Cities

1. Where are cities?• Urbanization• Definition

2. Where are people in cities?• Formal Models• Recent History of Cities

3. Problems of inner cities• Physical, social and economic• Housing, Redevelopment and Gentrification

4. Problems of suburbs?5. Urban Policy and Planning• Important point - 3) can not be understood without 4),

and vice versa.

Defining the city

• Impossible to understand the American City without including the suburb.

• Historian/Geographer Bill Cronon claims Chicago includes the plains and mountain region, since Chicago uses these resources.

• As I will use it, the City comprises the Central City and the Suburb

• What is to be done about the Atlantic Seaboard, Is it one giant city?

City Life• Mechanical vs organic solidarity• Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

– Size, density, and dynamism– Anomie and deviant bevavior (possible, but not necessary)

• Psychic overload (Georg Simmel – 1905)• “Lonely Crowd” as liberating• Louis Wirth

– Size, Density and Heterogeneity– City dwellers are withdrawn, impersonal– Unrestrained and self-centered– Unsupported– Fragmentation of social life

• Generalization: Europeans have seen the city more positively than Americans

City Models

• Concentric Ring– Economic Rent

• Sector– History matters

• Multiple Nuclei– Cities don’t have just

one center– Functional clusters

Concentric Rings (Burgess) Model

• The city grows like an onion

Economic Models

• Land use is determined by which use can earn the most profit.

• Key factor is the “willingness to pay” for accessibility, land and amenities.

History• Mercantile City (pre 1840)

– Commerce and elites are central• Early industrial city (-1880)

– Commerce and Industry are central– Free-for-all development

• Industrial City (-1920)– Large-scale industrialization– Generalized housing market

• Suburbanization (-today)– Automobile– Land use zoning– Subsidized home ownership– Mass-produced housing

• Polycentric metropolis (1970- today)– Edge Cities – suburban hubs of shops and offices

Urban Realms model

• Our lives are mostly lived in one realm

• A economic model, not a social model

Why are the poor centralized?

• Filtering and vacancy chains• Obsolescence:

– Functional– Form– Locational– Style

• Deindustrialization and the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis

• Land rent theory– Space vs Accessibility preferences.

What is Gentrification

• Definitions difficult, but…• Renovation of housing and community in

older, low income neighborhoods through the influx of more affluent residents (the gentry).

• Is gentrification bad or good?

Good Gentrification

• Reinvestment• More private investment, less public• Expansion of tax base without increase of

services• Encourages retail activity

Bad Gentrification

• Displaces poor residents (900,000 / year?)– Disproportionately elderly, female headed

households

• Raises rents• Caters to the wants of the wealthy (fancy

pants academics like me call these wants “consumption patterns”)

Why does it happen I

• David Ley (1996)– Demand side– Humanistic– Cities are hip again– Rejection of “cookie-cutter” suburbs and

modern downtown highrises.– Appreciation for places with history and

ethnic/architectural diversity• Early high-risk moves sanitize the ‘hood,

as well as make it more hip.

Why does it happen II

• Neil Smith (1996)• “Back to the City” movement of capital

– Preconditions• “Devalorization” during sprawl era• Rent gap

– Initation• Professional developers flipping properties• Occupier-developers• Landlord developers

Rent gap

• Capitalized vs Potential Ground

• Investment, Disinvestment and the “spatial fix”