urban planning regional planning theories of explaining the emergence of towns: -central place theory -bid rent theory -choice theory

2. URBAN
REGIONAL

3. “URBAN”
OF RELATING TO CHARACTERISTICS OF,
OR CONSTITUTING A CITY

4. “REGIONAL”
OF RELATING TO A PARTICULAR
REGION, DISTRICT, AREA, OR PART, AS
OF A COUNTRY.

5. WHAT IS A REGION?
• An area or division, especially
part of a country or the world
having definable
characteristics but not always
fixed boundaries.
• An area of land that has a
common characteristics that
make them different from
surrounding areas.

6. Regional Planning
• Regional planning deals with the
efficient placement of land-use
activities, infrastructure, and
settlement growth across a larger area
of land than an individual city or town.
• Regional planning is a sub-field of
urban planning as it relates land use
practices on a broader scale.
• it also includes formulating laws that
will guide the efficient planning and
management of such said regions.

7. Regional Planning
• Urban and Regional Planning is about shaping and structuring the
future of society.
• Planners affect the structure of cities and urban life, the countryside
and regional development, the economic situation and the
environment, culture and population from social, economic and
ecological perspectives.
• Planning takes place in the public and private sectors as well as within
international organizations
• Regions require various land uses; protection of farmland, cities,
industrial space, transportation hubs and infrastructure, military
bases, and wilderness.

8. Principles
Specific interventions and solutions will depend entirely on the needs of each region in each
country, but generally speaking, regional planning at the macro level will seek to:
•Resist development in flood plains or along earthquake faults. These areas may be utilized as
parks, or unimproved farmland.
•Designate transportation corridors using hubs and spokes and considering major new
infrastructure
•Some thought into the various ‘role’s settlements in the region may play, for example some may be
administrative, with others based upon manufacturing or transport.
•Consider designating essential nuisance land uses locations, including waste disposal.
•Designate Green belt land or similar to resist settlement amalgamation and protect the
environment.
•Set regional level ‘policy’ and zoning which encourages a mix of housing values and communities.
•Consider building codes, zoning laws and policies that encourage the best use of the land.

9. Regional Planning
• The purpose of regional planning is to identify regional outcomes to
help achieve state interest.

10. THEORIES OF EXPLAINING THE EMERGENCE OF
TOWNS:
Central Place Theory
• A spatial theory in urban geography, used to explain the
locational pattern, by focusing on:
– Distribution pattern
– Size
– Number of cities in town
• Developed by Walter Christaller (1933)
• Christaller noticed that towns of a certain size were
roughly equidistant, and by examining and defining the
functions of the settlement structure of certain cities
and the size of their hinterland, he tried to model the
pattern of settlement locations of different sized cities
using geometric shapes, such as circles or hexagons
(Christaller, 1966).

11. Central Place Theory
Theory The range of good and threshold population of retail shops and service
establishments are the major influences in explaining the number, size and
distribution patterns of settlements.
Findings Consumers avoid higher transport costs by going to the nearest service
location.
The larger the settlements in size, the fewer in number they will be.
The more number of settlements, the higher order of services, and the higher
the degree of specialization that occurs.
Applicability or
Planning Implication
Provides an economic and spatial development of regions through provision of
appropriate goods and services, with establishments according to scale.

12. Central Place Theory: Assumptions
• humans will always purchase goods from the closest place that offers the
good
• whenever demand for a certain good is high, it will be offered in close
proximity to the population. When demand drops, so too does the
availability of the good.
• Evenly distributed population with equal buying power of individual
• transportation costs equal in all directions and proportional to distance
• The market areas of the larger towns and the smaller towns is overlapping.
All market areas of the smaller towns is also market areas for the larger
towns
• unbounded isotropic (all flat), homogeneous, limitless surface
• No excess profits (perfect competition)

13. Central Place Theory
• Each central place will have a
circular market area as shown
in C
• But it has either un- served areas
or over- served areas.
• Christaller suggested the
hexagonal shape .

