1. Urban Geography Chapter 9
Not until 8,000 years ago did humans begin to live in cities
Chapter 9

2. 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.

3. 20th Century-the Urban Century
1900 only 13 cities had 1 million people
1999 about 362 cities had 1 million
By 2025 there will be 650 cities of 1 million or more
Sometime in 21st cent. The world will become mostly urban
Western Europe, US & Canada are 4/5 urban
China and India are only 3/10 urban
Top Amsterdam
Bottom-hillside slum in South America
Calcutta and Mumbai, India are growing at a very rapid pace
Costal China has phenomenal growth as well-Shenzen, China grew from 20,000 (size of Homewood) to 2.5 million (size of Chicago) in 30 years.

4. Urban Definitions
Urban-a general term for towns, cities and suburban areas
City-nucleated settlement with many functions and a central business district
Town-small than a city-less complex
Suburb-subsidiary area that is exclusively residential, commercial or industrial-not self sufficient.

5. Urban Morphology
The layout of a city, its physical form and structure.
Berlin, Germany
With wall (above)
And without wall (right)

6. Ancient Cities
Between 7,000 & 5,000 b.p. agricultural societies became more complex with irrigation & larger scale farming
Stratified societies developed with priests, merchants, administrators, soldiers and farmers
Central authority or the state developed which led to the rise of ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece & the Roman Empire.
Picture at upper right-the Euphrates River where urban civilization began
Lower right-Iranian farmers winnowing grain-same method is ancient times.
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

7. Urban Definitions
Central City-main city around which suburbs have grown
Urbanized area-continuously built up area with buildings & population density with no reference to political boundaries
Metropolitan area-a large scale functional entity containing several urbanized areas that are integrated as an economic whole
Picture at right-a roof garden-city hall Chicago-reduces air conditioning costs

8. Attributes of Cities Centers of political power
Centers of industrial power
Centers of technology
A market place for goods
Specialization in products and services
Services of all types
Medical advances
Cultural and Artistic pursuits
Centers of education and research
Entertainment of all types
Sports teams, arenas and parks
An anchor of society

9. 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

10. 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.

11. Function & Location
Earliest civilizations probably developed with the need for organization to create irrigation and provide enough food
Availability of water, good farmland and defensible sites helped certain towns thrive
Positions on travel & trade routes created urban growth.
Urban elites or decision makers evolved.
Writing made the codification of laws and record keeping possible.
Urban elite required to organize the distribution of food, organize defense and irrigation.
The harvest was stored as a tax and tribute
Out of this need for an organized society came record keeping and writing
Laws ere codified or written down and traditions were preserved in writing.

12. The River Valley civilizations or Hydrologic Societies as Marvin Harris called them, developed governments, mathematics, engineering to irrigate and control the rive and architecture.

13. Maya and Aztec America
The Maya civilization thrived from 200 to 800 AD- with 2 million people in the Yucatan
The Aztec civilization thrived from 1200 to 1500 AD
Olmec were the first to emerge in Central America

14. God-kings or theocratic rulers developed in some ancient cities.
Theocratic Centers
God-kings or theocratic rulers developed in some ancient cities.
Priests, temples and shrines took center stage in the Yucatan, Guatemala and Honduras when the Maya Indians developed the great cities of Tikal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal and Copan.
They also served as educational centers with teachers and philosophers
Ancient Americas rain god Tlaloc (main god of Teotihuacan) on the top on an ornate incense burner from Teotihuacan

15. 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
Indus River Valley
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.

16. Ancient Mesopotamia and Nile River Valleys had between 10,000 and 15,000 people-the maximum size sustained by food production and distribution systems of the period.

17. Athens was the largest city in the world with 250,000.
Diffusion to Greece
Knossos emerged as the leading city of the Minoan Civilization about 3,500 yrs. ago.
Greece emerged as one of the most highly urbanized areas on earth with over 500 cities and towns by 500 BC
Athens was the largest city in the world with 250,000.

18. Each Greek city had an acropolis (high city) for defense.
The most famous is the acropolis of Athens (447BC)
Below the acropolis was the agora or market place
Theaters, shops and stores of all kinds were available.
Despite the modern features-sanitation was still primitive
Frieze of the Parthenon in Athens

19. Athens, Greece
below-the agora
above the acropolis

20. Athens-the Parthenon begun 447BC