but there
are some famous exceptions e.g. New York, Sydney and Sao Paolo.
Conurbation: Two or more towns or cities that have joined to
together e.g. Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley and Wolverhampton in
England.
Megalopolis: A conurbation or a clustering of cities with a population
of over 10 million people e.g. Tokyo.
Hierarchy
The hierarchy of a settlement normally depends on three variables:
The size of population
The range and number of services
The sphere of influence
Obviously these three variables are very much interconnected. For services to be
offered there has to be a minimum threshold population. When services are then
offered more people are attracted. As more people are attracted more services
are offered and the sphere of influence increases.
As you move down the settlement hierarchy the number of settlements increase.
For example you only get one capital city (near the top of the hierarchy) in each
country, but you get thousands of isolated buildings (farms - near the bottom of
the hierarchy) in every country.
PULL FACTORS (Why people are attracted to another place)
•Better job opportunities
•Electricity and a better standard of living
•EDUCATION for themselves and their children – education is seen as the way out of
the poverty trap
•HOSPITALS – better health care and vaccinations
•Feel safe – police force
PUSH FACTORS (Why people leave a particular area)
•Disease
•To escape a natural disaster
•Not enough land to go around
•Large family sizes and absence of contraception (condoms,pill) means that there are
many unemployed
•Crop failure – people are starving so flee to the city to start a new life
•Lack of government investment in rurul areas
•Heard of friends / family who have “made it” in the city and so go and join them
What Are They?
• Settlements can be described as being part of
the urban hierarchy.
• Where they stand on the hierarchy depends
on a number of factors, the main ones being
population, the number of services a
settlement has and its sphere of influence.
Population
• The most obvious way of deciding where a
settlement ranks on the urban hierarchy is by
using the population of that settlement.
• The larger the population, the higher the
settlement is placed on the hierarchy.
• In the UK, the largest city in terms of
population is London, which most people
would agree is the most important settlement
in the country and so deserves to be placed on
the top of the urban hierarchy for the UK.
Population
• After that the divisions between what is classified in
each layer is a bit more vague.
• Different sources will have different numbers for how
many people are needed for a place to be called a
city rather than a town for instance.
• However the most important thing to notice on the
diagram is that as you go up the hierarchy, there
becomes a lot less of that type of settlement.
• So, the diagram shows us that there are huge
numbers of isolated farmhouses and hamlets.
• There are less villages and small towns and so on.
Settlement Hierarchy
Services And
Functions
Services
• Services are things such as retailers
(commercianti al minuto, shops), professionals
(doctors, lawyers etc), entertainment (tempo
libero), government functions and leisure
(svago).
• The theory goes that the larger a settlement
is, and therefore the higher it is on the urban
hierarchy, the more services and functions it
will have.
Size
• In general in the UK, this is the case. London is the
settlement at the top of the urban hierarchy, and it has the
greatest numbers of services and functions of any
settlement in the country.
• For instance, it has the major international airports, it is the
seat of national government, it has the widest range of
shops, including very specialist ones, and it has the most
renowned (rinomato) professional services.
• This is because its population is large enough to support all
of the services.
• A small village may on the other hand only have the
population to support a pub, post office, village store and
perhaps a small garage.
Villages
• Villages and other rural settlements have found
over the last 20 years that it has been increasingly
hard for services to remain viable in these
settlements.
• Small post offices and banks have frequently been
closed down, as there are simply not enough
people using them to make them viable.
• The number of services (functions) that a town
provides normally relates to the number of people
living there.
• There are however, two noted anomalies.
Anomoly A
• A Tourist town: Towns, such as Brighton, Blackpool and
Eastbourne, that have grown due to the tourist industry,
often have more services than their population suggests
they should have.
• This is because many of their services are catering for the
huge numbers of tourists who flood into the towns during
the summer months.
• Hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, beach shops and ice cream
stalls all are aimed to provide services for the tourists.
• The extra tourist numbers swell the total population during
the summer to a level that is more appropriate for the
number of services provided.
Anomoly B
• A Commuter Settlement: Many rural villages
are becoming commuter centres, where
people live, but work elsewhere.
