Models of Urban Structure

• Cities exhibit functional structure– Central business district (CBD)– Central city– Suburb

• North American cities?– 3 models

Louis Wirth• Urban Settings Have 3 Characteristics:

1. Large size: Won’t know most people living in a city.

2. High Density: each person has a role essential for the urban system to function smoothly, people compete for survival in limited space.

3. Social Heterogeneity:

-people pursue an unusual profession

-people pursue a different sexual orientation

-people pursue cultural interests

Urban Physical Characteristics

1. Legal Boundary: A city is an urban settlement that has legally been incorporated into an independent, self-governing unit.

2. Continuously Built up Area: An urbanized area is a central city plus its contiguous built-up suburbs, pop exceeds 1000 persons per sq. mile.

3. Functional Area: zone of influence extends beyond legal boundaries and adjacent built-up jurisdictions

METROPOLITAN STATISITICAL AREA (MSA)-

-central city with a pop of 50,000

-county within which the city is located

-adjacent counties with a high pop density and a large % of residents working in the central city.

Smaller urban areas are called:

MICROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREA 10,000-50,000

Some MSAs overlap: BOSWASH CORRIDOR

-southern California -German Ruhr

-southern Great Lakes -Japan’s Tokaido

-Rabdstad in the Netherlands

4. A city has more functional specialization than a town and a larger hinterland and greater centrality.

- a well-defined commercial center-a central business district-suburbs (subsidiary urban areas surrounding and connected to the central city.) Many suburbs are residential but some have their own commercial centers or shopping malls. (technoburbs)

Concentric Zone Model: A city grows outward from a central area in a series of concentric rings

Use census tracts, 5,000 people in neighborhood boundaries. These tell us where people tend to lives.

• E.W. Burgess

1.non-residential activities

2. Industry & poorer quality housing (immigrants new to the city live here 1st)

3.Stable working class

4.Middle class

Sector Model: Homer Hoyt

A city grows in a series of sectors. Certain areas are more attractive to certain activities, by environmental factors, or by chance. As a city grows, activities expand in sectors out from the CBD. Industrial and retailing are in sectors by good transportation lines.

Multiple Nuclei: C.D. Harris and E.L. Ulman

A city is a complex structure that includes more than one center around which activities revolve.

Some activities are attracted to particular nodes while others avoid them.

Ex: Airport=hotels & warehouses

Ex: University=well-educated residents, book stores and pizza joints.

Modeling the North American City

• Urban realms• The “galactic city”/peripheral model• Early post-war period, reduced interaction

between the central city and suburban cities

• Outer cities became more self-sufficient

Models of Urban Structure• Outer city growth since 1960s• By 1973, American suburbs surpassed central cities in

total employment• Outer cities = “edge cities”

– Equal partners in city shaping processes

a. Industrial factories and complexes(office parks)

b.Hotels

c. Amusement parks

d.Malls

e. technoburbs

Tyson’s Corner

Modeling the ModernLatin American City

• Law of the Indies 1575

• Latin American cities were designed after European cities, explorers came from Portugal and Spain

• Centered on a church and central plaza

Squatter Cities

Characteristics of Squatter Cities

• Housing materials are collected from available resources: corrugated tin

• Little sanitation• No running water• No Cooking facilities• Illegal hookup to

electricity, if any• No political voice• Lack of social services

Spatial distribution of Squatter Cities

• On the periphery of the cities in LDCs around the world.

• In Europe and Latin America the rich choose to live in the culturally-rich inner city, the opposite is sometimes true in North American cities

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/a-slum-insight/

Ted Talks on Squatter Citieshttp://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_on_squatter_cities.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_neuwirth_on_our_shadow_cities.html

Vila Cruzeiro, Brazilhttp://www.google.com/search?q=images&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-

8&startIndex=&startPage=1&safe=active#q=favela+vila+cruzeiro&hl=en&safe=active&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&prmd=ivnm&source=univ&tbs=nws:1&tbo=u&ei=lHX-

TI7CF8T38AbKjum2Bw&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDYQqAIwAw&fp=4c012cce622ee640

Modeling the ModernSoutheast Asian City

Modeling the ModernSubsaharan African City

African cities to triple in size..• By 2050 60% of Africans

will live in cities• In 5 years Lagos, Nigeria

will be Africa’s largest city 12.4 mil

• 199.5 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa live in slums

• UN Habitat’s State of African Cities 2010 Report: urbanization is occurring faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world.

Slum Dwellers in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia have dropped from 20.8 million in 1990 to 11.8 million in 2010

Growth of cities:

Pull Factors: Attractive location of cities, jobs, culture

• Push Factors: agricultural reform, poverty in rural areas

Problems in the cities: overcrowding, irregular supply of water, inadequate infrastructure

Lagos, Nigeria: Population 18City within a city: Eko Atlantic Project

• 1 ½ mile into the Atlantic rocks are poured to reclaim land that has been eroded for the last century

• Building a 7 kilometer wall to hold back the waves

• 400,000 will live here• Constant water, power,

roads, light rail system

Resources• De Blij, Harm, J. (2007). Human Geography People, Place and Culture. Hoboken,

NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. • Domosh, Mona, Neumann, Roderic, Price, Patricia, & Jordan-Bychkov, 2010. The

Human Mosaic, A Cultural Approach to Human Geography. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

• Fellman, Jerome, D., Getis, Arthur, & Getis, Judith, 2008. Human Geography, Landscapes of Human Activities. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

• Pulsipher, Lydia Mihelic and Alex M. and Pulsipher, 2008. World Regional Geography, Global Patterns, Local Lives. W.H. Freeman and Company New York.  

• Rubenstein, James M. (2008). An introduction to human geography The cultural• landscape. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.• Benewick, Robert, & Donald, Stephanie H. (2005). The State of• China Atlas. Berkeley: University of California Press.