Session 7

1. Session 7: Urban Geography
1) Review on referencing
2) Chapter 10: 10.1: When and why did people
start living in cities?
3) Chapter 10: 10.2: Where are cities located and
why?
4) Chapter 10: 10.3 (part 1): How are cities
organized and how do they function?
5) Group work: starting to prepare your
presentations
Fouberg, E. H., Murphy, A. B., De Blij, H. J. and C. J. Nash (2012). Human Geography: People,
Place, and Culture. John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., Mississauga.
March 6, 2015

2. Section 10.1 - When and why did people start living in cities?
City: Conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to
serve as a centre of politics, culture, and economics.
Urban (area): The entire built-up, non-rural area and its population,
including the most recently constructed suburban appendages.
Provides a better picture of the dimensions and population of such
an area that the delimited municipality (central city) that forms its
heart.

3. Suburban realm: The surrounding environs connected to the city.
Creative commons - Wikimedia

4. Half of the world’s population lives in cities with populations that
have less than 500,000 people
Examples:
• Cairns, Australia
• Athens, Georgia, USA
• Kenora, Ontario
• Halifax, Nova Scotia
• many, many more…
Many cities are slightly over 500,000
• Winnipeg (633,450 people)

5. Mega-city: A city having a population of more than 10 million
inhabitants.
35 in existence today
Population of a city depends on if you only take into account the
urban agglomeration
Example:
• Tokyo metropolis (13.35 million)
• Greater Tokyo (38 million)
Other mega-cities: Delhi; Mumbai; Seoul; Shanghai (14.99
million); Beijing; Sao Paulo; Jakarta; Mexico city; New York

6. Urban agglomerations: Defined by the United Nations as those
populations of 1 million or more people “within a contiguous
territory inhabited at urban levels or residential diversity.”
Open text book to Table 10.1
Shows 1975 highest populations, 2007 populations, and predictions
for 2025
• Mexico expected to drop from 3rd to 6th position
• Delhi expected to rise from 6th to 3rd position
• Dhaka (Bangladesh) expected to rise from 9th to 4th position

7. Sao Paulo mega-city and water resources
BBC News: ‘Brazil drought linked to Amazon deforestation’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rQmG-koEPI

8. The Hearths of Urbanization
Urban centres originally took thousands of years to develop
First cities were established about 8,000 years ago according to
archaeological evidence
Past 200 years that cities have come to their modern size and
structure
2 urban revolutions
1. 3500 BCE (Before Common/Current/Christian Era): driven by
a shift in agricultural technology
2. 500 BCE: rapid tech advances related to the industrial
revolution

9. Agricultural village: A relatively small, egalitarian village, where
most of the population was involved in agriculture. Starting over
10,000 years ago, people began to cluster in agricultural villages as
they stayed in one place to tend their crops.
• Archaeologists could tell that dwellings where permanent based
on their construction
• Egalitarian social order persisted for quite some time after
agriculture began
• Egalitarian social order began to change when urban areas
increased

10. • trade became more common practice
• economic activities became more diversified
• resulting in different social classes and governance structures
2 main components resulting in the emergence of cities:
Agricultural surplus: One of the two components, together with
social stratification, that enable the formation of cities; agricultural
production in excess of that which the producer needs for his or her
own sustenance and that of his or her family and which is then sold
for consumption by others.

11. Social stratification: One of two components, together with
agricultural surplus, that enables the formation of cities; the
differentiation of society into classes based on wealth, power,
production, and prestige.
Leadership class: Group of decision-makers and organizers in early
cities who controlled the resources, and often the lives of others.
a.k.a. “urban elite”
• typically did not work in the fields
• other pursuits such as religion and philosophy
• establishment and collection of taxes

12. The First Urban Revolution
First urban revolution: The innovation of the city, which occurred
independently in six separate hearths.
Creative commons - Wikimedia

13. 6 hearths of urbanization are closely tied to the hearths of
agriculture
1st urban hearth, Mesopotamia: Region of great cities (e.g., Ur and
Babylon) located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers;
chronologically the first urban hearth, dating to 3500 BCE, which
was founded in the Fertile Crescent.
• signs of social inequality found in archaeological evidence –
mostly dwellings
Urban morphology: The study of the physical form and structure of
urban places.

14. 2nd urban hearth; Nile River Valley: Chronologically, the second
urban hearth, dating 3200 BCE.
• some scholars believe this is not a hearth; is diffusion from
Mesopotamia
• relationship between urbanization and irrigation distinguishes it
from other areas (those who controlled irrigation held power)
3rd urban hearth; Indus River Valley: Chronologically, the third
urban hearth, dating to 2200 BCE.
• leadership class existed, but dwellings were all the same size

15. 4th urban hearth; Huang He (Yellow) and Wei (Yangtze) river
valleys: Chronologically, the fourth urban hearth, established
around 1500 BCE, at the confluence of the Huang He and Wei rivers
in present-day China.
• urban elite built large elaborate dwellings
• 200 BCE: the Emperor directed the building of the Great Wall of
China
Mesoamerica: Chronologically, the fifth urban hearth, dating to 200
BCE.
• urban elite augmented their authority through religion

16. Diffusion of Urbanization
• Diffusion from Mesopotamia was the earliest
Greek Cities
• By 500 BCE Greece had become one of the most highly urbanized
areas on Earth
• New stage in the evolution of cities
• Network of over 500 cities and towns (mainland and islands),
~250,000 inhabitants
Acropolis: Literally “high point of the city.” The upper fortified pant
of an ancient Greek city, usually devoted to religious purposes.

