This chapter discusses the internal structure and design of contemporary cities. It examines how cities are organized into different zones for various land uses and activities. Larger cities tend to be culturally diverse with different ethnic communities concentrated in certain areas. American and European cities differ in aspects like architecture and urban planning. Cities face problems like poverty, unemployment, and infrastructure issues. Rapidly growing peripheral cities encounter additional problems related to accommodating population growth.

1. Human Geography: Places and
Regions in Global Context, 5e
Chapter 11: City Spaces: Urban Structure
Paul L. Knox & Sallie A. Marston
PowerPoint Author: Keith M. Bell

2. Overview
This chapter continues the study of urban geography begun in Chapter 10.
Whereas the previous chapter focused on the historical roots, growth, and
globalization of cities, this chapter focuses on the structure and design of
contemporary cities in both the core and periphery, on architecture and urban
design, and on the problems facing urbanized areas.
Cities have many different zones and areas in which different kinds of activities
take place. Larger cities, especially those in the United States, are also
characterized by cultural diversity, often reflected in a geographical patchwork
of different ethnic communities. American cities also differ from, for example,
European cities, in many other ways as well—a fact that accounts for the
appeal of European cities to many American tourists. City landscapes are also
symbolic, and this attribute has been recognized in the design and architecture
of cities. Many cities have attempted to create idealized images of themselves
through particular styles of architecture, such as Beaux Arts or Modern. Finally,
cities also face a variety of problems—most of which are familiar to any city-
dweller. These include declining revenues, pockets of poverty, unemployment,
pollution, and traffic gridlock. Cities on the periphery face these as well as other
problems, including rapid growth and environmental destruction.

3. Chapter Objectives
• The objectives of this chapter are to:
– Examine urban structure and land use
– Investigate urban form and design
– Survey urban trends and problems

4. Chapter Outline
• Urban Land Use and Spatial Organization (p. 424)
– Accessibility
– Congregation and segregation
• Traditional Patterns of Urban Structure (p. 425)
– North American cities
– Problems of North American cities
– European cities
– Islamic cities
– Problems of cities in the periphery
• New Patterns: The Polycentric Metropolis (p. 449)
– Edge cities
– Sprawl
– Packaged landscapes
– Gentrification and elite enclaves
• Conclusion (p. 452)

5. Geography Matters
• 11.1 Visualizing Geography—Shock
City: Dubai, United Arab Emirates (p.
440)
– Excessive growth and affluence has made
Dubai a shock city
• 11.2 Window on the World—Life in a
Mega-Slum (p. 446)
– The experiences of a women living in poverty

6. City Spaces:
Urban Structure
The internal structure of cities is shaped heavily by
competition for territory and location.
Social patterns in cities are heavily influenced by
territoriality.
The typical North American city is structured around
a central business district (CBD), followed by many
other urban manifestations of growth.
North American cities have experienced high rates of
in-migration, forming concentric zones of ethnicity,
demography, and social status.
Problems in postindustrial core region cities are felt
most in the central city as it restructures its economy.
Peripheral city problems stem from the way in which
their demographic growth has outstripped their
economic growth.

7. Congregation: Minority Groups
• Congregation is the territorial and residential clustering of specific groups
or subgroups of people.
• Several specific advantages of congregation exist for minority groups:
– Congregation provides a means of cultural preservation. It allows religious and
cultural practices to be maintained and strengthens group identity through daily
involvement in particular routines and ways of life.
– Congregation helps minimize conflict and provides defense against
“outsiders”.
– Congregation provides a place where mutual support can be established
through minority institutions, businesses, social networks, and welfare
organizations.
– Congregation helps establish a power base in relations to the host society.

8. Segregation
• The combined result of
congregation and discrimination
is segregation, the spatial
separation of specific subgroups
within a wider population.
– Enclaves: tendencies toward
congregation and discrimination
are long-standing; internal
cohesion and identity
– Ghettos: more a product of
discrimination than congregation
– Colonies: a product of
congregation, discrimination, or
both; persistence over time
depends on the continuing arrival
of new minority-group members

9. Accessibility and Land Use
• Utility is a function of
accessibility.
• An isotropic surface is a
hypothetical, uniform plane: flat,
and with no variations in its
physical attributes.
• Accessibility decreases steadily
with distance from the city center.
• Utility decreases, but at different
rates for different land users.
• The result is a tendency toward
concentric zones of different
mixes of land use.

10. North American Cities
Urban structure varies considerably because of the influence of history, culture,
and the different roles that cities have played within the world-system.

11. Chinatown: Los Angeles
Invasion and succession is a process of neighborhood change whereby one
social or ethnic group succeeds another in a residential area. The displaced
group invades other areas. Such neighborhoods (e.g., Little Italys, Little
Koreas, and Little Havanas) can be thought of as ecological niches within the
overall metropolis.

