What are urban models in geography?

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Landuse models are theories which attempt to explain the layout of urban areas. A model is used to simplify complex, real world situations, and make them easier to explain and understand. There is a range of landuse models that apply to urban areas in MEDCS (More Economically Developed Countries).

The Burgess Model (1920s) and the Hoyt Model (1940s) are both quite simple models reflecting urban development in the UK:

Both of these models identity similar areas: 1. CBD (Central Business District) – located at the centre of the city often at the convergence of rail and road routes. Contains many commerical activities, shops, entertainment and also business activities. 2. Inner City (also known as the Twilight or Transition Zone) – mixed land-use containing small industries as well as high-density residential land-use – often characterised by terraced housing. 3. Inner Suburbs – residential areas which developed during the 1920s/30s – often semi-detached houses in a distinctive 1920s/30s style with bay windows and front / back gardens. 4. Outer Suburbs – residential areas which grew up later as greater public transport and private car ownership allowed people to live further out from their places of work. These houses are often semi-detached / detached with larger gardens and garages.

5. Rural-urban fringe – this is right on the edge of towns and cities and is mainly low density, private housing (often larger detached properties); new industrial estates / business parks and facilities requiring larger open spaces such as golf courses.

Geographers tried to make sense of the patterns made by urban areas and devised a number of models which urban areas in MEDCs could be compared to. These definitions apply to all the models.

Zone 1: Central Business District; contains the major shops, offices and entertainment facilities.

Zone 2: Inner city area (twilight zone). This is an area of old housing and light manufacturing industry.

Zone 3: Low class residential. This is an area of poor quality housing, although the conditions are better than in Zone 2.

Zone 4: Medium class residential. This is an area of housing which was built between the wars. It is mainly semidetached housing and council estates.

Zone 5: High class residential (commuter zone). This is an area of expensive housing on the outskirts of the city. It also stretches in to the countryside beyond the city.

The concentric ring model (below) was devised by Burgess. It split the land use of the city into rings, starting from the centre. The idea was that urban areas grow equally in all directions.

The Hoyt model (below) has land use concentrated in wedges or sectors radiating out from the city centre. For example, factories may be concentrated along a river, canal or road to form a zone of industry. This would attract low-class housing, but repel high-class residential land use.

There are three explanations for these land use patterns.

1 Historical

The urban area expanded outwards from the original site which is where the city centre is found today.

2 Economic

Rents and rates in the CBD became too expensive for people. In the suburbs there was more land and it was cheaper. Only businesses could afford to stay in the CBD, but even they needed to make the most of expensive land by building upwards.

3 Concentrations of similar land uses

One part of the urban area may have all the advantages for industrial location so that a lot of factories want to locate there; but few people want to live next door to a factory, so the residential areas are located elsewhere. Planners also prefer this segregation of land uses into definite zones.

Urban Land Use Patterns: Barcelona

The urban land use model of Barcelona (below) is a composite of Burgess and Hoyt.

Areas with generally lower class housing and socio-economic groups include the medieval Old Town and areas of the city that experienced significant growth during the Industrial Revolution and the chaotic unplanned development that followed. Industry and low-class residential areas are located along the coast or the two river valleys that provide access to the city through the coastal mountain range.

The high-class residential areas of the city fan out from the city centre to the elevated area of Zona Alta in the foothills. Here, residents enjoy cleaner air and less humidity, helped by a northerly prevailing wind. Slightly poorer housing is found in the valleys. Pedralbes is the zone for the very wealthy, with land values twenty times those of the inner city. The coastline has recently been transformed with artificial beaches and abandoned coastal industrial sites have been redeveloped as high class residential areas.

Transition zones exist between the mainly high class and low class residential areas.

The urban land use model of Barcelona

The model which has evolved is true mainly for Brazilian cities, although it can be applied to other cities in the world. The main characteristics of the model of Sao Paulo (below) are:

1. The Central Business District; contains the main businesses, shopping centres and entertainment of the urban area.

2. High status housing surrounds the CBD. This includes high-rise expensive modern apartment blocks, many with their own security guards. This pattern is the opposite to that of cities in MEDCs. Inner city districts of MEDCs date back to the factories and tenement blocks of the Industrial Revolution, whereas the area surrounding the CBD in LEDCs dates from colonial times when it housed the colony's administrators and Governor. It consequently has the infrastructure - electricity, telephones, sewerage, water, etc. not found in other parts of the urban area.

3. Surrounding the high-quality residential area is poor to medium quality housing which started out as a shanty town. It has now been provided with some basic amenities (the periferia).

4. Shanty towns (spontaneous squatter settlements or favelas) are found on the steep hillsides, swamps or waste land surrounding the city.

5. Modern factories are found along main roads, sometimes with favelas in between.

There are also areas on the periphery of low-cost housing funded by the government which have basic amenities. In addition there is suburban high status, low density housing for executive and professional classes.