17. Acropolis in Athens
Creative commons - Wikimedia

18. Agora: In ancient Greece, public spaces where citizens debated,
lectured, judged each other, planned military campaigns, socialized,
and traded.
• agora means “market” – became the focus of commercial activity
• open and spacious
• low lying part of town
Urbanization diffused from Greece to the Roman Empire
Europeans eventually carried notions of urbanization worldwide
through colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.

19. Roman Cities
Romans succeeded the Greeks as rulers in this region
Urban system exceeded that of the Greeks
Rome was the apex of the hierarchical urban system linked by an
extensive transportation system
Grid pattern of cities belonged to both Greeks and Romans (where
possible)
Roman regional planners determined “sites”
Site: The internal physical attributes of a place, including its absolute
location, spatial character, and physical setting.

20. Forum: The focal point on ancient Roman life combining the
functions of the ancient Green acropolis and agora.
Creative commons - Wikimedia

21. The Colosseum
Creative commons - Wikimedia

22. Many slaves were involved in the building of these ancient cities
It is estimated that one to two thirds of the population of the Roman
Empire were slaves
Some of the urban structures represent “both the greatest
achievements and the worst failings of civilization”
Roman Empire fell in 495 BCE – was the start of the Middle Ages in
Europe

23. The Second Urban Revolution
Began in Great Britain and the rest of Europe in the last decades of
the 18th Century
Technology and science radically altered society
Thousands migrated from rural areas to the cities to keep up with
production
Important improvements in agriculture also happened at this time –
increased production
Also, medical advancements decreased death rates – greater
population meant greater labour force

24. However…
Living and working conditions were very harsh
Factories often took over residential dwellings
Children worked long days
20th Century: many factories moved away from urban centres and
left behind “rust belts”

25. Section 10.2 - Where are cities located and why?
Situation: The external locational attributes of a place; its relative
location or regional position with reference to other nonlocal places.
• helps to explain why a city is located where it is
• often need to look at more than one city to make the connections
and explain why it is there

26. Central place theory: Theory proposed by Walter Chistaller that
explains how and where central places in the urban hierarchy should
be functionally and spatially distributed with respect to one another.
• Explained connections between and spatial distribution of
hamlets, villages, towns and cities
• Assumptions:
• the surface of the ideal region would be flat and have no
physical barriers
• soil fertility would be the same everywhere
• population and purchasing power would be evenly
distributed
• uniform transportation network
• a good or service could be sold from any place

27. Christaller calculated the ideal central place system and the
compared it to real world situation
• found that central places were nested
• the largest central place provided the greatest number of
functions for the region
Trade area: Region adjacent to every town and city within which its
influence is dominant.
• a series of large towns would provide function to an even
smaller service area
• Christaller studied the sale of good and how far people would
be willing to travel to acquire them

28. Rank-size rule: In a model urban hierarchy, the idea that the
population of a city of town will be inversely proportional to its rank
in the hierarchy.
This is how it works:
Say the largest city has 100,000 people
o the 10th largest city would have 1/10 the number of
people
o In reality this is often distorted by cultural, political
and other factors

29. Primate city: A country’s largest city-ranking atop the urban hierarchy-
most expressive of the national culture and usually (but not always)
the capital city as well.
• according to rank-size rule, this city has a disproportionally
larger population compared to its neighboring cities
• Have primary functional roles within a large urban system
(financial, governmental)
• Examples: London, Buenos Aries
Centrality: The strength of an urban centre in its capacity to attract
producers and consumers to its facilities; a city’s “reach” into the
surrounding region.

30. Other cities have smaller populations compared to neighboring cities
but have very important roles (financial, political, etc.)
This is…
Centrality: The strength of an urban centre in its capacity to attract
producers and consumers to its facilities; a city’s “reach” into the
surrounding region.
Examples:
• Ottawa (Popln: 883,390): Canada’s political centre has a much
smaller population than neighboring Toronto (Popln: 2.503
million)
• Canberra: Australia’s political centre

31. Creative commons - Wikimedia
Hexagonal Hinterlands

32. Central Places Today
Canada’s Urban System
Larry Bourne and J. Simmons argue that Canada is currently in a
state of transition and that Canada has 5 mega-urban regions:
1. Greater Toronto Area (GTA)
2. Greater Montreal Area
3. Alberta’s central urban corridor (Edmonton-Red Deer-
Calgary-Lethbridge)
4. Vancouver-Victoria
5. Ottawa-Gatineau
These regions affect areas far away and area also known as Census
Monopoly Areas (CMAs)

33. Census Monopoly Areas (CMAs) - larger population growth rates
Other areas in Canada are experiencing slow growth or decline
Factors for uneven population growth in Canada (according to
Bourne and Simmons:
• Canada now longer has a rate of natural increase that can
sustain population growth, rely on immigration
• Shift from manufacturing towards service sector – business
more likely to locate in a mega-city
• Trade and commerce is now flowing towards the US because
of NAFTA – benefits some areas and not others

34. Section 10.3 - How are cities organized and how do they function?
Models of the City, are studies of:
Functional zonation: The division of a city into different regions or
zones (e.g., residential or industrial) for certain purposes or
functions (e.g., housing or manufacturing).
Zone: Area of a city with a relatively uniform land use (e.g., an
industrial zone, or a residential zone).

35. Central Business District (CBD): The downtown heart of a central
city, marked by high land values, a concentration of business and
commerce, and the clustering of the tallest buildings.
Central city: The urban area that is not suburban; generally, the
older or original city that is surrounded by newer suburbs.

36. Suburb: A subsidiary urban area surrounding and connected to the
central city. Many are exclusively residential; other have their own
commercial centres or shopping malls.
• Often residential
• May also have other land uses such as schools, shopping malls,
office and industrial parks
Suburbanization: The process by which lands that were previously
outside the urban environment became urbanized, as people and
businesses from the city and other areas move to these spaces.