Where are Cities Located and Why?

Site and Situation

Site * absolute location of a city * a city’s static location, often chosen for trade, defense, or religion. Situation * relative location of a city * a city’s place in the region and the world around it.

Trade area

Trade area – an adjacent region within which a city’s influence is dominant.

Green Country, Oklahoma

Rank-Size Rule:

in a model urban hierarchy, the population of the city or town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy. The n th largest city will be 1/n the size of the largest city in that country.

For example: largest city = 12 million 2 nd largest = 6 million 3 rd largest = 4 million 4 th largest = 3 million

Primate City

The leading city of a country. The city is disproportionately larger than the rest of the cities in the country.

For example: London, UK Mexico City, Mexico Paris, France - the rank-size rule does not work for a country with a primate city

Central Place Theory

Walter Christaller developed a model to predict how and where central places in the urban hierarchy (hamlets, villages, towns, and cities) would be functionally and spatially distributed.

Assumed: surface is flat with no physical barriers soil fertility is the same everywhere population and purchasing power are evenly distributed region has uniform transportation network from any given place, a good or service could be sold in all directions out to a certain distance

Hexagonal Hinterlands

C = city T = town V = village H = hamlet

Urban Structure Urban Morphology

• The layout of a city, its physical form and structure.

Functional Zonation – The division of the city into certain regions (zones) for certain purposes (functions).

Zones of the City

• Central business district (CBD) • Central City (the CBD + older housing zones) • Suburb (outlying, functionally uniform zone outside of the central city)

Modeling the North American City

• Concentric zone model (Ernest Burgess) • Sector model (Homer Hoyt) • Multiple Nuclei Model (Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman)

Three Classical Models of Urban Structure

Suburban downtowns, often located near key freeway intersections, often with: - office complexes - shopping centers - hotels - restaurants - entertainment facilities - sports complexes

Edge Cities

Urban Realms Model

Each realm is a separate economic, social and political entity that is linked together to form a larger metro framework.

Modeling the Cities of the Global Periphery and Semiperiphery

• Latin American City (Griffin-Ford model) • African City (de Blij model) • Southeast Asian City (McGee model)

Latin American City (Griffin Ford model)

Disamenity sector – very poorest parts of the city eg. the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The African City (de Blij model)

Southeast Asian City (McGee model)