Urban Geog – Structure

  1. Urban Concepts
  2. Urbanisation
  3. Concept of urbanisation & relationship to urban growth
  4. Suburbanisation, counter-urbanisation and re-urbanisation in DCs
  5. Urbanisation trends in DCs and LDCs
  6. World/Global cities
  7. Primate cities
  1. The City
  2. CBD Dynamics
  3. Bid-rent theory
  4. Functional zoning
  5. Social forces
  6. Multiple nuclei
  1. Influences on urban structure
  2. Historical
  3. State planning
  4. Office decentralisation
  5. City future forms
  6. Globalisation
  1. Managing urban environments
  2. Housing problems
  3. Housing solutions
  4. Transport issues

Suburbanisation

Defn: movement of people away from the city to the edge, within city limits, usually within a 1-hour commute. Usu. upper class phenomenon, and in US, white.

Can be controlled (planned) or uncontrolled (urban sprawl)

  • Horizontal expansion of city, engulfing rural areas and farmland
  • Result of poorly-planned growth
  • Aided by the advent of the private car and motor highways – urban sprawl often occurs along transport belts. E.g. avg. US household has 2 cars

Causes

  • Push: Poor quality of life in inner-city areas
  • Congestion, pollution
  • “White flight”: esp. in US, white middle-class residents move out of non-white inner-city neighbourhoods
  • Push: High property prices in cities compared to suburban developments
  • Pull: Improvements in transport infrastructure – development of railroads in UK in 1920s and 30s, highways and road networks in the US post WWII
  • Pull: Government policies/private initiatives
  • US: federal govt underwriting mortgages
  • UK: building societies which provided mortgages, govt development of New Towns e.g. Milton Keynes
  • Pull: development in communications technology which allows more people to work from home

Consequences

  • Political: govt planning necessary to avoid urban sprawl. E.g. creating green belts, New Towns, providing necessary infrastructure
  • Social: segregation
  • Rich-poor and racial segregation, e.g. Watts (inner-city) vs. Beverly Hills (suburb) in L.A.: Beverly Hills: 90% white, 70% earn over $35k annually compared to Watts: 70% Hispanic & 25% black, 60% earn below $35k
  • Economic: hollowing out of city centre
  • As middle-class taxpayers move out of inner city areas, the financial viability of the city is affected. E.g. federal govt rescued NYC in 1975
  • Environmental: urban sprawl
  • Intrusion into green belts and farmland. E.g. much of London is built on formerly-productive farmland.
  • Cities joining into each other e.g. Bos-Wash megalopolis in NE US
  • Loss of sense of place, termed “geography of nowhere” (Kunstler, 1993)

Counter-urbanisation

Defn: movement of people away from cities into rural areas beyond city limits. Can be seen as an extreme form of suburbanisation, push-pull factors more intense

Preconditions

  • Dependent on transport (cars) and increasingly communications technologies
  • Almost exclusively a DC phenomenon, except Indonesia’s transmigration programme (forced counter-urbanisation, politically motivated)
  • Limited to those who can afford the daily commute

Causes

  • Pull: Higher quality of life in rural areas. Less stressful, less pollution
  • Japan: People living in log cabin communities, over an hour away from Tokyo by bullet train, to escape the concrete jungle for open spaces
  • Pull: development in communications technology – people work from home
  • Pull: holiday homes, e.g. Parisians buying homes in rural areas for May-Sept
  • Push: hectic life in cities, especially for retired

Moderate vs. extreme

Partial break / Complete break
Urban enclaves within rural setting / Rural immersion, in rural enclaves
Can lead to suburbanisation / Stays at village, hamlet level

Consequences

  • Services grow in rural areas. E.g. transport, out-of-town shopping centres
  • Rural enclaves grow into suburbs, esp. in US, complete with shopping malls
  • Society stratification
  • Rural enclaves exclusive, intended to keep people out
  • Racial segregation esp. US: those moving out of cities are mostly white
  • Economic stratification: not many can afford this kind of lifestyle
  • Hollowing out of inner city (NYC) to communities in upstate New York
  • City govts lose money/taxpayers
  • The rich move out, and city authorities can’t afford to support social services. E.g. NYC had to be saved from bankruptcy in 1975
  • Communities grow apart
  • Rural communities become insular, esp. walled neighbourhoods in US
  • “Escape” from concerns of wider community
  • Environmental damage to rural areas: encroachment on farmland
  • Reliance on transport: bullet train in Japan, highways and car in US

Rates and Levels of Urbanisation – DCs

Level of urbanisation high in DCs:

