Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes
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Study Guide UNIT 6: CITIES AND URBAN LAND-USE PATTERNS AND PROCESSES 12-17% AP Exam Weighting The presence and growth of cities vary across geographical locations because of physical geography and resources. Site and situation factors influence the origin, function and growth of cities. ! Site Factors: availability of water, food, good soils, a quality harbor, and characteristics that make a location easy to defend from attack ! Situation Factors: external elements that favor the growth of a city, such as distance to other cities, or a central location. Changes in transportation and communication, population growth, migration, economic development, and government policies influence urbanization. ! Economic development: Changes in economic structure - Industrial Revolution (19th century) and growth of services (20th century) led to the growth of cities o Work in factories and services located in cities o Need for fewer farmers pushes people out of rural areas o migration from the countryside to urban areas for jobs ! Population growth: high natural increase rates in LDCs leads to the growth of cities ! Transportation: John R. Borchert during the 1960s developed a view of the urbanization of the United States that is based on epochs of technology. As the components of technology wax and wane, the urban landscape undergoes dramatic changes. o Stage 1: Sail-Wagon Epoch (1790–1830) " cities grew new ports and major waterways which are used for transportation. The only means of international trade was sailing ships. Once goods were on land, they were hauled by wagon to their final destination. o Stage 2: Iron Horse Epoch (1830–70) " characterized by the impact of steam engines, technology, and development of steamboats and regional railroads. o Stage 3: Steel Rail Epoch (1870–1920) " dominated by the development of long- haul railroads and a national railroad network. o Stage 4: Auto-Air-Amenity Epoch (1920–70) " with growth in the gasoline combustion engine. o Stage 5: Satellite-Electronic-Jet Propulsion (1970–?) " also called the High Technology Epoch. This stage has continued to the present day as both transportation and technology improves Megacities and metacities are distinct spatial outcome of urbanization increasingly located in countries of the periphery and semiperiphery. ! Megacity:: Urban settlement with a total population in excess of 10 million people ! Metacity: has more than 20 million people o Only 3 of the 11 metacities are in developed countries: Tokyo, Seoul, New York Processes of suburbanization, sprawl, and decentralization have created new land-use forms – including edge cities, exurbs, and boomburgs – and new challenges. ! Suburbanization is a population shift from central urban areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of urban sprawl. ! Suburban Sprawl: progressive spread of development over the landscape ! Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group to a more local authority. ! Edge Cities: Large commercial centers that offer entertainment and shopping in the suburbs. o outside a traditional downtown or central business district, in what had previously been a suburban residential or rural area o Such cities may approach 100,000 in population. ! Exurb: rings of wealthier rural communities that grew just outside of the suburbs and were hotbeds for continued urban growth and development ! Boomburg: one of the countless cookie-cutter suburban communities that sprung up like mushrooms during the housing booms of recent decades. o rapidly growing, sprawling city of 100,000 or more on the edge of a major metropolitan area. ! Other challenges of suburban sprawl: o Inefficient (leapfrogging) o High cost o Wastes land o Reduces ability to get to the country o Dairy products and fresh produce o Segregation o Dependence on transportation World cities function at the top of the world’s urban hierarchy and drive globalization. Cities are connected globally by networks and linkages and mediate global processes. ! Urban hierarchy: A hierarchy that puts cities in ranks from small first-order cities upward to fourth-order cities, which are large, world-class cities. ! The higher the order of the city, the greater the sphere of influence that city possesses on a global scale. ! WORLD CITIES: The most important cities as defined by Saskia Sassen, based on their economic, cultural, and political importance: New York City, London, and Tokyo. Principles that are useful for explaining the distribution and size of cities include rank-size rule, the primate city, gravity, and Christaller’s central place theory. ! In many MDCs, geographers observe that ranking settlements from largest to smallest (population) produces a regular pattern or hierarchy. ! RANK SIZE RULE = the country’s nth-largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement. ! PRIMATE CITY = The largest settlement has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement. In this distribution, the country’s largest city is the primate city. ! Why does this matter? o A regular hierarchy – as in the United States – indicates that the society is sufficiently wealthy to justify the provision of goods and services to consumers throughout the country. Quick access to services o LDCS – primate-city rule. There is not enough wealth in the society to pay for a full variety of services. Absence of middle size settlements constitutes a hardship for people who must travel long distances to reach an urban settlement with shops and services such as hospitals Advantages of a Primate City Disadvantages of a Primate City ! Magnetic attraction for businesses, services ! Urban-rural inequalities and people (cumulative effect) ! Imbalance in development ! Can attract international trade and business ! Concentration of Power ! Centralize transportation and communication ! Has a parasitic effect, sucking ! Enhanced flow of ideas and information among wealth, natural and human larger populations resources into city. ! Ability to offer high-end goods due to increased ! Become centers for threshold unemployment, crime, pollution Improving Rank-Size Distribution: ! Limit the growth of largest city ! (Permits to move there) ! Government can build new apartments, schools, shops, electricity, paved roads, sanitation ! Give people greater access to services " Periodic Markets ! Central Place Theory: Christaller argues that urbanized areas are arranged in a regular pattern across the landscape. Assumptions: - no geographic boundaries (flat land) - humans will always purchase goods from the closest place that offers the good - whenever demand for a certain good is high, it will be offered in close proximity to the population Central Place Theory. This diagram represents an idealized urban hierarchy in which people travel to the closest local market for lower-order goods, but must go to a larger town or city for higher orders goods. ! Central place: market center for the exchange of goods and services by people attracted from the surrounding area ! Hinterland: the area surrounding a service from which consumers are attracted ! Range: maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service. The range is the radius of the circle drawn to delineate a service’s market area ! Threshold: minimum number of people needed to support the service. Every enterprise has a minimum number of customers required to generate enough sales to make a profit. Models and theories that are useful for explaining internal structures of cities include the Burgess concentric zone model, the Hoyt sector model, the Harris and Ullman multi-nuclei model, the galactic city model, bid-rent theory, and urban models drawn from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. CONCENTRIC ZONE MODEL ! A city grows outward from a central area in a series of concentric rings ! Size and width vary, but basic types of rings appear in all cities in the same order SECTOR MODEL ! Hoyt ! City develops in a series of sectors, not rings ! Certain areas of the city are more attractive for various activities because of environmental factor or by chance ! As city grows, activities expand outward in a wedge, or sector, for the center ! Once a district is established, new additions are built on edge of the district and extend further out from the center MULTIPLE NUCLEI MODEL ! Harris and Ullman ! A city is a complex structure that includes more than one center around which activities revolve ! Examples of nodes: port, neighborhood business center, university, airport, park ! Activities are attracted to particular nodes, whereas others try to avoid them o University node may attract well- educated residents, bookstores o Airport node – hotels, warehouses o Heavy industry and high class housing will rarely exist in the same neighborhood GALACTIC MODEL/PERIPHERY MODEL: ! Modification of multiple nuclei model by Harris ! Takes into account suburbanization ! Nodes of business form on the periphery/outside ! Tied together through beltways, new transportation Latin America: ! Griffin/Ford Model ! Large plaza at the middle ! Boulevard for the cities elite ! Housing for wealthy and powerful as spines from center ! No middle class, poor develop rings on the outside ! Squatter settlements Sub-Saharan Africa: ! Least urbanized but most rapidly urbanizing ! Three CBDS: colonial, traditional, periodic market Southeast Asian: ! contains some of the most populous