Urbanization

1. Urbanization

2. Urbanization • Definition • Growth and diffusion of city landscapes and urban lifestyle • Can be difficult to define what a city is and number of people needed to classify it • Most MDCs are highly urbanized • Number and % of urban dwellers in LDCs has exploded in recent years • Many city governments are trying to manage explosive urbanization • 10 million a year die from overcrowding and inadequate infrastructure

3. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) • MSA a term used by the U.S. Census Bureau to identify a geographic unit of area including central city and all of its immediately interacting counties with commuters and people directly connected to the central city • An MSA is an urbanized region with a minimum of 50,000 people in it • Often MSA boundaries overlap • Example “The Triangle” N.C. • Urban “blobs” led to coining of term “megalopolis” • Originally used to describing fusing of Washington, D.C. and Boston • Also uses a unit called a micropolitan statistical area • Area of the surrounding counties integrated into a central city with a population of 10,000 to 50,000 • Many formerly rural areas now reclassified

4. Rate vs. Level of Urbanization • Rate of urbanization • Definition: • Speed at which the population is becoming urban • Level of urbanization • Definition • Is the % of people already considered urban • Level of urbanization in the U.S. is nearly 75% • That means nearly 75% of U.S. population lives in urban places • HOWEVER rate of urbanization much higher in China • Versus its overall lower level of urbanization

5. Where Urbanization Began • Geographers analyze where urbanization 1st developed and why urbanization because in these urban hearths • Geographers analyze the path of urbanization’s diffusion from these hearths and related gaps in urban development among different countries • Several qualities are common among places that were urban hearths • A dependable water supply, a long growing season, domesticated plants and animals, plenty of building materials, and a system of writing records

6. Where Urbanization Began • Agricultural Urban Hearths • Earliest cities were born around 3500 B.C.E. • Came from agricultural villages • Earliest urban hearths existed in: • Mesopotamia • Indus River • Nile Valley • China • Mexico, Peru • Trade-Based Urban Hearths • Some cities grew as established marketplaces where traders came together to buy and sell goods from across the region • Urbanism spread westward throughout the Mediterranean region and spread eastward through overland and caravan routes through Persia into India, China, and then Japan • Specialization began to occur as certain cities began to focus on economic development on the goods over which they had a comparative advantage

7. Where Urbanization Began • Greco-Roman Urban Hearths • Greeks and Romans erected cities as centers of political and administrative control over their conquered regions • Cities were planned • Religious Urban Hearths • Some cities grew as centers of religious ceremony that were determined to be holy by sites

8. Pre-Industrial Cities • Definition: • Those that are developed prior to industrialization and shared several characteristics • Rural settlements surrounding the urban space provided agricultural products to urban dwellers, who in turn provided different economic functions • Cities served as trade centers and gateways to foreign lands and markets • After fall of Roman Empire, pre-industrial cities experienced a decline in development • Pre-Industrial Colonial Cities • Definition: • Cities built and developed by colonizers in conquered lands • European imperialism fueled creation • Shared common characteristics • Wide boulevards • Classical architecture • Constructed with the aim of exporting raw materials back to the mother country

9. Pre-industrial cities • The “urban-banana” • By the beginning of the 1500s, a majority of cities were located in trade centers that extended from London to Tokyo • Made a crescent shape , “urban banana” • Included: • London, Paris, Constantinople, Venice, Cairo, Nanking, Hanchow, and Osaka • The “urban banana” resulted from both site and situation factors

10. Pre-Industrial Cities • Internal Economic Structure of Pre-Industrial Cities • Often had a diverse mix of economic functions in any given space • Rather than zoning that came with industrialization • Shops, markets, homes, and government often jumbled together in urban space • Still separated by wealth • In feudal European cities: • Guilds led to clumping of certain functions in particular areas of town

11. Industrialization and City Structure • Urban-Industrial Revolution • In 1800, only 5% of world’s population lived in cities • Diffusion of industrialization is largely responsible for urbanizing the world’s people • Not equal distribution • European Industrial Revolution • related to Imperialism • Triggered diffusion of city growth • Urbanization grew in a snowball process • Growth of factories and urban jobs attracted rural farm workers • Started in England • Created a steady rural-urban migration pattern • England’s urban population was 24% in 1800, 99% by 1999 • The 2nd Agriculture Revolution • Supported the pattern of industrial and urban growth • More efficient and productive agricultural practices developed • Led to more workers moving to cities for jobs • Improved food supplies also supported an increasing population

