Urban Geography
Chapter 9
Key Question:
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.
Shenzhen, China
The Modern
Process of
Urbanization –
a rural area can
become
urbanized quite
quickly in the
modern world
Shenzhen, China
Shenzhen changed from a fishing village to a major metropolitan area in just
25 years. 25 years ago, all of this land was duck ponds and rice paddies.
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.
an agricultural surplus
2.
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
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were
two of the first cities of the Indus
River Valley.
- intricately planned
- houses equal in size
- no palaces
- no monuments
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
Terracotta Warriors guarding the tomb of the Chinese Emperor Qin Xi Huang
Mesoamerica
Mayan and Aztec Civilizations
Many ancient cities were theocratic centers where rulers
were deemed to have divine authority and were god-kings.
Mesoamerica
Between 300 and
900 CE, Altun Ha,
Belize served as a
thriving trade and
distribution center
for the Caribbean
merchant canoe
traffic.
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
the agora
the acropolis
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)
Roman Empire
The Roman Forum
Aqueducts in Nimes, France
During the mercantile era, the cities that thrived were embellished by
wealthy merchant families, who built ornate mansions, patronized the
arts, participated in city governments, and supported the reconstruction
of city centers.
Genoa,
Italy
The Second Urban Revolution
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. industrialization, which encouraged growth of
cities near industrial resources
Industrialized regions of Europe, 1914
During the second half of the
20th century…
Nature of manufacturing
changed and locations changed,
too. Many factories have been
abandoned, creating “rust belts”
out of once-thriving industrial
districts.
Duisburg, Germany
Archaeologists have found that the houses in
Indus River cities, such as Mohenjo-Daro and
Harappa, were a uniform size: each house had
access to a sewer system, and palaces were
absent from the cultural landscape. Derive a
theory as to why these conditions were present
in these cities that had both a leadership class
and a surplus of agricultural goods.
Key Question:
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.
Green Country, Oklahoma
Rank-Size Rule:
in a model urban hierarchy, the population of the city or
town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the
hierarchy.
For example:
largest city = 12 million
2nd largest = 6 million
3rd largest = 4 million
4th largest = 3 million
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.
Assumed: surface is flat with no physical barriers
soil fertility is the same everywhere
population and purchasing power are evenly distributed
region has uniform transportation network
from any given place, a good or service could be sold
in all directions out to a certain distance
Hexagonal Hinterlands
C = city
T = town
V = village
H = hamlet
Sketch a map of your city or town and the
cities or towns nearby. Make a list of
goods and services available in each of
these towns. Do the ideas about central
places presented in this section of the
chapter apply to your region?
Key Question:
How are Cities Organized, and
How do they Function?
Urban
Morphology
The layout of a city, its
physical form an
structure.
Berlin, Germany
With wall (above)
And without wall (right)
What does the urban
morphology of the city tell
us about the city?
Functional
Zonation
The division of the city
into certain regions
(zones) for certain
purposes (functions).
Cairo, Egypt
Central city (above)
Housing projects (right)
What does the functional
zonation of the city tell us
about the city?
Zones of the City
• Central business district (CBD)
• Central City (the CBD + older housing zones)
• Suburb (outlying, functionally uniform zone
outside of the central city)
Modeling the North American City
• Concentric zone model (Ernest Burgess)
• Sector model (Homer Hoyt)
• Multiple Nuclei Model
(Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman)
Three Classical Models of Urban Structure
Edge Cities
Suburban
downtowns, often
located near key
freeway
intersections, often
with:
- office complexes
- shopping centers
- hotels
- restaurants
- entertainment
facilities
- sports complexes
Urban Realms Model
Each realm is a separate
economic, social and
political entity that is
linked together to
form a larger metro
framework.
Modeling the Cities of the Global
Periphery and Semiperiphery
• Latin American City (Griffin-Ford model)
• African City (de Blij model)
• Southeast Asian City (McGee model)
Latin
American
City
(GriffinFord
model)
Disamenity sector – very poorest parts of the city
eg. the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The African
City
(de Blij
model)
Southeast
Asian City
(McGee
model)
Employing the concepts defined in this
section of the chapter, draw a model of
the city with which you are most familiar.
Label each section of the city accordingly.
After reading through the models
described in this section, determine which
model best corresponds to the model you
drew and hypothesize why it is so.
Key Question:
How do People Make Cities?
Powerful social and
cultural forces shape
the character of a city
and create the cultural
landscape of the city.
Making Cities in the Global
Periphery and Semiperiphery
- sharp contrast
between rich and
poor
- Often lack zoning
laws or
enforcement of
zoning laws
Making Cities in the Global Core
• Redlining – financial institutions refusing to lend
money in certain neighborhoods.
• Blockbusting – realtors purposefully sell a home
at a low price to an African American and then
solicit white residents to sell their homes and low
prices, to generate “white flight.”
Making Cities in the Global Core
• Gentrification – individuals buy up and rehabilitate
houses, raising the housing value in the
neighborhood and changing the neighborhood.
• Commercialization – city governments transform
a central city to attract residents and tourists. The
newly commercialized downtowns often are a
stark contrast to the rest of the central city.
Tear-downs – houses that new owners buy with the intention
of tearing it down to build a much larger home.
McMansions – large homes, often built to the outer limits of
the lot. They are called McMansions because of their super
size and their similar look.
Hinsdale, Illinois (25% of houses have been torn down in last 20 years).
Urban Sprawl
Unrestricted
growth of
housing,
commercial
developments,
and roads over
large expanses
of land, with
little concern for
urban planning.
Henderson,
Nevada
New Urbanism
• Development, urban revitalization, and suburban
reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with a
diversity of housing and jobs.
– some are concerned over privatization of public spaces
– some are concerned that they do nothing to bread down
the social conditions that create social ills of the cities
– some believe they work against urban sprawl
Celebration,
Florida
Celebration, Florida
Gated Communities
Who are gated communities for?
How do the goals/purposes of gated communities
differ across the world?
Ethnic Neighborhoods
• European City
– eg. Muslim neighborhoods in Paris
• Cities of the Periphery and Semiperiphery
– eg. Mumbai, India
Mumbai, India
Using the city you sketched in the last “Thinking
Geographically” question, consider the concepts
and processes introduced in this section of the
chapter and explain how people and institutions
created this city and the model you sketched.
Key Question:
What Role do Cities Play in
Globalization?
World Cities
Cities that function at the global scale, beyond the
reach of the state borders, functioning as the
service centers of the world economy.
Spaces of Consumption
The transformation of the city into an entertainment district,
where major corporations encourage the consumption of
their goods and services.
For example: Berlin, Germany
New York City
Times Square
New York City
Thinking through the challenges to the state
presented in Chapter 8, predict whether and
under what circumstances world cities could
replace states as the basic and most powerful
form of political organization in the world.