  • Long history of urbanisation
  • Industrial Revolution in 1800s led to economic opportunities being concentrated in cities
  • Urban-rural migration for economic opportunities. Also, international migration esp. to cities in the US
  • BR high throughout, but in cities the population growth rate translated into high rates of urban growth

Rates of urbanisation low in DCs:

  • DCs already highly urbanised: about 80% of the UK’s population lives in cities. Figure for most DCs around 70-80% – most people already live in urban areas, so rural-urban migration likely to be much less significant
  • Pop growth rate slowed down in general
  • Suburbanisation and counter-urbanisation occurring because of congestion, high rents, cost of living, quality-of-life issues: people are moving out of recognised urban areas, slowing urban growth

Rates and Levels of Urbanisation – LDCs

Level of urbanisation low in LDCs:

  • Shorter history of urbanisation
  • Cities in former colonies served mainly as trading ports, rest of country largely unaffected by urbanisation
  • Restrictions on who could live in the city areas in many former colonies, inhibited growth
  • Growth only took off post-independence

Rates of urbanisation high in LDCs:

  • Pop growth rate high, LDCs generally less urbanised: more scope to grow
  • Industrialisation leads to rural-urban migration as urban areas naturally become growth poles, creating economic opportunities and attracting migrants. E.g. Mexico City in 70s: as many as 1000 migrants every day

Urban Sprawl

  • Horizontal expansion of the city towards outskirts, engulfing rural areas
  • Result of uncontrolled, poorly-planned growth
  • Uncontrolled suburbanisation

Causes

  • White flight: middle classes escaping from inner city (perceptions of crime etc.), new neighbourhoods developed
  • Use of the automobile and building of highways that radiate out from city centre, as well as improvements in transport network e.g. the London commuter belt covering an area of several thousand km2
  • Some argue that green belts have paradoxically encouraged urban sprawl by limiting the area available for urban expansion, forcing people to live outside of the green belt

Consequences

  • Lower house prices in suburbs, more can afford their own home
  • Relieving pop pressure in city centre
  • Engulfing farmland, loss of rural heritage
  • Heavy reliance on cars = carbon emissions. Also traffic congestion because of long commute
  • Loss of sense of place – suburbs all tend to look the same, Kunstler’s geography of nowhere. Increasing homogenisation of culture and society.
  • Social phenomena e.g. (!) obesity blamed on urban sprawl because of dependence on car, rather than walking to buy groceries and stuff
  • Stratification – only middle class and above can afford the commute

Myrdal’s Brilliant 3-in-1* Cumulative Causation Model

*Primate cities, world cities and global cities – adapt as desired

Describe the development of primate cities.

  • Some cities enjoy concentrated growth in trade or commerce early in a country’s development e.g. ports.
  • Built-in momentum to grow even more
  • Concentration of workers, jobs, investment
  • Rural-urban migration – push-pull factors
  • Over-concentration of activities leading to backwash effect as one city draws in economic (retail, commercial, industrial) and social (cultural, political, educational, administrative) activities at the expense of other cities. Other cities become dependent on it for services. – stage where primate cities establish primacy
  • E.g. Bangkok dwarfs all other cities in Thailand; few rural Thais would consider moving to anywhere but Bangkok
  • Decentralisation (spread effects) – the extent to which this happens/has happened to primate cities is questionable –
  • Diseconomies of scale (problems of overpopulation) and trickle-down effect leads to other cities eventually developing into growth poles in their own right
  • Spread effect expressed in the spatial outflow of people in suburbanisation/counter-urbanisation that eventually reduces primacy of primate cities
  • E.g. London: spread effects so great that overspill towns were created (Milton Keynes), London Metropolitan Green Belt created to limit urban sprawl (over 5000 km2 O.o)
  • OTOH Bangkok: 60 times larger than Chiang Mai, centre of Thai culture, economy (produces 40+% of the GDP), administration, political power, little evidence of decentralisation to other regions except tourism.

Special characteristics of global cities

  • First-name familiarity (e.g. Paris, London. OTOH where on earth is Abidjan?)
  • Concentration of economic activity (e.g. headquarters of MNCs, law firms, stock exchanges that have considerable influence over world economy)
  • Advanced communications network
  • Large population
  • Cultural institutions (museums, universities)
  • Lively cultural scene (film festivals, music, theatre, art galleries, buskers)
  • Influential media (e.g. BBC, New York Times)
  • Sports (e.g. events like Wimbledon, ability to host Olympics, World Cup etc.)

The big 4: London, Paris, New York, Tokyo

Primate Cities good or bad?