12. Industrialization and City Structure • The Industrial City • By mid-1700s formerly great land-based cities were fading away • Sea-trade centers were growing rapidly • St. Petersburg, Russia • By the early 1900s, most of the world’s great cities were American or European industrial cities • Manchester, England; Chicago, Illinois; Barcelona, Spain • Industrial cities had a different function from the pre-industrial city • Rather than serve mainly as administrative, religious, trade, or gateway cities primary function was to make and distribute manufactured products • Shock Cities • The pattern of rapid urban growth and urban migration led to growing urban spaces that were overwhelmed with the influx of urban in-migrants • Definition: • Urban places experiencing infrastructural challenges related to massive and rapid urbanization • Challenges often include: • Slums, hazardous pollution levels, deadly fires, urban prostitution, and exploitation of children • Examples: • Manchester, England • Less than 80,000 in 1750 • 500,000 by 1850 • Chicago, Illinois • 30,000 in 1750 • 500,000 by 1830 • 1.5 million by 1900

13. Industrialization and City Structure • Strained Infrastructure • An important trend in modern urbanization is its diffusion to LDCs • Currently highest rates of urbanization are occurring in LDCs • Urbanization in LDCs is often focused on one or two major cities with a high degree of primacy rather than being spread out throughout the country • Such intensely high rates of urbanization in LDCs are straining the infrastructural resources • Large migration streams of young adults moving from rural areas to urban areas add to strain • Squatter Settlements • Many migrants are unable to find housing and build squatter settlements • United Nations estimated that 175 million people lived in squatter settlements in 2003 • Definition: • Makeshift, un-safe housing constructed from any scraps they find on the land they neither rent nor own • Called favelas or barriadas in Latin America, bastees in India, kampongs in Malaysia

15. Urban Systems • Defining urban systems • All urban places are part of an interlocking urban system of cities that operate within a network of spatial interaction • A.k.a- urban places interact with each other and are interdependent • Geographers analyze the spatial distribution of cities and try to determine why cities look the way they do

16. Central Place Theory • Walter Christaller’s theory • Developed the theory as a means of studying the geographical patterns of urban land use • Specifically looking to explain and predict the pattern of urban places across the map • Assumptions: • Flat land surface • Uniformly distributed rural population • Equal transportation methods • Evolutionary movement towards the growth of cities • Main ideas • Central places are urban centers that provide services to their surrounding rural people • Also called hinterland • Range, Threshold • Spatial competition implies that central places compete with one another for customers • Illustrates that higher-order central places contain economic functions with high thresholds and high ranges that require large populations

17. Central Place Theory • Hexagonal Spatial Pattern • Model predicted hexagonal pattern of urban, central places • Central places vary in their degree of “economic reach” • Higher-order central places have larger ranges and thresholds • lower-order central places have smaller ranges and thresholds

18. Urban Hierarchy • Central place theory predicts that if a population is evenly distributed, there will be a hierarchy of evenly spread central places to serve the population • Urban hierarchy • Definition: • System of cities consisting of various levels, with a few cities at the top level and increasingly more settlements on each lower level • The position of a city within the hierarchy is determined by the types of central place functions it provides • Higher the position in the hierarchy= the higher the population being served by the central place and the more variety of central place functions performed in the city • A.k.a- have the highest ranges and thresholds • Hierarchy • There are few urban central places are the top of the hierarchy • Example: Chicago

19. Applying Central Place Theory and Urban Hierarchy: An Example • Central place theory provides one piece in the jigsaw of understanding and predicting geographic patterns or urban places • Over past thirty years, populations in the U.S. south and west have increased and become wealthier overall • With more people and wealth, more services were needed • Phoenix, Atlanta, and Dallas moved up on the urban hierarchy as they grew to offer more central place functions to the newly growing populations • As these cities moved up the ladder, other cities took their place and others fell • Tampa, San Antonio, Charlotte moved up • Cities from Northeast and Midwest fell in rankings • Ex. Cleveland, Detroit

20. Rank-Size Rule/ Primate Cities • There is a relationship between a city’s population size and its place on the urban hierarchy within its urban system • In MDCs usually predicted using rank-size rule • Some urban systems have disproportionately large cities, called primate cities • ex: Bueno Aires, Argentina is nearly 10x the size of the 2nd-largest city • = high degree of primacy

21. World Cities • In the interlocking, interacting network of cities throughout the world’s urban system, there exist some world cities • Powerful cities that control a disproportionately high level of the world’s economic, political, and cultural activities • Sometimes called global cities • Distribution • Group of world cities have shifted • 1600s- London, Amsterdam, Lisbon • 1700s- Rome, Paris • 1800s- Berlin, Chicago, New York City, St. Petersburg • Today world cities are centers of global financial decisions, flows of information, and TNCs • NYC, Tokyo, London • Pan-regional Influence • Definition: • A reach that extends beyond the city’s own region into other centers of economic control

22. Megacities • All megacities are large and have over 10 million inhabitants • Examples: • Beijing, Cairo, Mexico City, Jakarta