Week 8

Question 1

Reasons for growth of cities

Answer 1

Factors leading to expansion of cities - Economic forces:
o The community as an economy – produce G&S - basic employment, local industry - 2ndary employment
o Community survival occurs with population growth or increasing income per capita
o Need to export – resources, labour, processed goods
o Transition required Eg. Detroit –originally a wheat shipping port wheat ship engine repairs spare part production entire engines car city now needs to reinvent

Agrarian reform – can refer to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land. This resulted in migration from rural areas to cities

Industrialisation - A cotton mill is a factory housing powered spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution when the early mills were important in the development of the factory system. Originally, it is a Lancashire phenomenon, which was later copied in New England and later in the southern states of America). The industrialised town attracted people from the agricultural areas.

Improvement in transportation technology - took place in late 19th century. Automobile made it possible for the compression of travelling time. With automobile, people can stay further away from city centre and can still work there. Hence people spreaded outwards towards urbanisation.

Question 2

define agrarian reform

Answer 2

can refer to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land. This resulted in migration from rural areas to cities

Question 3

define industralistion

Answer 3

A cotton mill is a factory housing powered spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution when the early mills were important in the development of the factory system. Originally, it is a Lancashire phenomenon, which was later copied in New England and later in the southern states of America). The industrialised town attracted people from the agricultural areas.

Question 4

problems of urbanisation

Answer 4

o Housing shortages – due to limited area, over-crowding
o High property values – D > S
o Sprawl – haphazard, unplanned, discontinuous growth of the city
o Traffic congestion
o Environmental pollution
• Air & water pollution, waste
o Central city decay – develop slum areas
• Fiscal problems – lack of tax income to tackle problems
• Social problems such as unemployment and psychological effects (loneliness)

Question 5

define housing shortages

Answer 5

when there is limited area in the city, we can expect people naturally crowding around with insufficient housing space and amenities

Question 6

define high property values

Answer 6

the consequence is high property value due to increasing number of people with limited housing.
It cause a problem to every household

Question 7

problems of urbanisation detail

Answer 7

Housing shortages – when there is limited area in the city, we can expect people naturally crowding around with insufficient housing space and amenities

• High property values – the consequence is high property value due to increasing number of people with limited housing.
It cause a problem to every household

• Sprawl – result in urban sprawl, a concept to describe a haphazard, unplanned, discontinuous growth of the city. When there is a sprawl, the city will have to spend a lot more just to serve a small pocket of residents. For example, the government may have to run the water pipelines for a few km just to serve a mall residential areas. An urban sprawl is also not good aesthetically.
• Traffic congestion – Every country can a only have a few cities, so many people congregate and travel to the few cities for jobs and shopping etc. This can cause bottlenecks and traffic congestion
• Environmental pollution – When city growth with more industrialisation, we naturally have more air pollution, waste water, noises which are all threats to our health
• Central city decay – when cities grow old, it will develop into a slump area. For e.g. in Detroit in US, when automobile industry came in, the middle class wanted to move out faraway. This affected the city to become a slump with more crimes.
• Fiscal problems – most cities in the world have the problem of running out of money to tackle the city problems. In most cities of the world, there is a tendency for more residential areas moving from city to suburban and hence pay their tax to suburban authorities. This result in not many people left living in the city and hence not paying tax to the city authorities where most problems occur and need resolution.
• Social problems such as unemployment– crime and delinquency is common when there is high concentration of unemployment in the city. This can become an economic and social economic problems. It can also be a spatial problem where the poor cannot get pout of the circle. For example, when there is unemployment, their children cannot get educated and resort to crime. Therefore the cycle continues.
• Psychology –large scale urbanisation can result in people getting lonely and results in all sorts of psychological problems. E.g. they may stressed by too many inputs making them not bother in getting to know their neighbours

Question 8

explain Highest and best use

Answer 8

Highest and Best Use is the legal use that will produce the highest capitalized net income return to the land after allowing for the cost of the building/site improvements.
o In a market economy, there is competition among the various buyers of each product. In the absence of government or private controls, all goods and services go to the highest bidders.
o There is a similar competition among potential users of a site, and land goes to the user who is willing to pay the highest price.
This is know as the highest and best use.
o In most cases, the value of a land is determined by how much rent it will bring. Possible tenants are sorted out, by how much rent each could pay at that particular land. If the site is vacant and for sale, the site will be captured by the user who pays the highest price. This usually is the user who will benefit the most.

legally permissible
physically possible
economically feasible
maximally productive

Question 9

Patterns of land use appear to be determined by a set of rules:

Answer 9

Competition of Uses – (Bids up prices)
Every available land faces a competition of users. When a number of different potential users seek the same site, competition between them causes the asking price of the land to increase, until the highest bidder wins. The highest bidder’s price was based on an expectation regarding the property’s ability to produce a desired level of benefits to that user.