Case studies: (LDCs) Bangkok, Manila & (DCs) Tokyo, London

Good

  • Focus growth: govt resources more effectively used. Easier to provide infrastructure
  • Multiplier effects create wealth/jobs e.g. tourism: hotels cater to tourists, who also support services e.g. food, tour guides, shopping
  • (In LDCs) important channel for modernisation. Primate cities serve as a conduit for socio-economic opportunities e.g. squatter settlements in Cairo which have become so permanent that satellite dishes are a common sight

Bad

  • Slums – uncontrolled development in Bangkok in 70s, 80s and urban sprawl
  • Massive buildings that don’t blend well with Bangkok’s older architecture e.g. office blocks downstream from the royal palace complex
  • Pollution and health problems – many primate cities are health hazards e.g. Manila: people living on Smoky Mountain and other landfills, Jakarta cited as bird flu hazard because of people living with poultry (which has been banned but enforcement is dubious), Bangkok’s legendary congestion
  • Inequality, disconnect e.g. in Thailand, provinces feeling neglected. In the last GE, voters in Bangkok largely supported the Democratic Party while voters in the provinces voted for the Thai Rak Thai party
  • Lack of spread effect to other cities (link to Cumulative Causation Model). Centrifugal pattern of growth so pronounced that MNCs only cite their offices/investments in prominent primate cities
  • Parasitic effect – smaller towns and cities drained of capital, talent as people and money move out into the primate city
  • Unemployment –Jakarta’s jobless rate is around 17% even as the economy grew by 6% because of the influx of rural-urban migrants. Cities cannot create jobs fast enough for them

CBD

CBD: area in the city which provides the highest concentration of administrative, financial, commercial and possibly retail functions.

Structure of the CBD includes the inner core (highest concentration of financial & commercial activities), outer core (lower concentration, wider range of activities) and zone of transition (mixed zone of old and new land use, including areas of discard, characterised by constant redevelopment).

Past questions:

N2004

a) Describe the changing nature of the CBD in urban areas you have studied. [9]

b) TWE are the changes in the CBD the consequences of increasing difficulties (O.o?) experienced within the CBD. [16]

Question b)

Consequences of difficulties within CBD

  • Spatial limitations affect traffic – leads to changes in road upgrading, traffic congestion, need for more public transport
  • Outdated buildings need to be demolished – gentrification of Chinatown, old National Library making way for some road tunnel

Not consequences of difficulties within CBD

  • Maintain competitiveness and relevance, both within the city and against other cities. E.g. the integrated resorts
  • Creating urban economies of scale: larger critical mass attracts economic activity
  • Urban growth = CBD inadequate to meet the needs of the city. Need for secondary CBDs to spread growth, create secondary growth poles
  • Tourist activities incorporated into CBD and 24-hour CBD: drawing on spatial strengths of CBD (accessibility, prime land, lots of people)

CBD Re-imaging

Re-imaging: constant readjustment in response to changes in social and economic trends. E.g. in Singapore, industrial and residential growth relevant in 70s now complemented with commercial, leisure and recreation.

Need for re-imaging

  1. CBD’s relevance to the rest of the city changes over time. Re-imaging helps keeps the CBD relevant e.g. providing leisure activities (Clarke/Boat/Robertson Quay)
  2. Old landscape needs to be updated to keep up with the times, e.g. Gentrification in Chinatown, Bugis area
  3. Building functions, architecture, planning principles change.
  4. Keep up with competitors: other upcoming world cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong. Attracting economic activity and people

Re-imaging strategies to vomit on the paper

  1. Secondary CBDs
  2. In Singapore, Tampines, Woodlands and Jurong East are examples
  3. Provide secondary retail and commercial functions to spread growth, reduce overconcentration of activity in CBD
  4. Continuous redevelopment
  5. Takes place in outer core and zone of transition
  6. Old buildings torn down to make way for new ones – accounts for the changing face of CBD
  7. E.g. Old National Library, parts of Chinatown (later rebuilt at the expense of cultural heritage, turned into tourist trap)
  8. Problem: loss of character (Lonely Planet describes Singapore as “shockingly modern and anonymous” O.o)
  9. Gentrification
  10. Places like Chinatown, Boat Quay. Changed the character of these areas (formerly warehouses, shophouses) to upmarket pubs, restaurants serving office workers after work.
  11. 12-hour to 24-hour city
  12. Attract people by turning CBD into a vibrant area at night
  13. Draw on CBD’s strengths of central location, large pool of bored office workers and high rents to support pubs, restaurants, nightlife, bazaars.
  14. Creation of integrated hubs of activity e.g. integrated resorts combining retail, commercial and leisure functions.
  15. These activities are supported by 3 main groups of people: locals, people working in the vicinity, and tourists

Alonso’s Bid-Rent Theory

From the Urban Geog tips: Bid-rent can be useful in answering other questions

The bid-rent theory postulates that price & demand for land changes in relation to proximity to the CBD. The ability to bid for land results in patterns of differentiated land use.