The goals and objectives of this chapter are to:

Describe how urbanized areas are distributed
Explain how urban areas are expanding and why
Determine the challenges to urban growth

CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT
Most urban centers begin in the downtown region called the central business district (CBD). The CBD tends to be the node or of transportation networks along with commercial property, banking, journalism, and judicial departments like City Hall, courts, and libraries. Because of high competition and limited space, property values for commercial and private ownership tend to be at a premium. CBDs also tend to use land above and below ground in the form of subways, underground malls, and high rises. Sports facilities and convention centers also tend to be dominating forces in CBDs.

URBAN GROWTH MODELS
Urban planning is a sub-field of geography and until recently was part of geography departments in academia. An urban planner is someone trained in multiple theories of urban development along with developing ways to minimize traffic, decrease environmental pollution, and build sustainable cities. Urban planners, sociologists, along with geographers have come up with three models to demonstrate and explain how cities grow.

The first model is called the concentric zone model, which states that cities have the ability to develop in five concentric rings. The inner zone of the cities tends to be the CBD, followed by a second ring that tends to the zone of transition between the first and third rings. In this transition zone, the land tends to be used by industry or low quality housing. The third ring is called the zone of independent workers and tends to be occupied by working-class households. The fourth ring is called the zone of better residences and is dominated by middle-class families. Finally, ring five is called the commuter’s zone, where most people living there have to commute to work every day.

The second model for city development and growth is called the sector model. This model states that cities tend to grow in sectors rather than concentric rings. The idea behind this model is that “like groups” tend to grow in clusters and expand as a cluster. The center of this model is still the CBD. The next sector is called the transportation and industry sector. The third sector is called the low-class residential sector, where lower income households tend to group. The fourth sector is called the middle-class sector and the fifth is the high-class sector.

The third and final urban design is called the multiple nuclei model. In this model, the city is more complex and has more than one CBD. A node could exist for the downtown region, another where a university is situated, and maybe another where an international airport may be. Some clustering does exist in this model because some sectors tend to stay away from other sectors. For example, industry does not tend to develop next to high-income housing.

Determining which urban model fits a particular city is often based on census data.The U.S. Bureau of the Census divides urban areas into census tracts, where each track contains approximately 5,000 residents. Every 10 years, the bureau does a complete count of the country’s individuals and publishes the results. Data includes household incomes, gender, ethnicity, high school completions, and more. This information is not only collected but mapped for spatial analysis. Social scientists use the data and maps to analyze demographic patterns spatially and over time to help understands current and project future social, demographic, and economic trends.

Sociologists, geographers, and urban planners know that no city exactly follows one of the urban models of growth. But the models help us understand broader reason why people live where they do. Higher income households tend to live away from lower income households. Renters and house owners also tend to segregate from each other. In fact, renters tend to live closer to the CBD, whereas home owners tend to live along the outer regions of the city. It should be noted that the three models were developed shortly after World War II and based on U.S. cities; many critics now state that they don’t truly represent modern cities.

An excellent website on urban planning using geospatial technology is called the Urban Observatory. The website provides access to spatial data for cities all around the world and allows you to simultaneously view multiple cities at once. Compare and contrast visualized information for a greater understanding of life in the 21st century.

METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREAS
A city is defined as an urban settlement that is legally part of a larger governing entity. Cities have local officials, can raise taxes, and are responsible for providing services to local residents. The central city is a city that is also surrounded by suburbs and together is called an urbanized area. Census counts suggest that 70 percent of Americans live in an urbanized area.

The U.S. Bureau of the Census has created a way of measuring the influence cities have on surrounding regions, called the metropolitan statistical area (MSA). An MSA is defined as an urbanized area with at least 50,000 residents, includes the county the city exists within, and any surrounding counties if a high percentage of the residents within those counties work in the central city’s county. The federal government has also created smaller designations for urban areas smaller than 50,000 residents and is called a micropolitan statistical area. If there is any overlap between these two statistical areas, usually in the form of commuting and transportation patterns, the census has created the term combined statistical area.

FRAGMENTED GOVERNMENTS
There has been an ongoing conflict between cities and peripheral urbanized areas outside of the central city who want to maintain their independence. This becomes problematic for housing, taxes for schooling, transportation, garbage disposal, and law enforcement. If urbanized areas are legally incorporated into an existing city, the process is called annexation. In order for annexation to occur, the majority of the residents in the outer regions must vote to approve such an acquisition. The debate over annexation varies throughout the United States and truly is a local issue.

INNER CITIES
One of the major problems that cities face is deteriorating areas, high crime, and homelessness, and poverty. As noted in the urban models, many lower income people live near the city, but lack the job skills to complete for employment within the city. This often results in a variety of social and economic problems. Census data shows that 80 percent of children living in inner cities only have one parent and because child care services are limited in the city; single parents struggle to meet the demands of childcare and employment. Problems associated with lower income areas are often violent crime (assault, murder, rape), prostitution, drug distribution and abuse, and homelessness, and food deserts.