Economics of Succession – (existing use has advantage)
If there is a building on site, a user who can occupy the existing improvements has an advantage over other users. The improvements will be demolished only when a new use is profitable enough to pay for the site, the old building, the demolition cost, and the cost of the new building.

Comparative Advantage – (unique advantages e.g. natural features, cess to schools infrastructure)
Each land has unique advantages and disadvantages for particular uses. Some locations may have favourable natural characteristics (raw materials, climate, topography, or water). Other locations may have access to many customers, or to needed materials from nearby facilities. Still other locations might have good schools, suppliers, favourable government regulations, or other institutional advantages.

The Rule of Imperfection – (Ideal pattern rarely exists)
The ideal pattern of land use rarely exists, because the information needed to make a perfect decision is often not available. Unwise property development, or unusual social or political situations, will also impede the highest and best use. Sometimes, the community will interfere with the market (by zoning, for example) to avoid changes that market forces would otherwise cause. Thus land use patterns are never completely perfect or completely predictable.

Principle of Change – (nothing fixed, use of land continually changes)
Nothing is fixed or static; change is the only constant. Therefore, the highest and best use of land is always changing. Technical, social and economic changes continually alter the structure of the community and the pattern of ideal land use.

Question 10

non-economic factors in land use:

Answer 10

o Political Forces – State and local govt may control use of land
o Social Forces – pressure groups manage to prevent certain use of land, eg. McDonalds
o Eminent Domain – right of community to buy sites (parks)

Political influences can take the form of decisions carried out by the state and local authorities, executing the law. For example, the state government may decide to control the uses of certain land.

Social influences operate more subtly, through group pressures. For example, we have heard of some environmental group that have managed to prevent a certain type of uses in certain areas.
Political. Social and economic influences on land use often operate independently of each other

Question 11

explain structure of communities - land use patterns

Answer 11

o Accessibility
o Topography
o Transportation
o Community origins

Question 12

explain accessibility

Johan von thunen

Answer 12

Accessibility is the single most important factor.
One of the earliest concepts of how communities are arranged was developed in Bavaria by Johan von Thunen in 1826
He suggested that the shape of communities followed a predictable pattern. In the centre would be land uses to which everyone needs access, such as community meeting places, churches, courtyards and community food stores. Around the central uses would be a simple ring with the homes of the village people. Land uses beyond the city would be distributed in similar circles or rings. Closer to the town would be farms growing perishable produce, and farms requiring intensive, frequent care by the farmers. Further out would be farms with crops requiring less care or transport. The most distant land would be used for grazing by animals that could transport themselves, and for growing timber.
Thunen’s concept of accessibility is fundamental to the study of land-use patterns

see diagram and 5 zones:

1. central facilities
2. homes
3. intensive car farming (perishable) close proximity required
4. farms and crops with less care or transport required
5. grazing and timber

Question 13

explain topography

Answer 13

o Community site not level, the round shape changes – becomes a ribbon
o Attractions to growth – lake shores, level land, gentle hills
o Impediments – ridges, rivers, steep hills, swamps
o Topography modifies accessibility

Van Thunen’s concept of a round city assumed a town won a level site. When a community site is not level, the round pattern suggested by von Thunen begins to change. For example, if a city had its origins as a protection site, located on top of a ridge, with steep slopes on two sides, there will be little economic activity on these steep slopes. The city would be strung out along the ridge top in each direction, and its circular shape would become a ribbon. This is one example of the effect of topography on city shape.

Topographical features can attract added development or impede growth. Features that are attractions to growth include pleasant lake shores, level land, and for their views, gentle hills. Features that are barriers to growth include steep hills, ravines, marshes, swamps, and riverbanks. Effectively, topography acts to modify the important issue of accessibility.

Question 14

explain transportation

Answer 14

Transportation also affects accessibility. Topography also has an obvious effect on transportation. It is easier, cheaper, and faster to travel on level land, than up and down steep hills.
20th centuries communities developed transportation system that von Thunen did not foresee. The car is capable of moving far greater distances in a given time period. Automobile cities, therefore, tend to be circular, like von Thunen’s, but extremely spread out, with much lower population density.
Street cars and subways, on the other hand, cannot move randomly; they must move along rail lines and they are linear transportation systems. These create patterns of linear growth. Freeways are a combination of the two types of transport. The car itself tends to give a circular shape to the city, but freeways produces a series of linear extensions.

