URBAN GEOGRAPHY
Extended Chapter Outline

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-existant
• 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 Postapartheid 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)