Trends related to Urbanization

Most of the land in urban
settlements is devoted to
housing, where people live
within U.S. urban areas
◦ the most fundamental spatial
distinction is between innercity residential
neighborhoods that surround
the CBD and suburban
residential neighborhoods on
the periphery

Inner cities in the U,S,
contain concentrations of
low-income people

Inner-city Issues
◦ Physical
◦ Social
◦ Economic

Major physical
problem face by
inner-city
neighborhoods is
the poor condition
of the housing
◦ Most built before
1940

Process of
Deterioration

As the # of low-income
residents increase in the
city, the territory they
occupy expands

Filtering
◦ Large houses built by wealthy
families in the 19th century are
subdivided into smaller dwellings
for low-income families
◦ Definition:
 Process of subdivision of houses and
occupancy by successive waves of
lower-income people
◦ As rent decreases, so does
maintenance
 Eventually no one will rent, buildings
abandoned


Leads to schools, shops closing as well
Redlining
◦ Definition:
 Drawing lines on a map to identify
areas in which they will refuse to loan
money (done by banks)
◦ As a result, families that try to fix
up houses in “bad” neighborhoods
have difficulty loaning money
◦ Technically illegal
 but difficult to enforce

Underclass
◦ Inner-city residents often
referred to as a permanent
underclass because they are
trapped in an unending cycle of
economic and social problems
◦ Suffers from:
 High rates of unemployment,
alcoholism, drug addiction, illiteracy,
juvenile delinquency, and crime
◦ Schools, hospitals, shops are all
deteriorated
 Lack adequate fire/police protection
◦ Homeless
 Estimated that nearly 1 million are
homeless in America
◦ Future is bleak




Little to no technical skills
Fewer than ½ complete high school
Atmosphere ignores “good habits”
With less Primary and Secondary
jobs, even more unemployment

Culture of Poverty
◦ Trapped in cycle because they
live in a culture of poverty
 3/4ths of babies in inner-cities born
to unwed mothers
 3/4ths of children live with 1 parent


Many mothers have to stay home
“Deadbeat Dads” no help
◦ Many turn to drugs
 Rates of use have most rapidly
increased in inner-cities recently
 Many obtain through criminal
activities


Leads to gangs controlling drug
distribution
Contributes to gang violence
◦ Many neighborhoods segregated
 Most inner-city residents are
African-American and Hispanic

Eroding Tax Base
◦ Low-income inner-city residents
require more public services

But can pay very little of taxes necessary
to support those services
◦ Central cities face growing gap
between need of services and funds
to pay for them

Impact of Recession
◦ Once of the principal causes of
severe recession in 2008 was
collapse of housing market


Two choices:


Reduce Services
 Close libraries, eliminate bus routes,
collect trash less frequently
Raise Tax Revenues
 Provide tax breaks for downtown offices,
luxury hotels, restaurants, shops
 Even with break, still pay more taxes
than abandoned buildings
◦ Federal Aid to cities has significantly
decreased since 1980s


Declined 2/3rds
Primarily in the inner city
Banks had increased loans to lowincome inner-city households buying
their 1st home


Many had poor credit, no background
checks
Called subprime mortgages
◦ Investing in housing viewed as way
to get higher rate of return than
other investments

House prices increased rapidly

Banks saw this as an opportunity to
increase # of home owners
◦ Concentric model shows inner- city
residents more likely to be renters
◦ When people can’t repay loans=
bank foreclosure

In 1st year of recession 10% of
Americans behind on their mortgages
◦ Compounding problem- the
housing bubble burst


Homes have decreased in value
Home now worth less than mortgage

Ghettoization
◦ Definition:
 Refers to the growth of areas
of concentrated poverty
◦ Originally comprised of
mostly immigrants
 Newly-arrived Irish, Italian,
and German immigrants
 But even larger AfricanAmerican and Hispanic
ghettos have grown since the
1950s

Real Estate developers and
banks contributed to
growth of urban ghettos in
3 ways:
◦ Blockbusting
 When real estate agents and
developers used racism to “bust
up” a block by bringing in a
minority family into a
predominately white
neighborhood
 Then profited in all the turnover
◦ Racial Steering
 When real estate agents would
intentionally or unintentionally
steer people to buy a home in a
neighborhood based on their
race, which contributed to racially
segregated housing patterns
◦ Redlining
 Banks refusing loans in central
neighborhoods that were “redlined”

Urban Renewal
 Cities identify blighted
inner-city neighborhoods
 They acquire property, move
residents, demolish, and
rebuild
 National government
grants help finance
 Has been criticized for
destroyed older
neighborhoods and
reducing supply of low-cost
housing
 Called “Negro Removal” in
1960s
 Many North American and
European Cities have turned
away from
◦ Public housing
 Many sub-standard inner-city
houses have been
demolished and replaced
with public housing
 In U.S. public housing is
reserved for low-income
households
 Must pay 30% of their
income for rent
 Maintained by housing
authority
 Only 1% of all dwellings
 U.S. has stopped funding most
public housing
 Instead looks to renovating
old buildings from 1950s
and 1960s
◦ Renovated housing
 Some non-profit
organizations renovate lowincome housing and sell or
rent to low-income people
 Example: Habitat for Humanity


Definition:
◦ Process by which middle-class
people move into deteriorated
inner-city neighborhoods and
renovate housing

◦ Chicago


Why?
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Houses may be larger
More substantially constructed
Cheaper than suburbs
Architectural details
Close to work
No children