Effects of Freeway:
o Movements away from downtown pulls circular shape with it – linear (axial) growth
o New locations near intersections
o Can become new downtowns

*look at diagram

Question 15

explain community origins

Answer 15

Community Origins:
First building erected, will influence where the second building would be (close to the 1st)
• 1st store built is likely to be located near or close to the centre of existing housing cluster
• First government structure is usually located in the middle of existing community
• Town grows around its centre – shop next to shops, home next to homes, and offices next to offices
• New users want the same locational advantages that the existing competitive users have.

Question 16

explain modern city groth patterns

Answer 16

• Proximity vs Accessibility
• Congestion occurs and downtown (CBD) accessibility/central location disappears
• Some downtown uses move to the fringes
• Continual conflict
• New transportation systems change accessibility
• Favourable impact on real estate prices for outlying suburbs

The Complex city
More than one transport system
• Linear
• Random – subways, cars etc leads to non-linear development
• Leap frogging – jump further out
• ‘Bursting’ – shopping centres, outlets, research parks
• Creates new downtowns, better accessibility
• Distorts the circular shape

Question 17

Complex city: Major land use patterns theories of urban structure:

Answer 17

• Concentric zone theory
• Radial or axial development theory
• Central place theory
• Sector theory (wedge)
• Multiple-¬‐Nuclei theory
• Large Grids

Question 18

explain concentric theory

Answer 18

Burgess applied Thunen’s ideas to American communities and presented the concept of concentric rings in 1920. In the inner ring of the community would be shopping centres, department stores, and offices for lawyers, bankers, accountants, and government. In the second ring would be older homes, undergoing a succession of uses as the first ring expanded. In addition, there would be warehouses, wholesaling activity, and on one side of the city, manufacturing. In the third ring, we would find low and medium cost housing, whereas higher priced homes and shops would be located in the outer edges of the community. Concentric growth in such cities results in the rings gradually expanding, with older building being converted to a new use, or demolished.

Concentric Theory:
•	No better or worse position 
•	happy to live anywhere in the residential ring
•	Equal accessibility to core
•	What happens in practice?

1. CBD
2. zone of transition - older homes, warehousing, manufacturing
3. low and median income housing
4. high income housing
5. outer commuter zone

Question 19

explain the central place theory

Answer 19

1. City -10k - 100k
2. town 1k-10k
3. Village 100 - 1k
4. hamlet - fewest goods and services available (100)

low order goods have a low range and low threshold, less people needed to support it , smaller the distance people are willing to travel

• low range and threshold goods are sold in small towns, villages etc.
• higher range and threshold are sold in large towns
• range is the maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service
• threshold is the minummim number of people required to support the service

see diagrams

Question 20

christallers’ model (central place theory) will never be found in the real world as

Answer 20

large areas of flat land are rare with accompanying transportation

gov’t intervention can dictate the location of industry

perfect competition is unreal with some forms making more money than others

people vary their shopping trends, not always to the nearest centre people or resources are never perfectly distributed.
(online)

Question 21

explain the wedge / sector theory

Answer 21

So far…..community has had no better and no worse side! Assumption that we would be happy to live anywhere in the residential ring on the outskirts of the city.
In the study on the structure and growth of residential neighbourhoods in American cities, Hoyt concluded that high priced homes took the best acreage on the outskirts of the city. These houses tended to cluster into one segment of the outer circle. As the community grew, and as new houses were added in the suburbs, the higher priced homes were added just beyond the existing high=-priced areas. In this fashion, the higher priced sector became a wedge. Sorting process happens with manufacturing orienting themselves out of the way, middle income locating near to the prestige locations, low income housing taking poorer areas of land. Wedge pattern most clearly evident in Minneapolis and Richmond. Boston – fashionable area tended to just stay on the same side of town, didn’t from a wedge, just moved out

• Preference for locations
• Higher-priced housing takes best acreage on outskirts
• Cluster into one segment
• Melbourne - Hawthorn, Toorak, Malvern (south-eastern suburbs)
• Sydney – Northern suburbs
• Exclusive retail follows
• Medium-cost and lower-cost housing moves into non-claimed segments
• Wholesale/manufacturing move to ‘cheaper segments’ – Western suburbs (both Sydney and Melb), Dandenong/ Liverpool (south)

Question 22

explain the multi nuclei theory

Answer 22

In 1945 Harris and Ullman suggested that the dominant concept in city shape was that of multiple nuclei. This is where each land use responds in a different way to topography, transportation, and other influences. Similar uses tend to cluster together in nuclei as seen in this figure. The city thus created appears to be star shaped. The multiple nuclei concept explains why uses become located in different places in the community.

