Session 7: Urban Geography 1) Review on referencing 2) Chapter 10: 10.1: When and why did people start living in cities? 3) Chapter 10: 10.2: Where are cities located and why? 4) Chapter 10: 10.3 (part 1): How are cities organized and how do they function? 5) Group work: starting to prepare your presentations Fouberg, E. H., Murphy, A. B., De Blij, H. J. and C. J. Nash (2012). Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., Mississauga. March 6, 2015
Transcript
Session 7: Urban Geography
1) Review on referencing
2) Chapter 10: 10.1: When and why did people start living in cities?
3) Chapter 10: 10.2: Where are cities located and why?
4) Chapter 10: 10.3 (part 1): How are cities organized and how do they function?
5) Group work: starting to prepare your presentations
Fouberg, E. H., Murphy, A. B., De Blij, H. J. and C. J. Nash (2012). Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., Mississauga.
March 6, 2015
Section 10.1 - When and why did people start living in cities?
City: Conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a centre of politics, culture, and economics.
Urban (area): The entire built-up, non-rural area and its population, including the most recently constructed suburban appendages. Provides a better picture of the dimensions and population of such an area that the delimited municipality (central city) that forms its heart.
Suburban realm: The surrounding environs connected to the city.
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Half of the world’s population lives in cities with populations that have less than 500,000 people
Examples:
• Cairns, Australia • Athens, Georgia, USA• Kenora, Ontario• Halifax, Nova Scotia• many, many more…
Many cities are slightly over 500,000
• Winnipeg (633,450 people)
Mega-city: A city having a population of more than 10 million inhabitants.
35 in existence today
Population of a city depends on if you only take into account the urban agglomeration
Example:
• Tokyo metropolis (13.35 million)• Greater Tokyo (38 million)
Other mega-cities: Delhi; Mumbai; Seoul; Shanghai (14.99 million); Beijing; Sao Paulo; Jakarta; Mexico city; New York
Urban agglomerations: Defined by the United Nations as those populations of 1 million or more people “within a contiguous territory inhabited at urban levels or residential diversity.”
Open text book to Table 10.1
Shows 1975 highest populations, 2007 populations, and predictions for 2025
• Mexico expected to drop from 3rd to 6th position
• Delhi expected to rise from 6th to 3rd position
• Dhaka (Bangladesh) expected to rise from 9th to 4th position
Sao Paulo mega-city and water resources
BBC News: ‘Brazil drought linked to Amazon deforestation’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rQmG-koEPI
The Hearths of Urbanization
Urban centres originally took thousands of years to develop
First cities were established about 8,000 years ago according to archaeological evidence
Past 200 years that cities have come to their modern size and structure
2 urban revolutions
1. 3500 BCE (Before Common/Current/Christian Era): driven by a shift in agricultural technology
2. 500 BCE: rapid tech advances related to the industrial revolution
Agricultural village: A relatively small, egalitarian village, where most of the population was involved in agriculture. Starting over 10,000 years ago, people began to cluster in agricultural villages as they stayed in one place to tend their crops.
• Archaeologists could tell that dwellings where permanent based on their construction
• Egalitarian social order persisted for quite some time after agriculture began
• Egalitarian social order began to change when urban areas increased
• trade became more common practice
• economic activities became more diversified
• resulting in different social classes and governance structures
2 main components resulting in the emergence of cities:
Agricultural surplus: One of the two components, together with social stratification, that enable the formation of cities; agricultural production in excess of that which the producer needs for his or her own sustenance and that of his or her family and which is then sold for consumption by others.
Social stratification: One of two components, together with agricultural surplus, that enables the formation of cities; the differentiation of society into classes based on wealth, power, production, and prestige.
Leadership class: Group of decision-makers and organizers in early cities who controlled the resources, and often the lives of others.
a.k.a. “urban elite”
• typically did not work in the fields
• other pursuits such as religion and philosophy
• establishment and collection of taxes
The First Urban Revolution
First urban revolution: The innovation of the city, which occurred independently in six separate hearths.
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6 hearths of urbanization are closely tied to the hearths of agriculture
1st urban hearth, Mesopotamia: Region of great cities (e.g., Ur and Babylon) located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers; chronologically the first urban hearth, dating to 3500 BCE, which was founded in the Fertile Crescent.
• signs of social inequality found in archaeological evidence –mostly dwellings
Urban morphology: The study of the physical form and structure of urban places.
2nd urban hearth; Nile River Valley: Chronologically, the second urban hearth, dating 3200 BCE.
• some scholars believe this is not a hearth; is diffusion from Mesopotamia
• relationship between urbanization and irrigation distinguishes it from other areas (those who controlled irrigation held power)
3rd urban hearth; Indus River Valley: Chronologically, the third urban hearth, dating to 2200 BCE.
• leadership class existed, but dwellings were all the same size
4th urban hearth; Huang He (Yellow) and Wei (Yangtze) river valleys: Chronologically, the fourth urban hearth, established around 1500 BCE, at the confluence of the Huang He and Wei rivers in present-day China.
• urban elite built large elaborate dwellings
• 200 BCE: the Emperor directed the building of the Great Wall of China
Mesoamerica: Chronologically, the fifth urban hearth, dating to 200 BCE.
• urban elite augmented their authority through religion
Diffusion of Urbanization
• Diffusion from Mesopotamia was the earliest
Greek Cities
• By 500 BCE Greece had become one of the most highly urbanized areas on Earth
• New stage in the evolution of cities
• Network of over 500 cities and towns (mainland and islands), ~250,000 inhabitants
Acropolis: Literally “high point of the city.” The upper fortified pant of an ancient Greek city, usually devoted to religious purposes.
