Urban Geography

California State University
Northridge

Acropolis (fig)
Where is this? 
What is it’s name?
What’s the significance?
Cities
Why do cities form?
What are the necessary preconditions behind the rise of cities?
the Agricultural Revolutions
industrial Revolutions
Rise of Cities
Why cities?
Single-Factor and Multiple-Factor Models for the Rise of Cities 
Technical (e.g., irrigation)
Defense
Religious
Political
Beer, Others

Defining Cities
How do know when you are in city?
Hamlet
Village
Town
City
Big City
Think about what amenities a city has that a town does not.
Trouble with counting populations
First world and Third World patterns
World Cities

Edge Cities
Term coined by Joel Garreau to describe peripheral areas of the city where people now increasingly work, play and live.  Functionally similar to older center cities, but less dense and planned around the automobile.
Can you think of local edge cities?
Problems?   Most of them are linked to transportation.
Edge City Landscape (fig)
Edge City Landscape: New York City (fig)
The Ecology of Urban Location
Where cities are located are key indicators of their original purpose.
Each city’s original purpose is a product of its location and the possibilities afforded by that location.
Site and Situation 
Site refers to a set of factors that deal with a location’s advantages or disadvantages at that place.
Situation refers to a set of factors that deal with a location’s advantages or disadvantages relative to other places.
Singapore
New York
San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego
Defensive Sites (fig)
Mt. St. Michel and Paris (fig)
Trade-Route Sites (fig)
What city is this?
What has been it’s great advantage?  Changed?
Christhaller’s Central Place Theory 
describes the pattern of cities in space.  It relies upon the following notions:
Threshold-size of population
Range-distance for good
Hinterland-trade area
Order of a good and order of a place
Central Place Theory
Higher order goods have a greater range, need smaller threshold
These facts build urban hierarchies
Regional metropolises are at the top of the hierarchy
Market villages are at the bottom.
Requires an “all things held equal” clause
Central Place Theory 1 (fig)
Central Place Theory 2 (fig)
Central Place Theory (fig)
with transportation routes
Satellite Image of Central Places (fig) 
Satellite Image of Central Places (fig) 
Urban Culture Regions
A. Social Regions
Socioeconomic traits
Ethnographic traits
Census Tracts, Block Groups
Census Tracts, Berkeley
Neighborhoods 
Small social region where people share values and interact daily
May lead to a reduction in social conflict.
Territoriality?
Social cohesion in face of diversity
Implication of permanence of residence
Derelict D.C. (fig)
The Burbs (fig)
Homelessness
Unknown number of homeless 
Three million?
Census debate in congress
Multiple problems of homelessness
Reagan’s legacy
Shelters, Los Angles (fig)
Cultural Diffusion in the City
There are constantly at work forces that work to collapse the city around the CBD and there are others at work that tend to spread the city out.
What you see in each city is a result of this contest.
A.  Centralization
1. Economic and Social Advantages
Accessibility
Transportation routes
Agglomeration (residence)
Historical momentum
Prestige
B.  Decentralization
Clearly the most powerful of the forces since 1945
Many cities have been hollowed out by the forces of decentralization, which are the same forces driving forth suburbanization.
Investment capital moving from one to other.
Uneven development
The Decentralized City (fig)
Socioeconomic Factors
Accessibility is now greater in suburbs.
Agglomeration economies in suburbs.
Taking advantage of the diseconomies of scale and location of the inner city.
Some terms
Bedroom Communities
Lateral Commuters
How’d it happen?
Federal Highway Acts 1916/1954
FHA established in 1937
GI Bill 1944
FHA practices
Housing Act of 1937
Red Lining and Restrictive Covenants
Other government actions
The Costs of Decentralization
Massive loss of investment and inner city capital.
Sprawl
Checkerboard vs. Gap Toothed
In filling legislation
Sprawl (fig)
Gentrification 
Counter action to suburbanization
Often began by alternative lifestyle crowd
Has had major impact on some downtown areas and their residents
How does it work?
Economics
Rent Gap Theory
The downtown areas become so devalued that investors now think these areas have a good risk to return potential.
Overall shift in the economic structure of the United States: Post-Modernity.
Demographics
The baby boomers frequently delayed entry into parenthood, but felt unsure about moving into the suburbs without children.
Status of historical areas difficult to erase.
Proximity to new economy jobs in downtown area
Nightlife for those in courtship life cycle.
Politics and Taxes
Some cities have actively encouraged gentrification through systems of tax breaks and other development incentives in order to prop up flagging downtown economies.
Rainbow Neighborhoods
Gays, Bisexuals and a variety of Bohemian types frequently led the charge into gentrification.
Access to amenities catering to alternative lifestyles.
Defensive strategy.
Where else to go?
Cost of Gentrification
Tax boost often small or non-existent
Displacement of lower income residents
Ethnic tensions
See Focus Box
Society Hill (fig)
The Cultural Ecology of the City   
A. The Urban Ecosystem
B. The Urban Geologic Environment
C. Urban Weather and Climate
D. Urban Hydrology
E. Urban Vegetation 

Urban Heat Island (fig)
Dust Dome-Cincinnati (fig)
Green Space-NYC (fig)
Models of the City  
A.  Concentric Zone Model
B.  Sector Model 
C.  Multiple Nuclei Model
D.  Feminist Critiques
E.  Apartheid and Post apartheid cities 
F.  Soviet and Post-Soviet cities
G.  Latin American Model 

Chicago (fig)
Concentric Zone Model (fig)
What Zone? (fig)
Sector Model (fig)
Multiple Nuclei Model (fig)
Latin America Model (fig)
Boston (fig)
Urban Landscapes
Urban Landscapes reveal much about the processes of the city.
A. Themes in Cityscape Study
1. Landscape dynamics
Where is the city changing most?
Where is change not occurring?
2. The City as Palimpsest
The city landscape can be read as if it were an old parchment, containing bits and pieces of former text un-erased by the passage of time.
Good clues to the former life of a city.
What is saved and what is lost underscores the value system of the culture.
3. Symbolic Cityscapes
There are lots of symbolic, metaphorical meanings lodged in the landscape of the city.
Think of skyscrapers, historic landscapes.
Landscapes act upon us.  They help maintain social order.
How do these meanings get created?
Meinig’s Three Symbolic Landscapes:
New England Village       
Main St. USA
California Suburb
New England Village (fig)
The New Urban Landscape
Shopping Malls-an interior experience, that is made to appear exterior.
Location: on the interstate near suburbs
Forms changing over the years
Malls serve multiple functions, including social ones.
The Mall (fig)
Office Parks: Atlanta (fig)
Office Parks
Out on the edge of town, they have replaced some of the functions of the CBD
Cheaper, more accessible, convenient.
Horizontal, not vertical.
“Park”
Homogenous
High Tech Corridors
Edge City Office Park (fig)
Gated Community (fig)
Master Planned Communities
The totally-planned neighborhood
Social engineering?
Multiple regulations
Scary as hell?
Quincy Market-Festival (fig)
Festival Setting
Frequently part of a gentrification or urban renewal effort
Surround natural or historical amenities
Staging the “spectacular”
Fake and consumptive
May stand next to grinding poverty, but seemingly unaware of it.
Militarized Space
Consciously planned areas that are designed to separate the unsavory elements of society from the “nice” people.
Gated downtown areas, removal of park benches, spikes for fire hydrants, elevated walkways, etc.
Hyper segregation of class and race.
Reduction of truly public spaces
Internet?
Dade, Co Library (fig)