• Many villages and towns around the London
area fulfil (svolgere, completare) this function.
Commuter Settlements
• Have a large resident population, but as very few of
them actually work in the village, there is nobody to
support any services.
• The commuters will do their shopping and banking in
the city where they work.
• This means that these settlements will have fewer
services than their population suggests they should
have.
• Some commuter settlements are changing their services
to cater for the different residents, with restaurants and
cafes replacing the traditional village services.
Sphere Of
Influence
What Is It?
• The sphere of influence of a settlement
describes the area that is served by a
settlement, for a particular function.
• Its sphere of influence for different functions
may cover vastly different areas.
• For instance a supermarket may attract people
from a 20-mile radius, whilst a leisure (tempo
libero) activity, such as going to the theatre
may attract them from far further away.
What Does This Mean?
• A small village may only have a village store selling the
daily newspaper and food such as bread and milk
• People will only travel the shortest distance they need to
buy these products.
• They are described as being convenience goods.
• In other words, something that you can buy easily and
for the same price all over the place.
Comparison Goods
• A larger town would have a wider sphere of
influence because it would have shops and
services that are more specialist, and so
people would be willing to travel further to
use them.
• An example might be a furniture shop.
• This sells comparison goods, in other words
products that you might shop around for
before going ahead and buying something.
Range
• The range of a good or service describes the
maximum distance that someone would be
willing to travel to obtain that good or service.
• A newspaper shop has a small range because
people will not travel far to use them.
• A cinema has a much wider range as people
are prepared to travel much further to go to it.
Threshold Population
• The threshold population of a good or service
is the minimum number of people needed to
allow that shop or service to be successful.
• A newsagent will have a small threshold,
where as a supermarket like Tesco's needs a
much larger population before it can consider
opening a store.
Settlement
Functions
Function
• These can be grouped into a number of headings,
such as residential,recreational, retail,
government, entertainment andindustrial.
• Some settlements have one predominant function.
• This was particularly thecase when settlements
were first established.
• Some towns performed important defensive
functions, others were ports and others were
important route centres for further exploration of a
country (such as the gateway cities of Canada e.g.
Calgary and Edmonton).
Multi-Functional
• Most settlements now are multi-functional,
which means that they perform a range of
different functions, however some may be
more important than others to a particular
settlement.
• For instance a tourist town will perform all
sorts of functions, but its main ones are
concentrated towards the tourists.
What Happens?
• Many settlements around the world have
found that their functions have had to change
over time.
• One such example is that of small farming
villages finding that their residents are moving
out to find jobs in the cities.
What Happens?
• This leaves the village empty, apart from the
older population.
• The village then may become a retirement
centre, or commuters (pendolari) may move in
and it could become a commuter village.
• Two good examples of the changing functions
of a settlement can be seen in Benidorm
(Spain) and the South Wales mining towns.
Urban Models
For MEDC’s
What Are They?
• Often in geography models are used to try to
explain something that we can see in the
physical environment.
• During the 20th century a number of models
were developed to try to explain how urban
areas grew.
• Although models show a very general idea of
the shape of the city, all of the ones described
here have aspects that can be seen in most
cities in the developed and developing world.
Burgess
Urban Structure
What do you need to know today?
1.
Differences in the structure of urban areas can lead to
differences in the quality of life of the inhabitants.
2. Urban models attempt to show those differences.
Urban Model 1:
Burgess’ Concentric Zone Model
Burgess suggested that towns
grew outward from the centre in
a concentric pattern. This means
that buildings become more
recent closer to the edge
(margine) of a city. It is possible
that up to 5 rings may develop:
A - Central Business District (CBD):
- most accessible to the largest number of
people
- contains services such as shops, offices,
banks, etc.