  1. Offices e.g. Shenton Way
  2. Retail e.g. Orchard
  3. Light industry (older parts of the central area) e.g. North Bridge Road
  4. Low income residential e.g. Redhill, Bukit Merah
  5. High income residential e.g. Bukit Timah
  6. Heavy manufacturing e.g. Jurong

This theory is based upon the reasoning that the more accessible an area, the more profitable it is going to be. Retailers and offices wish to maximise their profitability, so they are much more willing to pay more for land close to the CBD and less for land further away from this area.

Bid-rent theory explains why financial & commercial activities are almost always found in the most accessible parts of the city, while industrial and residential land uses are further away. In reality, multiple peak land value intersections (PLVIs) create their own growth poles, resulting in multiple nuclei in a city.

Poorer people (in low income residential areas) live near the city because of urban history – the houses closest to the CBD are likely to be older, built before modern land planning and growth of cities, and the run-down appearance and lack of amenities (reflecting older, more functional urban planning – or even no planning at all) produces lower rents. Sub-letting (dividing the unit up for multiple tenants so they all share the cost of the full rent) also reduces rents.

Influences on City Structure

Social forces

  • Burgess (1925): concept of a city based on a single centre that spreads itself concentrically outwards by the process of invasion and succession
  • Poor rural-urban migrants settle nearest city centre, for accessibility to jobs. This pushes out the richer inhabitants, who move further out from the city centre. The process is repeated, and eventually a rich-poor divide is created
  • Invasion and succession creates a rich-poor divide. E.g. LA – Watts vs. Bel Air

Influence of transport

  • Transport is an important influence on land use
  • It connects different nodes of growth together
  • Higher accessibility along highways and expressways means that rents/prices are higher along them.
  • Cities start growing horizontally, in wedge or ribbon-like patterns. These sectors are areas of growth for middle-class housing, suburban shopping malls, even light industry. E.g. Ventura and Pacific Highways along the coast of LA

Influence of growth poles

  • Growth poles are hubs or clusters of activity, can be financial, commercial, industrial, residential in nature
  • Growth pole theory is based on the observation that growth happens at different points with different degrees of intensity
  • Growth poles spread out growth in the city. They also attract similar activities in a cluster, become obvious after some time.

Government

  • Development of new towns
  • Urban redevelopment
  • Re-imaging
  • Destruction and construction
  • Creation of green belts
  • Conservation of old buildings/monuments

Others

  • Cultural and ethnic groupings e.g. Chinatown, Little India
  • Topophilia: aesthetic, emotional or nostalgic attachment to a place
  • Gentrification: creative class want to stay in the inner-city because of nightlife and close proximity to work and leisure

Influences on City Structure: Influence of History

Cities in the developing world often developed from ports e.g. Singapore, Georgetown (Penang), Yangoon (Myanmar), Manila (Philippines), Hong Kong. These were gateways for trading with the hinterland in spices and other goods, nodal points of entry and exit for goods and services.

Asia: Characteristics

  • Mixed, haphazard land use
  • Still applicable today e.g. Manila, Jakarta, characterised by godowns, administrative blocks, commercial trading companies and old pre-war houses dot the urban landscape
  • Spontaneous growth
  • Squatter settlements and proliferation of slums
  • Racial segregation resulting from strong govt planning

Latin America: Characteristics

  • CBD: central plaza or square, flanked by govt buildings and church
  • Commercial spine along major transport route with surrounding high class residential areas. Contains some light industries as well. The spine is thin because the society isn’t developed yet, few wealthy people
  • Disamenity sectors in outskirts (areas lacking amenities)
  • Spontaneous growth
  • Still occurring e.g. Rio de Janeiro: population growth leading to unplanned settlements, slums, favelas

Possible questions for influences on city structure: DRQ on model of city
Look out for
  • Mixed land use
  • Rich/poor divide
  • Others – racial segregation, Latin American commercial spine
Role of govt
  • Singapore – concept plans, re-imaging
  • Manila – Tondo: new housing but at the cost of squatters losing homes
  • Brazil – favelas, self-help schemes, Cingapura project

Influences on City Structure: Role of State