In cities where there is strong
gentrification, ethnic patterns
are being altered
Inner-city white population increasing
African-Americans, Hispanics declining


Renovations are expensive!
◦ Cities encourage with low-cost loans
and tax breaks
◦ Encourages middle-class to move in,
low-class to move out

Not concerned with inner city
schools
U.S. and other countries have laws to
protect low-class families


Moving farther from center
Reimbursed for moving and rent increases
over 4-year period
Some argue helps disperse
lower-income families more
evenly throughout city
◦ Instead of clumping in one area

Annexation

◦ Definition:
◦ Definition:
◦ Rules concerning annexation vary
from state to state
◦ In the U.S. a city surrounded by
suburbs is sometimes called a
central city
◦ Boundaries of a city define the
geographic area within which
the local government has legal
authority
 Defines an urban settlement that
has been legally incorporated into
an independent, self-governing unit
 Process of legally adding land area to a
city
 Usually only happens when majority of
residents in the area vote in favor of
doing so



The city
Often desired in 19th century because
cities offered more services
Today it is less likely, most don’t want
to pay city taxes

Defining Urban Settlements
◦ City: a legal entity
◦ Urbanized Area: a continuously
built up area
◦ MSA: a functional area
Urbanized Area
◦ Definition:
 In the U.S. the central city AND
surrounding suburbs
 Approximately 70% of U.S.
population lives in urbanized areas

MSAs
◦ Functional area
 Minimum of 50,000 people
 Surrounding counties with high
population density and large % of
residents working in the central city
 Also have micropolitan statistical
areas


Definition:
◦ The increase in rural
populations that result
from the out-migration
of city residents from
their city and suburban
homes in search of nonurban lifestyles
Exburbs
◦ Noticed in the 1950s
◦ Rings of wealthier
communities that grew
just outside of the
suburbs

Telecommuting
◦ Modern form of
commuting that involves
only commuting of
information, not the
worker



Developed by Chauncy Harris
According to model, an urban
area consists of an inner city
surrounded by large
suburban and residential
areas tied together by a
beltway or ring road
Edge Cities
◦ Definition:
 Around the beltway are nodes of
consumer and business services
◦ Originally built as suburban
residences
 Services grew with population
 Many are specialized nodes

Collection of hotels around airports,
etc.

Density Gradient
◦ As you travel outward
from the center city,
the population
density declines
 According to the
density gradient, the #
of houses per unit of
land diminishes as
distance from the
center city increases

Urban Sprawl:
◦ Diffusion of urban
land use and life-style
into formerly nonurban, often
agricultural lands

Uneven Development
◦ Definition:
 Refers to urban
development that is not
spread equally among a
city’s areas
 Leaves some areas richly
developed and others
continually poor and
decrepit
◦ Often caused by
cumulative causation
 When money flows to
areas of greatest profit

As suburban regions
grew and became more
desirable two
consequences occurred

◦ Segregated social classes
◦ Segregated land uses
Residential Segregation
◦ Prior to suburbs, vertical
integration in cities
◦ Once cities spread out
replaced by territorial
segregation
◦ Suburban neighborhoods
discouraged entry of lowincome or minority residents
 Feared loss of property values

Segregated Land Uses
◦ Zoning ordinances were
developed in European and
North American Cities in the
early decades of 20th century
 Prevented to mixing of landuses within the same district

Businesses have moved to
the suburbs too

Suburbanization of Retailing
◦ Most residents no longer want to
make journey to CBD
◦ Retailing has increased in
planned suburban shopping
malls
◦ Manufacturers have selected
peripheral locations because
land costs are lower
◦ Services have moved to be
closer to customers
 Malls have become centers for
activities in suburban areas

Suburbanization of Factories
and Offices
◦ Factories and warehouses have
migrated to suburbia for more
space, cheaper land, and better
truck access
◦ Offices that do not require faceto-face contact are increasingly
moving to the suburbs

Historically, growth of suburbs
was constrained by poor
transportation

Motor Vehicles
◦ Suburban explosion of 20th century
relied on motor vehicles
 Rather than railroads of 19th century
 rail-lines restricted development to
narrow ribbons within walking distance
of stations
◦ People lived in crowded cities
because they had to be within
walking distance of shops and
employment
◦ Cars/trucks permitted large-scale
development from the center
 Invention of railroad 1st allowed
people to live in suburbs but work
in the central city
 Later improved to
streetcars/trolleys, then subways
to accommodate commuters
 Provided more flexibility
◦ Ownership nearly universal in
American households

Public Transit
◦ Few people now live within walking
distance of employment

Urban areas are characterized by extensive
commuting

European cities like
London, England have
worked to limit urban
development to a
particular area by
installing a green belt
◦ A boundary that forces all
urban development to occur
within the city’s urban core

North American cities
have a difficult time
setting such boundaries
◦ Can attract investors who
want to develop lands and
grow the city at the expense
of rural lands

Portland, Oregon
◦ One U.S. city that has
effectively instituted a
boundary to contain urban
sprawl
 Boundary forced revitalization of
the inner-city, not outward growth
 While it did work, it also increased
cost of living and real estate prices
substantially

Definition:

One neo-urban trend is
planned communities
◦ Movement to bring together
trends in healthy living,
sustainable growth, and urban
development
◦ Neighborhoods with masterplanned housing designs,
walkable pathways, recreational
facilities, and security features

Many recent, neo-urban
designs include festival
settings
◦ Large recreational areas for
communities, such as waterfront
parks along rivers