
New field in 1920s called
human ecology based on
ideas from biology such as:
– Plant invasion
– Species succession
– Climax vegetation

Urban ecology: groups of
people occupy over time
different areas of the city like
different plant species

Burgess said the zones were
rings…
2. The Concentric-Zone Model

Proposed by Burgess – A sociologist at
the University of Chicago:
1925 book titled The City

Based on a study of land use patterns
and social group dynamics in Chicago

Geographically the city was visualized
like 5 or 6 major rings, such as from a
cross-section of a tree
Concentric zone model

A model with five zones.
– Zone 1
The central business district (CBD)
 Outer portion occupied by
commercial/industrial enterprises;
 Extension of trolley lines had a lot to do with
this pattern

Concentric zone model

A model with five zones.
– Zone 2
Characterized by mixed pattern of industrial and
residential land use
 Rooming houses, small apartments, and
tenements attract the lowest income segment
 Often includes slums and skid rows, many
ethnic ghettos began here
 Usually called the transition zone, think “social
disorganization”

Concentric zone model

A model with five zones.
– Zone 3
The “workingmen’s quarters”
 Solid blue-collar, located close to factories of zones
1 and 2
 More stable than the transition zone around the
CBD
 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

Concentric zone model

A model with five zones.
– Zone 4
Middle class area of “better housing”
residential hotels and better apartments;
 Established city dwellers, many of whom
moved outward with the first streetcar
network
 Commute to work in the CBD

Concentric zone model

A model with five zones.
– Zone 5
Consists of higher-income families clustered
together in older suburbs
 Located either on the farthest extension of
the trolley or commuter railroad lines
 Spacious lots and large houses
 From here the rich pressed outward to avoid
congestion and social heterogeneity caused
by expansion of zone 4

3. The Sector Model

This model proposed by a land
economist working for U.S. federal
government named Homer Hoyt

Based his model on a huge study of
housing values in more than 100
cities (1939)
He posited a CBD around which other
land uses cluster

3. The Sector Model

But important factor is not distance
from CBD as in the concentric zone
model, but direction away from CBD

Wedge-shaped land use zones: like
pieces of pie

Does the “side” of town matter in an
San Jose?
Sector model

Hoyt suggested high-rent sector would expand
according to four factors
– Moves from its point of origin near the CBD, along
established routes of travel, toward another nucleus of
high-rent buildings
– Will progress toward high ground or along waterfronts,
when these areas are not used for industry
– Will move along the route of fastest transportation
– Will move toward open space
Sector model

As high-rent sectors develop, areas between them
are filled in
– Middle-rent areas move directly next to them, drawing on
their prestige
– Low-rent areas fill remaining areas
– Moving away from major routes of travel, rents go from
high to low


There are distinct patterns in today’s cities that
echo Hoyt’s model
He had the advantage of writing later than Burgess
— in the age of the automobile
3. The Sector Model (continued)
1. CBD
2. Wholesale & Light
Manufacturing
3. Low-income Residential
4. Middle-Income Residential
5. High-Income Residential

SOURCE:
Which side is high-class residential?
Why?
http://www.geog.umontreal.ca/geotrans/eng/ch6
en/conc6en/sectornuclei.html

Adapted from: H. Carter (1995) Urban Geography
Why is lower-class residential
where
it isp.shown?
4 Edition.
London: Arnold,
126.

Discuss: Concept of “environmental justice”
th
3. The Sector Model
(continued)

This theory is particularly
good for residential land use

Both the concentric zone and sector
models are monocentric representations
of urban areas

How realistic are they for an auto-age
metropolis like Tucson or San Jose?
4. Multiple Nuclei Model

Developed by two geographers: Chauncey
Harris & Edward Ullman in 1945 based on
Seattle, Washington

Basic concept: cities don’t grow up around a
single core but have several nodes

CBD need not be at the center (!)

Proximity to other locations (universities,
airport, malls) can generate clusters of highintensity land use
4. Multiple Nuclei Model
CBD
2. Wholesale & Light
Manufacturing
3. Low-income Residential
4. Middle-Income Residential
5. High-Income Residential
6. Heavy Manufacturing
7. Outlying Business District
(Mall)
8. Residential Suburb
9. Industrial Suburb
1.
SOURCE:
http://www.geog.umontreal.ca/geotrans/eng/ch6en/conc6e
n/sectornuclei.html
POP QUIZ
Name ___________
Name that model:
Proposed by a land
economist, Homer Hoyt,
it posits that different
categories of housing
occupy wedge-shaped
areas radiating out from
the CBD…
Sector Model
Political economy and urban
sociology

Idea of scarcity of resources, not
enough of generally coveted goods and
benefits society produces for everyone
to get as much as they want, we can
look upon outcome of competition for
urban space in which wealthy individuals
and institutions prevail in different light
Political economy and
urban sociology

Political economy- study how political
decision-making and social policy
articulates with economic interests of
different social classes, how it
advantages or disadvantages particular
groups of actors.
Social Change

A series of urban riots in United States
during the decade of 1960s, economic
decline of central cities, and loss of
urban industrial jobs attracted
attention of critical urban analysis
(254).
Marxist perspective
Critical of traditional urban sociology,
of ecologists, and of those working in
urbanism tradition because nothing in
that body of work had anticipated
urban uprisings.
Criticisms of Ecological
Model

What Park, Burgess, Wirth, and others
in ecological school and urban
tradition should have focused on was
how a particular set of urban
structures and effects were produced
by capitalism.
Criticisms of Ecological
Model

Capitalism created forms of land-use
and massive cities that instilled
feelings of alienation and anomie.
Urban environment itself was in effect
-- a product of a capitalist Industrial
Revolution and its aftermath -- rather
than a cause.
Criticisms of Ecological
Model

Key to understanding urban problems was
to focus on economic conditions rather than
size, density, or ecology (254). In terms of
social action cities/ecologies are not real
agents that create social traditions or social
change in the same sense that individual
capitalists, corporations, or collective
movement based on class interests are.