- multi-storey buildings as land is very
expensive (build upwards to save cost)
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT
Urban Model 1:
Burgess’ Concentric Zone Model
B - ‘Twilight Zone (zona di transizione)’ has 2 sections:
1 - wholesale light manufacturing
(transitional)
2 - low class residential (old inner city areas):
- 19 Century terraced buildings
- no gardens
- cheap, dirty slum areas
- GRID IRON street pattern
- high rise blocks were built after slums were
pulled down
- attract crime
- old industries found here
Inner City
INNER CITY HOUSING: SMALL, RUN DOWN, OLD, UGLY, CHEAP = TERRACED (SEVERAL
LINKED)
£49,500 INNER CITY
Urban Model 1:
Burgess’ Concentric Zone Model
C - Council Estates:
Semi-detached housing with gardens in large
estates. Less expensive private estates also
here. Not top quality (medium class
residential). INTER WAR AREA
D - Commuter Zone:
High class residential area. Private, top
quality housing. Detached and semidetached on cheap land. People can live
here as are prepared to pay to get to work.
INNER SUBURBS - Medium Quality Residential
OUTER SUBURBS - High CLASS RESIDENTIAL
£695,000
Urban Model 1:
Burgess’ Concentric Zone Model
E - Countryside Areas
(suburb / exurbs):
Countryside surrounding the urban area.
Can also contain villages / hamlets in
which town / city workers live.
Countryside and Greenbelt land
City Transect (sezione)
Increase in vegetation
This city transect shows a cross section through a city. The CBD is located in the centre
of the diagram and the other areas are clearly marked. On your diagram, add 10
labelled arrows which show changes in the three quality of life environments towards
and away from the centre of the city. Examples: traffic, costs, vegetation, etc.
City Transect
Examples of labels
Increase in vegetation
Decrease in traffic congestion
Increase in housing cost
Decrease in land costs
Decrease in services
Increase in building height
Increase in crime
Decrease in space
Increase in competition for land
Decrease in car ownership
Burgess
• Burgess based his model on the city of Chicago.
• At its core is the CBD, or Central Business District.
• This is the area with the highest land price, which
could only be afforded by businesses.
• Around this is the zone of transition, which is where
industry located.
• In many cities in the UK, such as Birmingham, this
zone can be quite easily identified.
• However in most cases the industry has moved out,
leaving the zone empty and in need of renewal.
Burgess
• Beyond the zone of transition are the rings of residential
housing.
• As people became more wealthy they could afford to live
further out of town, in bigger houses, with larger gardens.
• The houses closest to the centre originally would have
housed the workers for the inner city industries.
• Many British cities still have many of these terraced
houses remaining.
• As people moved away from the CBD, the houses closest
to the centre would be taken by newly arrived immigrants
to the city, either from elsewhere in the country or
abroad.
Hoyt’s Sector Model
Urban Model 2:
Hoyts’ Sector Model
Hoyt proposed the idea that towns grew as sectors
or "wedges (spicchi)". That means that if, for
example, industry grew up in one part of a 19th
century town, future industry would then develop
in that sector. As the town grew, so would the area
of industry and therefore it would grow out in a
wedge shape.
A – Central Business District
B1 – Wholesale Light Manufacturing
B2 – Low Class Residential
C – Council Estates
D – Commuter Zone (Suburbs)
E - Countryside
Hoyt
• The sector model has a similar idea of a CBD to
Burgess.
• This is still the area with the highest land price.
• Hoyt then used transport routes to determine where
his other sectors would be located.
• He still had a zone of transition around the CBD, but he
also had industry fanning out from the centre along
major transport routes.
• He assumed that "Like would attract like", which is why
he decided that land-uses would concentrate to form
sectors, rather being in rings, like Burgess thought.
Hoyt
• The lowest class housing would be closest to
the industry, and probably be located where
the prevailing winds would blow the pollution
towards them (and away from the higher class
housing).
• The high class housing also is in a sector of its
own, running all the way from the CBD, where
many of the residents would work, to the
outer suburbs.
Case Study:
Urbanisation In
Cairo, Egypt
()
Push Factors - from
countryside
• Drought in desert
• unreliable weather, bad
for growing crops, no
water.
• Unreliable (inaffidabili,
scarse) water supply,
runs out.
