Urbanization

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Urbanization
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Urbanization and Urban Geography

• Cities and towns pivotal to economic and social
  organization
• Mobilizing function
• Efficient environments for organizing labor,
  capital and raw materials
• Decision making
• Concentrations of political and economic power

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Urbanization and Urban Geography

• Generative functions
• Facilitate innovation, knowledge creation,
  information
• Transformative capacity
• Escape from the rigidities of traditional, rural
  society

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Urban Systems

• Urban system
• Interdependent set of urban settlements
• Share some common attributes
• Differ in other ways
• Urban form
• Physical structure and organization of cities in
  their land use, layout and built environment

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Urban Systems

• Urban ecology
• Social and demographic composition of city
  districts and neighborhoods
• Urbanism
• How life in the city is lived
• Ie., distinct (?) way of life fostered by urban
  settings
• Often results in distinctive attitudes, values
  and patterns of behavior

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Central Places

• Cities and towns are organized in a number of
  overlapping ways
• As a hierarchy of central places
• Central place
• A settlement with certain types of products and
  services
• Smaller (lower order) places
• provide only those goods to meet every day needs
• Located relatively close to each other
• Spread across the countryside

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Central Places

• Larger Settlements
• Offer greater varieties of more specialized goods
  and services
• Fewer in number
• Located further away from each other
• Range
• The distance which people will travel to purchase
  a good
• Threshold
• The volume of purchases needed to sustain a
  business

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Functional Differentiation
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Rank Size Rule

• The population of a given city tends to be equal
  to the population of the largest city divided by
  the rank of the given city
• ie., Pr Pi/R
• Where
• Pr Population of the Rth city
• Pi population of the largest city in the set
• Rrank of the Rth city in the set

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Primate Cities

• Primate Cities
• A city which is at least greater than twice the
  size of the next largest city in that country
• E.g., Paris, Bangkok, Thailand
• Often times the Primate city far more than simply
  greater than twice the size of the next largest
  city
• E. g. London 7,074,265
• Birmingham 1,020,589

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Primate Cities

• Primate cities and development ?
• No direct correlation
• In poorer countries Primacy may be a problem
• Concentrates both growth and poverty into one
  place
• Makes it more difficult of other areas of the
  country to grow

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World Cities

• Command and Control centers in the World Economy
• Centers controlling the flows of information,
  cultural products and finances that organize the
  global economy
• Leading global markets for commodities, commodity
  futures, investment capital, foreign exchange

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World Cities

• Specialized business services
• i.e., Quaternary sector
• Concentrations of corporate headquarters
• Decision making
• HQs of trade and professional organizations
• HQs of NGOs
• Media Centers
• Sites of terrorist attacks

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World Cities

• Some are specialized
• E.g., Milan (fashion) Brussels (EU)
• Some diversified
• New York
• Some regionally specialized
• Miami (Middle and South America)

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Urbanization

• 1/2 of the population of the world live in
  cities
• Depends somewhat on how cities are defined
• Canada 1,000city
• Japan 50,000city
• Large regional differences in urbanized
• See next slide

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Urbanization trends
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Urbanization trends

• Differences between Core countries and periphery
  and semi-periphery countries
• 1950 (top 30)
• 21 of largest cities in the Core
• 11 in Europe 6 in the U.S.
• 1980
• 19 of largest were in Semi-periphery and
  semi-periphery
• 2010
• 25 in semi-periphery and periphery

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Urbanization trends

• In Core
• Rates of urbanization slow
• In periphery and semi-periphery
• Urbanization rates very high Driven by
• Demographic gap
• Rural to urban migration
• Continued high levels of internal growth
• Little matching economic growth
• e.g., Rio de Janeiro

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Urbanization trends

• Semi-periphery and periphery
• 25-75 of the population
• Instant slums
• Squatter settlements