URBAN GEOGRAPHY

URBAN GEOGRAPHYLecture Notes on Chapter 9

Bellringer

• What types of activities occur in a city that might shape the cultural landscape in different ways?

• Hint: think of the different types of buildings in a city

What is “urban geography”?

• The study of the city—its layout, patterns, and the factors that shape it and continue to change it

• The study of cities reveals how money and power shape urban spaces

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Why Did People Start Living in Cities?

• City: A conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics

Urban Population

Where Are Cities Located, and Why?

Site• Absolute location

Situation• Relative location• A city’s place in

the region and the world around it

• Trade area: An adjacent region within which a city ’s influence is dominant

Rank-Size Rule• Characteristic of a model urban hierarchy • The population of the city or town is inversely

proportional to its rank in the hierarchy For example:largest city = 12 million2nd largest = 6 million3rd largest = 4 million4th largest = 3 million

• Primate city: The leading city of a country, disproportionately larger than the rest of the cities

Bellringer• Paris is the primate

city of France.1.What are possible

advantages of having a primate city?

2.What are possible disadvantages of having a primate city?

• BRING YOUR TEXTBOOK TOMORROW

Central Place Theory• Developed by Walter Christaller • Predicts how and where central places in

the urban hierarchy are functionally and spatially distributed

• The location of cities is not accidental, but tied to trade areas, population size, and distance

Hexagonal Hinterlands

C = city

T = town

V = village

H = hamlet

Trade Areas

Organization and Functions of Cities

• Urban morphology: The layout of a city, its physical form and structure

• Functional zonation: The division of the city into certain regions (zones) for certain functions (purposes)

Zones of the City

• Central business district: center of commerce

• Central City: urban area that’s not suburban

• Suburb: functionally uniform zone outside of the central city; mostly residential

Classical Models of Urban StructureBurgess Hoyt Harris & Ulman

Bellringer• What is going on in the area next to the taller

buildings? What is that area and why is it there?

Cities of Latin America

• Griffin-Ford model• Disamenity sectors:

– Not connected to city services

– May be controlled by gangs and drug lords

Cities of Subsaharan Africa

Cities of Southeast Asia

• McGee model• Colonial port as

focal point

Shaping Residential Housing Patterns

• Redlining: Financial institutions refusing to lend money in certain neighborhoods

• Blockbusting : Realtors purposefully selling a home at a low price to an African American and then soliciting white residents to sell their homes at low prices, to generate “white flight”

• Gentrification: Individuals buying and rehabilitating houses, raising the housing value in the neighborhood

Gated Communities

• Find image

Urban Sprawl