1. UNIT VII: Urban Geo

2. 3 basic types of cities:
Central places: service centers for local hinterlands
Transportation centers: break-of-bulk functions
Specialized-function cities: dominated by one activity
metropolitan area: continuously built-up urban area
suburbs: extensive commuters residential land use

3. primate city: one disproportionately larger city in a country (Ex: Paris, Mexico City, Lagos)
rank-size rule: inverse relationship between size of a city & its urban rank
- 2nd largest city = ½ size of biggest

4. Economic Base Theory
Basic Sector: businesses dependent upon sales outside the city
Non-basic Sector: jobs dependent upon basic sector (grocery store, barber, drycleaners, restaurants)
multiplier effect: increase in basic jobs increases non-basic jobs…

5. Megacities: over 10 million
World cities: play a key role in the global economy (London, New York, Tokyo)
– financial centers
– most have large pops.
Megacities: over 10 million
– over ½ of 20 largest cities today are in developing world
Problems:
internal migration, slums, informal economies, poverty, crime, child labor, water, sewage

6. Walter Christaller’s Central Place Theory
nested hexagons show a hierarchal ranking of market areas
hinterland: rural area outside urban areas

7. 2. range of services: maximum distance consumers travel
* luxury items: longer range
3. Threshold pop.: minimum # of consumers to support a business

8. Central Place Assumptions:
orderly hierarchy
places of the same size equally spaced
larger cities farther apart

9. Classic Urban Land Use Models:
Concentric Zone Model
Sector Model
Multiple Nuclei Model

10. created by Ernest Burgess (1920s)
urban land use as concentric rings
“intensive” CBD in center… “extensive” suburbs on edge

11. Concentric Zone Weaknesses:
too simple
developed only for American cities
assumes public transit
highways/cars allowed increased mobility

12. Sector Model
Homer Hoyt (1939) stated land use patterns defined by “sectoral wedges”
“transportation corridors” impacts land use
better transport = more expensive land

13. Multiple Nuclei Model
Harris & Ullman (1945) see cities as multi-nucleated w/ center & smaller satellite CBD’s on edge
applies to newer, faster-growing cities (Miami, L.A.)

14. Inner City “Ghettoes”
became overcrowded, expensive, crime-ridden by 1940’s
“filtering”: expensive older houses subdivided for low-income families
“White Flight”: process of higher income whites moving out of city centers to suburbs
low-income public housing

15. Suburbanization “decentralization” of city centers
popularity of automobile
“sprawl”: residential neighborhoods away from CBD
edge cities: suburbs with their own CBD
greenbelts: open space for public use in suburbs

16. Public Policy & Suburbs
Gov’t policies:
Highway Acts (1916, 1956)
FHA 30-year mortgage (1934)
GI Bill (1944)
* post-WW II “BABY BOOM” = more families

18. Gentrificationc
gentrification: the movement of middle class people into deteriorated areas of city centers
begins in rundown “hoods”
inner city cheaper than suburbs
Urban “revitalization”/”renewal”:
“renewing” rotting downtown waterfronts

20. European Cities Latin American Cities
central cities
wealthy live in city center
higher poverty/crime/ethnic enclaves in suburbs
Latin American Cities
fastest urban growth in world
central plaza
wealthy live close to major blvd. near CBD
Poor live in outskirts or “disamenity sector” (lack of facilities)
“in situ accretion”: transition to slums & squatters

22. African Cities Asian Cities: N. Africa: Islamic architecture
S. Africa: remnants of apartheid (blacks segregated in “townships”)
Asian Cities:
centered around ports
open-air bazaar markets