What are Supranational Organizations, and What is the Future of the State?
Supranational Organizations
A separate entity composed of three or more states that forge an association and
form an administrative structure for mutual benefit in pursuit of shared goals.
Regional Scale – The European Union
How does Supranationalism affect the State?
Urban Geography
Chapter 9
When and Why did People Start Living in Cities?
Cities
•City – a conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a
center of politics, culture, and economics.
Urban:
The buildup of the central city and the suburban realm – the city and the
surrounding environs connected to the city.
Percent Urban by Region
The First Urban Revolution
Agricultural Villages
•Before urbanization, people often clustered in agricultural villages –
a relatively small, egalitarian village, where most of the population was
involved in agriculture. About 10,000 years ago, people began living in agricultural
villages
The First Urban Revolution
Two components enable the
formation of cities:
1.
2.
an agricultural surplus
social stratification
(a leadership class)
Five Hearths of Urbanization
In each of these hearths, an agricultural surplus and social stratification created the
conditions necessary for cities to form and be maintained.
Five Hearths of Urbanization
•Mesopotamia, 3500 BCE
•Nile River Valley, 3200 BCE
•Indus River Valley, 2200 BCE
•Huang He and Wei River Valleys, 1500 BCE
•Mesoamerica, 200 BCE
Indus River Valley
Huang He and Wei River Valleys
The Chinese purposefully planned their cities.
- centered on a
vertical structure
- inner wall built
around center
- temples and
palaces for the
leadership class
Mesoamerica
Mayan and Aztec Civilizations
Many ancient cities were theocratic centers where rulers were deemed to have
divine authority and were god-kings.
Diffusion of Urbanization
The Greek Cities
by 500 BCE, Greeks were highly urbanized.
–Network of more than 500 cities and towns
–On the mainland and on islands
–Each city had an acropolis and an agora
Athens, Greece
Diffusion of Urbanization
The Roman Cities
a system of cities and small towns, linked together with hundreds of miles of
roads and sea routes.
–Sites of Roman cities were typically for trade
–A Roman city’s Forum combined the acropolis and agora into one space.
–Roman cities had extreme wealth and extreme poverty (between 1/3 and 2/3s of
empire’s population was enslaved)
Africa
•Urbanization first occurred about 3000 years ago in Africa
•Some pre-colonial cities still exist today
–Ibadan (Nigeria)
–Kano (Nigeria)
–Kumasi (Ghana)
–Mombasa (Kenya)
–Timbuktu (Mali)
The Second Urban Revolution
A large scale movement of people to cities to work in manufacturing. Made possible
by:
1.
second agricultural revolution that improved food production and
created a larger surplus
2.
resources
industrialization, which encouraged growth of cities near industrial
Where are Cities Located and Why?
Site and Situation
Site
* absolute location of a city
* a city’s static location, often chosen for trade, defense, or religion.
Situation
* relative location of a city
* a city’s place in the region and the world around it.
Trade area
Trade area – an adjacent region within which a city’s influence is dominant.
Primate City
The leading city of a country. The city is disproportionately larger than the rest of
the cities in the country.
For example: London, UK
Mexico City, Mexico
Paris, France
- the rank-size rule does not work for a country with a primate city
Central Place Theory
Walter Christaller developed a model to predict how and where central places in the
urban hierarchy (hamlets, villages, towns, and cities) would be functionally and
spatially distributed.
Hexagonal Hinterlands