SLUMS AND SHANTY TOWNS
Some of these inner city areas are called slums, which is a heavily populated urban informal settlement consisting of poor, inadequate living standards. Most slums lack proper sanitation services, access to clean drinking water, law enforcement, or other essential necessities of living in an urban area.

A shanty town, also known as a squatter, is a slum settlement that usually consists of building material made out of plywood sheets of plastic, cardboard boxes, and other cheap material. They are usually found on the periphery of cities or near rivers, lagoons, or city trash dumps.

Based on reports by UN Habitat, it is currently believed that over 35 percent of the all those living in urbanized areas of the world live in slums and shanty towns. There are a variety of reasons why these types of living conditions develop that include: rapid rapid rural-to-urban migration, economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, poor planning, politics, natural disasters and social conflicts.

GENTRIFICATION
As a way for city officials to deal with inner city problems, there has been a push recently to renovate cities, a process called gentrification. Middle class families are drawn to city life because housing is cheaper, yet can be fixed up and improved, whereas suburb housing prices continue to rise. Some cities also offer tax breaks and cheap loans to families who move into the city to help pay for renovation. Also, city houses tend to have more cultural style and design compared to quickly made suburb homes. Transportation tends to be cheaper and more convenient, so that commuters don't spend hours a day traveling to work. Couples without children are drawn to city living because of the social aspects of theaters, clubs, restaurants, bars, and recreational facilities.

The logic behind gentrification is that it not only reduces crime and homelessness, it also brings tax revenue to cities to improve the city's infrastructure. But there has also been a backlash against gentrification because some view it as a tax break for the middle and upper class rather than spending much needed money on social programs for low income families. It could also be argued that improving lower class households would also increase tax revenue because funding could go toward job skill training, child care services, and reducing drug use and crime.

URBAN SPRAWL
Again referring back to census data, over half of all live in suburbs rather than in the city or rural areas. There was actually an urban sprawl model developed to explain U.S. development called the peripheral model. This model states that urban areas consists of a CBD followed by large suburban are of business and residential developments. The outer regions of the suburbs become transition zones of rural areas.

The attraction to suburbs is low crime rates, lack of social and economic problems, detached single-family housing, access to parks, and usually better schooling. These are nationwide generalizations and not necessarily true everywhere. Suburbs also tend to create economic and social segregation, where tax revenues and social resources provide better funding opportunities than in inner cities.

Of course, there is also a cost to urban sprawling. Developers are always looking for cheaper land to build, which usually means developing rural areas and farm land rather than expanding next to existing suburbs. Sprawl also requires more roads and utility lines to be built to reach further away from the urban centers. This often causes local governments to spend more on new infrastructure development than is received through tax revenue. Air pollution and traffic congestion also becomes a problem as working households are required to travel farther to and from work. Suburbs tend to be less commuter friendly to those who walk or bike because the model of development is based around vehicle transportation.

With a world of 7.3 billion people with the majority of them living in urbanized areas, it is becoming ever more important to design cities to efficiently fit dense populations of people yet in a way that is healthy and sustainable for the people and the environment. This includes more efficient transportation systems, walkable communities, green building projects, urban gardening, and

Many would argue that the future of humanity is not going to be determined by national governments, but by how we develop or local cities and communities.

Click here to listen to NPR's "Cities as Infestations" story (2012) to get a planetary view of the human impact on geographic and biological systems through city building:
"Every geological epoch gets a name. Looking back over millions of years, you have your Eocene, your Pliocene, your Holocene epoch (that was the most recent one). Now folks are suggesting that we are entering a new epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene means it's our activity which is the main driver changing the planet. But you know what? The Anthropocene is really the epoch of the city. It's our city building — on a massive, planetary scale — that is at work here."

Cities as Infestations

Image taken from Cities at Night, NASA.

Many are saying that if we are going to save the world, we need to start with our cities. Of the 7 billion people on the planet, over half of them now live in urban areas. So it's becoming critical that humans make a conscious effort to create sustainable cities that address issues of poverty, segregation, environmental pollution, urban landscapes, and transportation. Urban planners have created a series of models that try to analyze and predict how cities have developed and their projected trends. But has criticized them because they tend to focus on European urban places and that they don't represent the global trends.

In less developed countries, shanty towns of extreme poverty are a lot of issues that must be considered and addressed with our city landscapes. In more developed countries, inner cities must deal with poverty, segregation, higher crime rates, and homelessness. Gentrification can be a positive and negative influence on city growth. This process brings middle-class citizens into cities by providing them benefits to "fix up" inner cities. But often times this leads to a form of segregation because more often than not white citizens come in and replace minority citizens. It can also lead to controversial issues like "class warfare."

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