Parts of an Urban Area
• central business district CBD
• zone of transition
• suburbs
Central business district
(CBD): the central nucleus of
commercial land uses in a city.
Activities and structures typically
found in a city’s Central Business
District (CBD):
CBD
Activities:
•Business services
•shops (retail)
•City government (court house)
Structures:
• the tallest buildings
• city
hall
•major
hotels
•museums
Why are these activities and structures located in
the CBD?
• Accessibility (can support services with a large
threshold and range)
Zone in transition: area of mixed commercial and
residential land uses surrounding the CBD.
• Warehouses
• Apartment buildings
• public housing
New York from Bronx
• Older residential neighborhoods
• gentrified buildings
Zone of transition: elderly in the Netherlands
Suburbs are
residential areas
surrounding a large
urban area.
People are attracted to suburbs in part because
suburbs are characterized by
private land surrounding the house.
The largest
percentage of the
U.S. population
lives in the
suburbs
Edge cities: nodal concentrations of shopping and
office space that are situated on the outer fringes of
metropolitan areas, typically near major highway
intersections.
FR What kinds of activities and structures are typically
found in Edge Cities?
FR How do CBDs and Edge Cities differ?
Edge cities:
suburban
downtowns
activities:
• Shopping
• office space/jobs
• Entertainment
Edge City: Tysons
Corner, Virginia
Edgecity
structures:
• Malls
• office parks
• movie theaters
• suburban housing
• major highway intersections.
A business/office park is an area of land in which many office
buildings are grouped together. These are popular in
many suburban locations, where it is cheaper to develop
land because of the lower land costs and the lower building
costs for building wider, not necessarily higher.
They are also often located near highways or
main roads.
Edge cities In
Southern
California:
_________
Examples:
Bid rent theory is a geographical economic theory
that refers to how the price and demand on real
estate changes as the distance towards the Central
Business District increases. It states that different
land users will compete with one another for land
close to the city center. This is based upon the idea
that retail establishments wish to maximize their
profitability, so they are much more willing to pay
more money for land close to the CBD and less for
land further away from this area. This theory is
based upon the reasoning that the more accessible an
area, the more profitable.
A great example of distance decay
Three urban land (structure) use models of North
American cities.
Burgess Concentric (has a common center/circles)
Zone Model, 1925
Burgess: Bulls eye
Chicago is a good location in which to
develop urban models because it is located
on a flat prairie.
Zone 1
• The central business district (CBD)
2 Zone of transition
• Rooming houses, small apartments, and
tenements attract the lowest income
segment
• Immigrants to the city first live in this zone
in small dwelling units.
• Example In
Southern
California:
_________
3 Zone of independent workers’ homes
• Located close to factories of zones 1 and 2
• Often characterized by ethnic neighborhoods —
blocks of immigrants who broke free from the
ghettos
• Spreading outward because of pressure from
transition zone and because blue-collar workers
demanded better housing
• Example In Southern California: ______________
4 Zone of better residence
• The fourth zone has newer and more
spacious houses for middle-class families.
• Established city dwellers, many of whom
moved outward with the first streetcar
network
• Commute to work in the CBD
• Example In Southern California:
______________
5 Commuter’s zone
• beyond the continuous built-up area of the
city.
• Some people who work in the center
nonetheless choose to live in smaller
suburbs.
• Located either on the farthest extension of
the trolley or commuter railroad lines
• Spacious lots and large houses
• Example In Southern
California:_________________________
Invasion and succession: a process of
neighborhood change whereby one social
(economic) or ethnic group succeeds
another in a residential area.
Eventually, people and economic activities in the
center are pushed out into farther rings. Invasion and
succession is essentially a series of migration waves,
with one group moving in and establishing itself.
Because of this constant invasion and
succession pattern, often a ring known as
the zone in transition forms just outside the
CBD. This ring never becomes developed
because investors know it will constantly be
caught in the shifting urban pattern.
Theory represented the American city in a new stage of development
Before the 1870s, cities such as New York had mixed neighborhoods
where merchants’ stores and sweatshop factories were intermingled
with mansions and hovels
Rich and poor, immigrant and native-born, rubbed shoulders in the
same neighborhoods
19th Century New York
• In Chicago, Burgess’s
home town, the great
fire of 1871 leveled the
core
• The result of
rebuilding was a more
explicit social
patterning
• Chicago became a
segregated city with a
concentric pattern
• This was the city
Burgess used for his
model
• Critics of the model
Pointed out even though portions
of each zone did exist, rarely were
they linked to totally surround the
city
• Burgess countered there were
distinct barriers, such as old
industrial centers, preventing the
completion of the arc
• Others felt Burgess, as a
sociologist, overemphasized
residential patterns and did not
give proper credit to other land
uses
Hoyt Sector Model
1939
• Cities that have not been
dominated by successive waves
of migrant or immigrant ethnic
groups tend to be organized
around the linear development
of two main features that grow
outward from the CBD:
• industrial districts
• high-class residential districts.
sectors or wedges
• Example In Southern California: _______________
Harris-Ulman
Multiple Nuclei Model: a city
is a complex structure that
includes more than one
center around which
activities revolve.
Outlying Business Districts,
and/or heavy manufacturing
are the other nuclei besides
the CBD
The multiple nuclei theory best explains why
different neighborhoods of a city attract
people of different
ethnic origin.
Integrated model of a
large U.S. city
FR Assess/evaluate the three
models of urban structure of
North American cities.
• If the models are combined they are useful.
• Most people live near others that have
similar characteristics.
Negative aspect of models (Feminist Critiques)
• They ignore dual-income families (Not all
households have a single bread winner who
commutes everyday)
• They ignore households headed by single women.
Most women seek employment locations
closer to their homes than do men, and this
applies to almost all women, not just those
with small children.
• Not all people have kids
• Some like to live in urban setting and see
suburban life as boring
These people are often called
Yuppies (short for "young urban professional" or
"young upwardly-mobile professional") is a term
that first came into use in the late 1980s which refers
to a financially secure, upper-middle-class young
person in their twenties or early thirties.
DINKS: Dual (or double) income, no kids.
Or DINKY Dual (or double) income, no kids yet.
DINK is sometimes used in reference to gay and
lesbian couples who are childless. This may also be
a more appropriate term for heterosexual couples
who prefer not to have children and consider
themselves childfree