Suggested that the dominant concept in city shape was multiple nuclei

o Each land use responds in a different way to topography, transportation, and other influences.
o Factors of location
o Amenities of location
o Topography
o Transportation
o Political and social constraints on growth

Question 23

explain grid system

Answer 23

Pattern of large grid
Major cross streets – lined with commercial uses
Enclosed superblocks and interior streets – residential use

check slides

Question 24

explain land use evoloution

Answer 24

• Topography – people’s feelings about it – hills and higher ground attract growth; hinders
• Climate – coastal/hill areas cooler in summer
• Transport
• Community attitudes/tastes
• Past and present social and religious customs
• Legislation and legal decisions
• Demand for goods and services including varying consumer preferences
• Demand of state and commonwealth governments in the supply of public utilities an social services

Question 25

effects of transportation change

Answer 25

• Locational effect - Manufacturing / wholesaling no longer tied to customers, centre of community or railroads
• Locational advantages – location along freeways, transport hubs, outer areas - cheap and large allotments of land
• Availability of transportation – trucks, air freight all contribute to Just-in-time inventory holdings
• Changes in transportation produce changes in land use patterns

Question 26

new technologies impact on land use

Answer 26

• Internet for improved communication
• Teleconferencing
• Email & Flexible working enviornments
• Just-¬in¬‐Time Distribution systems

Impact:
•	Smaller offices
•	Open plan/Hot desks
•	Work from home
•	Office buildings relocate away from CBD to suburban areas

Question 27

How to study a community and city structure

Answer 27

Informally
• businesses, real estate agents, lenders, investors watch for community strengths/weaknesses,

Formally:
•	Population movts
•	Basic Employment & how changed from community origins
•	Land use maps
•	Population density
•	Traffic counts
•	School enrolment
•	Crime rates
•	Census data
•	Age distribution
•	Condition of housing
•	Economic base studies
•	Input/output analysis

Question 28

explain melbourne 2018 distribution

Answer 28

Significant of axial model
Monash freeway south eastern freeway
East – higher social economic
Now city grow and move towards south west
Satellite town Werribee, Melton and Sunbury
Outer Melbourne

CBDs and inner suburbs
• oldest parts of our cities, industry was placed close to city centres and
ports and within walking distance of workers‟ homes.
• population peaked after World War I
• declined thereafter as trains, trams, buses and cars increased mobility and saw residents move further out.
Middle suburbs
• suburbs located between 10 and 30 kilometres from the CBD.
• developed with the rise of the car so spread beyond public transport routes.
• build own homes on new subdivisions.
• public infrastructure lagged behind.
• greater segregation of land uses in middle suburbs - residential areas often set apart from commercial
Outer suburbs
• areas that have been built since the 1990s.
• greenfield developments - designated as growth corridors – set aside in government planning schemes

Question 29

5 rules of eco land use

Answer 29

Competition of Uses – bids up prices

Economics of Succession – existing user has advantage

Comparative Advantage – unique advantages/disads, natural features, access to schools/infrastructure

The Rule of Imperfection – ideal pattern rarely exists

Principle of Change – nothing fixed, use of land continually changes

Question 30

Compare and contrast the Burgess concentric ring model with the Hoyt sector model of urban form. Which, if either one, do you think better describes most cities? Any other theoretical models you would consider??

Answer 30

Adapted the Concentric Ring theory of Von Thunen (1826);
Suggests a geographical model of the city
Similar types of land use tends to locate at similar distances from the centre of the city –
In his model, Burgess suggested 5 zones:
CBD
Zone of transition – grey area, light
industrial, warehouses, factories
merging into zone 3.
Low income housing
High income housing
Outer Commuter zone
As the city expands outwards, the 4th ring
consists of newer, less dense housing (middle/upper income), their value for larger lot sizes
Lower densities offsetting the transport effect
Resulting in and EQ location of higher-income households.
Whilst the concentric ring model explains important elements of the urban form it also leaves much unexplained.
It assumes that a community has ‘no worse side’, residents would live anywhere within the ring level.

Homer Hoyt:
Similar land uses do not lie at equal distances from the CBD,
Rather cluster along rays or in pie-shaped wedges emanating from the city.
This theory is based on the phenomenon of cities growing outwards from their centre.
Once a particular type of land use became predominant in a particular direction or on a particular ‘side of town’
Then new development continues the same land use outwards.
For example, the Northern beach suburbs of Sydney, the Eastern suburbs in Melbourne.
Both cities have a Western suburb wedge – of lower income housing.
Hoyts found that lower income housing tended to locate near the industrial areas (Western suburbs – like Footscray/sunshine next to industry and Oakleigh/Dandenong in the south east).