• no jobs
• unpleasant conditions
Pull Factors - to urban areas
• Irrigated, fertile land
on the Nile delta
• reliable water supply
• “bright lights of city”
effect
• job opportunities
• inertia - if people
move, others will
follow
• New, modern
European additions
to the city, such as
Parisian style
boulevards and
commercial
centres, as well as
bridges and
transport links.
• New suburbs built.
• Egypt becomes free
of European
control.
Urban Problems
• Strain on services demand for piped
water, sewers
(fognature), schools,
paved roads and
electricity.
• Traffic congestion, air
pollution and water
pollution
• housing shortages people live in The City of
the Dead = old cemetary
• Lack of permanent jobs
• illegal housing is built on ‘green’ land, and
protected farmland
• overcrowding, lack of basic sanitation and
poor refuse collection, in temperatures of
40oC +, leads to disease and illness.
• 3 million people now live in the city of the
dead in the tombs of old Cairo
• people are squatters on rooftops of office
buildings and flats in home made huts
• Private landlords illegally add extra storeys to
their existing blocks of flats
• rich poor imbalance - very few rich, many poor
• no enforcement of catalytic converters on cars,
or unleaded fuel, this leads to toxic smog
• low pay for jobs, and unskilled jobs are hard to
come by
• polluted sewage water raises the water table,
and rots the foundations of buildings
Solutions
• Gentrification
(bonifica) improving city
• building a new
sewage (raccolta
• Dei liquami di
scarico) di system
(greater Cairo
sewage project)
• Zabbaleen people
given official
contract to collect
waste and sewage
• New satellite and
dormitory town are
built in areas around
Cairo
• a massive new ring
road and metro
system have been
built
• waste is seen as a
resource
• a drop in birth rate
may be the best
solution long-term
Urban Structure
What do you need to know today?
1.
Differences in the structure of urban areas can lead to
differences in the quality of life of the inhabitants.
2. Urban models attempt to show those differences.
Harris And Ulman’s Multiple Nuclei Model
Harris And Ulman
• This model was aimed at being more specific
than the other two, however it also has
become more complicated.
• Harris and Ullman still have a central CBD, but
they also have other smaller centres
performing specific functions that Hoyt and
Burgess decided would have been found in
and around the CBD
• Thus Harris & Ullman also have a
business centre, and industrial parks.
Harris And Ulman
• Large cities do display some of these characteristics.
• London has different areas of its centre that have
different functions: the City, Westminster, Oxford
Street and the West End all have differing specific
functions.
• London has also grown to engulf other towns and
villages, which have become smaller CBD's within the
whole of Greater London.
• These CBD's act as growth poles, meaning that the
city does not just grow from one central point, but
from many spread around its area.
Urban Models
For LEDC’s
Waugh’s Model
What Is It All About?
• Based on cities of the developing world, using some of
the ideas found in the MEDC models, but also
incorporating the urban features only found in LEDC
cities.
• The CBD is still central to the urban area, and is the area
of highest land price.
• However around it is the most expensive residential
areas.
• In some places, such as Sao Paulo, this means huge
luxurious high-rise apartment blocks, whilst in others,
such as Delhi, the former colonial areas are the most
lucrative in which to own property.
What Is It All About?
• Industrial development is along major transport
routes, whilst there are also sectors of high-class
housing.
• The most striking difference between the LEDC
model and the MEDC models is the remaining
residential areas. They have been divided into
three sections.The periferia are low class, poor
quality houses. However they do have limited
amenities and are permanent homes.
What Is It All About?
• The favelas or shanty towns are illegal
settlements, where the houses are built from
what ever the people can find, and there are
no basic amenities.
• In some cities, such as Sao Paulo, schemes
have been introduced to help the residents of
the favelas, and these people can be found in
the sector of housing improvements schemes.
Urban Zoning
Urban Line Transect
Outer
Suburbs
Inner
Suburbs
Inner
City
CBD
Inner
City
Inner
Suburbs
Outer
Suburbs
Transect
• By drawing a transect of a city, you can quite
easily identify the different zones, in much the
same way as Burgess and the other theorists
did.
• Transects help you to identify and classify
zones, enabling you to compare the
characteristics of each area.