14. How it started?
A – A farmer who owns a vegetable-based
production house and a launderette will
have his own market range.
B – As the business profiting,
others may want to operate
the same business.
C – and it develops into
hexagonal settlements as
what we know today

15. The basic principles
• The centre acts as the centre of
services / nucleus of the surrounding
community. Also acts as the centre to
encourage social and economic activities
– either in the form of goods or services.
• The importance of one centre depends
on the central of tendency – which is
also determined by the size of the
settlement.

16. • Metropolis tend to offer good /
services of the higher order.
High central of tendency.
• – The number of function and
commercial opportunities is
higher at larger towns,
compared to smaller towns.
• – The size of settlement is
directly proportionate with the
size of the market range.
• – Order of goods and services
• – Complementary areas
• – Economic distance

17. The Critiques
• Assumptions do not reflect the reality
• Christaller used phone index to determine the type of services available.
Today, phone is used also to perform social services, not solely on business
purposes.
• There is no such thing as a hexagonal settlement.
• Settlements are formed in various forms.
• The assumption that transportation are distributed evenly is simplified
• It is eventually concluded that Christaller’s model is more and more
inappropriate to be applied in the real world.

18. Significance of Central Place Theory
“It is true that industrial and technical changes have brought
changes in world trade pattern, and the relationships between
town and country have become obscured. But, it is also equally
true that the changed large cities have not lost their role as
service centres for their extensive tributary areas, thus reflecting
to some measure a central-place pattern”
(Sharma, undated)

19. THEORIES OF EXPLAINING THE EMERGENCE
OF TOWNS:
Bid Rent Theory
• Developed by Alonso (1964) –
based on the concept of micro
economy.
• Land use pattern is determined by
its value – related to
transportation cost.
• Land users all compete for the
most accessible land within the
CBD. The amount they are willing
to pay is called "bid rent".
• The result is a pattern of
concentric rings of land use,
creating the concentric zone
model.

20. Bid Rent Theory

21. Bid Rent Theory
Theory The price of and demand for land changes according to the distance from
the center (CBD). The center commands the highest value of land because
of its proximity to business establishments and supports services as well as
the
market.
Applicability or
Planning Implication
Provided an explanation on why slums and squatter settlements
proliferate in areas close to the CBD or commercial centers

22. Bid-Rent Theory: Assumptions
• The city is comprised of many identical producers that operate in a perfectly
competitive environment.
• All land is privately owned
• All firms are identical and sell in competitive markets, therefore, each firm
generates a normal rate profit, can sell as much as it produces, and faces the same
set of production costs as all other firms
• The market place for goods and services is
located in the center of city
• For a firm to sell its product it must be transported to the market located at CBD
• Transportation costs are a linear function of distance.
• The city’s population is evenly distributed and
households have uniform tastes for housing.

23. • Transportation cost in CBD is lower
– firms locating at CBD are willing to
pay more for centrally located area
in order to minimize their
transportation cost.
• Added transportation cost will
reduce profit, firms will not be
willing to pay as much for land at
more distant locations.
• More distance firms will only be
willing to bid up to the amount at
which lower land cost are exactly off-
set by their higher transportation
cost.
• Land value decline with distance
from the city centre
Near CBD Far from CBD
Rent Per
Acre
Bid Rent Function
CBD Distance
Land Transportation Cost
$5 + $2 = $3 + $4

24. INDUSTRIAL LOCATION THEORY: Bid-Rent Theory
• Beyond d3, urban users do
not value land and its value
falls to
• the value of
• agricultural land.
• If the city is symmetrical, the
pattern of land use will form
a set a concentric rings as
shown in this slide.
• Distance from
I – Retail
II – Manufacturing
III - Housing
Rent Per
Acre
Retail
Manufacturing
Housing
I
II
III
d1 d2 d3

25. THEORIES OF EXPLAINING THE EMERGENCE OF
TOWNS:
Public choice theory
Advanced by Paul Peterson in his 1981 book, City
Limits
States that urban politicians and governing regimes are subordinate to
the overall economic principles that force cities to compete to capture
new investment and capital.
The competitive nature of cities encourages the business elite and
politicians to favour new development