Urban land use and layout in MEDC cities

Question 1

Name the 5 Zones of an MEDC.

Answer 1

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. This area dates back to the Industrial revolution when it filled with coal-fired factories and tenement housing blocks.

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.

Zone 6: Rural urban fringe. This is an area where houses are uncommon and fields in the countryside are very popular. Towns are sometimes apparent in these rural areas.

Question 2

What is the Hoyt Model?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What is the difference between the Hoyt Model and the Burgess model?

Answer 3

1. Burgess model is older (about 1929) and describes the geographic use around a city as concentric rings like an archery target. For example the CBD or Central Business District is in the “bullseye” in the very centre of the target or city. Surrounding this is the inner city and then further out the city becomes more spread out in both use and space so that you end up with a city surrounded by nearly totally rural farm land.
2. The Hoyt model realized that transportation (in particular) and access to resources caused a disruption of the Burgess model. For example a rail line or major highway to a nearby city may result in business development to preferentially develop parallel to the rail line or major highway. It this case, the city develops in sectors (or like slices of a pie) instead of concentric rings. So one side of a city may be completely industrial with another sector may be completely rural.