• You can identify the CBD, the older terraced
housing, and as you move further from the
city centre the newer housing of the suburbs.
The CBD
• The focal point of the city, with the highest land
prices.
• The CBD is where shops will locate as they know it is
the most accessible point for the people of the city.
• The high land prices mean that buildings tend to
grow upwards, and this is why CBD's often have tall
skyscrapers, particularly in American cities.
• The main functions of the CBD will include retail,
entertainment, financial services and other
professional services.
The Inner City
• This is Burgess's zone of transition.
• The inner city in the 19th Century would have
been the centre of industry for most cities.
• Low paid workers would have lived in the many
rows of terraced houses that were built beside
the factories.
• Nowadays, although the factories have gone,
many of the terraced houses remain.
• The Inner city of many urban areas has
undergone great changes.
The Inner City
• These are covered in detail in a later section.
However once the industry moved out, the inner
cities became areas in need of redevelopment.
• The first plan was to build tall blocks of flats to
replace the terraces.
• This occurred in the 1960's and 1970's.
• During the 1990's Inner City redevelopment has
taken the form of gentrification schemes aimed at
rejuvenating the area, producing more of a
community spirit, whilst trying to keep some of the
old architecture.
The Suburbs
• Many suburban houses were built in the
period between the two World Wars, during
the first half of the 20th century.
• Estates full of detached and semi-detached
houses grew rapidly as public and private
transport improvements allowed people to
live further away from their place of work.
• During the 1960's and 1970's these areas also
continued to grow.
The Rural-Urban Fringe
• The rural-urban fringe is where most of the
post war housing has been built.
• Usually in estates of mainly detached and
semi-detached houses, the emphasis has
often been on making the houses as spacious
as possible.
• Again these housing developments were only
possible thanks to the fact that most families
now own at least one car.
Urbanisation
CBD Problems And Solutions
Urbanisation: (= an increasing number of people living
in urban areas (cities)). There are 3 main causes of this:
1. People migrating from the countryside to the
city (common in LEDCs – eg Mexico City)
2. People migrating from other countries
(international migration)
3. More babies born to the people who migrate
to the city – who are generally young anyway
In MEDCs the reverse is often occuring where
people are moving from the city into the
countryside = COUNTER-URBANIZATION
Congestion
• Many British cities still have street plans that were laid
down hundreds of years ago.
• The roads cannot cope with the ever-increasing numbers
of cars and other vehicles.
• This can cause massive congestion problems, especially
at "rush hour".
• Solutions to the problems have included improving public
transport (e.g. the trams of Manchester); introducing
park and ride schemes (e.g. Oxford); pedestrianisation
(e.g. Exeter & Oxford); encouraging people to share cars
into work and building ring roads (e.g. Watford).
Congestion
• In Athens (Greece) they have tried an extreme
form of control by only allowing cars with odd
numbers on their number plates into the city
on one day, and then cars with even numbers
the next day.
• Unfortunately this has led many people to
own two cars, one with an odd number and
one with an even one!
Lack Of Space
• CBD’s are limited in their outwards growth by
the fact that the city encompasses them, and
due to the fact that businesses want to locate
as close to the centre as they possibly can.
• This has led to land prices rising to
astronomical amounts.
• The only solution seen by most businesses is
to build upwards, which is why CBD's can be
characterised by the presence of skyscrapers.
Pollution
• The major pollution seen in urban areas is air
pollution, or smog. This pollution is mainly
caused by the fumes given off by traffic and
industry.
• The most famous example of where this
pollution haze can be seen is over Los Angeles,
but most of the large cities of the world
experience it too. Poor air quality can lead to
an increase in the cases of asthma and
bronchitis.
Pollution
• Air is not the only thing polluted in cities.
Water can be badly polluted, and so has to be
carefully treated before being drunk.
• It’s a horrible thought, but most of the water
that you drink in London has already been
drunk by 7 other people!
• Solutions to pollution problems include:
banning heavy vehicles from CBD's;
developing cleaner fuels, and providing more
litter bins in CBD's.