Acropolis in Athens
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Agora: In ancient Greece, public spaces where citizens debated, lectured, judged each other, planned military campaigns, socialized, and traded.
• agora means “market” – became the focus of commercial activity
• open and spacious
• low lying part of town
Urbanization diffused from Greece to the Roman Empire
Europeans eventually carried notions of urbanization worldwide through colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.
Roman Cities
Romans succeeded the Greeks as rulers in this region
Urban system exceeded that of the Greeks
Rome was the apex of the hierarchical urban system linked by an extensive transportation system
Grid pattern of cities belonged to both Greeks and Romans (where possible)
Roman regional planners determined “sites”
Site: The internal physical attributes of a place, including its absolute location, spatial character, and physical setting.
Forum: The focal point on ancient Roman life combining the functions of the ancient Green acropolis and agora.
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The Colosseum
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Many slaves were involved in the building of these ancient cities
It is estimated that one to two thirds of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves
Some of the urban structures represent “both the greatest achievements and the worst failings of civilization”
Roman Empire fell in 495 BCE – was the start of the Middle Ages in Europe
The Second Urban Revolution
Began in Great Britain and the rest of Europe in the last decades of the 18th Century
Technology and science radically altered society
Thousands migrated from rural areas to the cities to keep up with production
Important improvements in agriculture also happened at this time –increased production
Also, medical advancements decreased death rates – greater population meant greater labour force
However…
Living and working conditions were very harsh
Factories often took over residential dwellings
Children worked long days
20th Century: many factories moved away from urban centres and left behind “rust belts”
Section 10.2 - Where are cities located and why?
Situation: The external locational attributes of a place; its relative location or regional position with reference to other nonlocal places.
• helps to explain why a city is located where it is
• often need to look at more than one city to make the connections and explain why it is there
Central place theory: Theory proposed by Walter Chistaller that explains how and where central places in the urban hierarchy should be functionally and spatially distributed with respect to one another.
• Explained connections between and spatial distribution of hamlets, villages, towns and cities
• Assumptions:
• the surface of the ideal region would be flat and have no physical barriers
• soil fertility would be the same everywhere• population and purchasing power would be evenly
distributed• uniform transportation network• a good or service could be sold from any place
Christaller calculated the ideal central place system and the compared it to real world situation
• found that central places were nested
• the largest central place provided the greatest number of functions for the region
Trade area: Region adjacent to every town and city within which its influence is dominant.
• a series of large towns would provide function to an even smaller service area
• Christaller studied the sale of good and how far people would be willing to travel to acquire them
Rank-size rule: In a model urban hierarchy, the idea that the population of a city of town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy.
This is how it works:
Say the largest city has 100,000 people
o the 10th largest city would have 1/10 the number of people
o In reality this is often distorted by cultural, political and other factors
Primate city: A country’s largest city-ranking atop the urban hierarchy-most expressive of the national culture and usually (but not always) the capital city as well.
• according to rank-size rule, this city has a disproportionally larger population compared to its neighboring cities
• Have primary functional roles within a large urban system (financial, governmental)
• Examples: London, Buenos Aries
Centrality: The strength of an urban centre in its capacity to attract producers and consumers to its facilities; a city’s “reach” into the surrounding region.
Other cities have smaller populations compared to neighboring cities but have very important roles (financial, political, etc.)
This is…
Centrality: The strength of an urban centre in its capacity to attract producers and consumers to its facilities; a city’s “reach” into the surrounding region.
Examples:
• Ottawa (Popln: 883,390): Canada’s political centre has a much smaller population than neighboring Toronto (Popln: 2.503 million)
• Canberra: Australia’s political centre
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Hexagonal Hinterlands
Central Places Today
Canada’s Urban System
Larry Bourne and J. Simmons argue that Canada is currently in a state of transition and that Canada has 5 mega-urban regions:
1. Greater Toronto Area (GTA)2. Greater Montreal Area3. Alberta’s central urban corridor (Edmonton-Red Deer-
These regions affect areas far away and area also known as Census Monopoly Areas (CMAs)
Census Monopoly Areas (CMAs) - larger population growth rates
Other areas in Canada are experiencing slow growth or decline
Factors for uneven population growth in Canada (according to Bourne and Simmons:
• Canada now longer has a rate of natural increase that can sustain population growth, rely on immigration
• Shift from manufacturing towards service sector – business more likely to locate in a mega-city
• Trade and commerce is now flowing towards the US because of NAFTA – benefits some areas and not others
Section 10.3 - How are cities organized and how do they function?
Models of the City, are studies of:
Functional zonation: The division of a city into different regions or zones (e.g., residential or industrial) for certain purposes or functions (e.g., housing or manufacturing).
Zone: Area of a city with a relatively uniform land use (e.g., an industrial zone, or a residential zone).
Central Business District (CBD): The downtown heart of a central city, marked by high land values, a concentration of business and commerce, and the clustering of the tallest buildings.
Central city: The urban area that is not suburban; generally, the older or original city that is surrounded by newer suburbs.
Suburb: A subsidiary urban area surrounding and connected to the central city. Many are exclusively residential; other have their own commercial centres or shopping malls.
• Often residential
• May also have other land uses such as schools, shopping malls, office and industrial parks
Suburbanization: The process by which lands that were previously outside the urban environment became urbanized, as people and businesses from the city and other areas move to these spaces.