12. North American Cities: Vancouver, British Columbia
The hub of North American cities is called the central business district
(CBD) and has shops, offices, libraries, museums, and government buildings.
The CBD typically is surrounded by a zone of mixed land uses.

13. Infrastructure Problems
The collapsed freeway bridge on I-35W just outside of downtown
Minneapolis, Minnesota, killed 13 people and injured 144. The American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials released a report
saying at least $140 billion was needed to repair or replace up to one-quarter
of the nation’s bridges.

14. Poverty Areas
Concentrations of poverty are found not only in decaying inner-city areas
but also in newer public housing projects and in first- and second-tier
suburbs that have filtered down the housing scale, as in this example in
the District of Columbia.

15. Poverty and Neighborhood Decay
The New Homeless Foreclosures
The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and the Urban
Institute, estimate that about 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them
children, are likely to experience homelessness in any given year.

16. European Cities
• Several distinctive
features:
– Plazas and squares
– Plazas, central squares, and
marketplaces
– History: scars of war
• Cologne, Germany
– Symbolism: statues,
memorials, cathedrals, and
more
– Low skylines
– Lively downtowns
– Neighborhood stability
– Municipal socialism

17. European Cities: Vigevano, Italy
The Piazzia Ducale is a product of early Renaissance town planning. The
piazza now provides an important social space for the citizens of the town.

18. Urban Design and Planning: Sabbioneta, Italy
Dramatic advances in military ordnance brought a surge of planned
redevelopment that featured impressive fortifications. Inside new walls,
cities were recast according to a new aesthetic of grand design—fancy
palaces and geometrical plans, streetscapes, and gardens.

19. Architecture: Modern Movement
The Modern Movement was based on the idea that buildings and cities
should be designed and run like machines. Equally important to the
Modernists was that urban design should not simply reflect dominant social
and cultural values. Rather, these designs should help create a new moral
and social order.

20. Islamic Cities: The Suq
The suq, a covered bazaar or open street market, is one of the most
important distinguishing features of a traditional Islamic city. The suq
consists of small stalls, clustered by product type, located in numerous
passageways.

21. Islamic Cities: Kalaa Sghira, Tunisia
The traditional Islamic city is a compact mass of residences with walled
courtyards—a cellular urban structure within which it is possible to
maintain a high degree of privacy.

22. The Informal Economy
Rio de Janeiro: garbage
pickers
Lagos: irregular sprawl
In many peripheral cities, more than one-third of the population is engaged in the
informal sector where underemployment is estimated to range from 30–50
percent of the employed workforce. Dualism is the juxtaposition in geographic
space of the formal and informal sectors of the economy.

23. Shock City: Dubai, U.A.E.
Burj Dubai Tower Burj Al Arab Hotel

24. The Jumeirah Palm
Dubai’s “shock city” status derives as much from its spectacular
affluence as its phenomenal rate of growth from what had hitherto been
an impoverished setting. The Jumeirah Palm is one of two artificial
islands extending from the Dubai City waterfront. The recent real estate
bust has led some to call this development “The Eighth Blunder of the
World.”

25. Shock City: Dubai, U.A.E.
Ski Dubai
Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht
Club
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is climatically a true desert, yet Dubai’s
environment has been converted to a lush, 18-hole championship golf course
(outside) and a five-run ski complex (inside). This change has been bought
with petro-dollar wealth. UAE is an OPEC member.

26. Dubai’s Skyline
Dubai’s population of 1.3 million is dominated by immigrants from Asia
and the Middle East, who account for over 70 percent of the city’s
residents. The construction boom is sustained by more than 500,000 low-
skilled, poorly-paid South Asian migrant workers who live in
substandard conditions, with few rights.

27. Luxury Economy vs. Informal
Activities
Dubai: duty-free shopping
Asia: foodstuffs and
handicrafts

28. Transport and Infrastructure Problems
Colombia: sewage problems Africa: water-supply problems
The World Bank estimates that around 65 percent of urban residents
world-wide in LDCs have access to adequate, potable water; 40 percent
sewers.

29. The Twentieth-Century Metropolis
Consisting of a central city, a ring of suburbs, and a series of far-flung
urban realms; studded with edge cities (nodal concentrations of office and
retail space) and “edgeless cities” of suburban and exurban office parks
and shopping malls.

30. The New Metropolis
• The New Metropolis is an encompassing term for the
evolving stereotypical urbanized regions.
• These vary in character and include:
– “Edge cities,” decentralized clusters of retailing and office
development along transportation axes
– Newer business centers in a prestigous residential quarter
– Outermost complexes of back-office and research and
development operations
– Specialized subcenters, usually for education,
entertainment and sports

31. The New Metropolis
The largest metropolitan regions are now “megapolitan,” with coalescing
metropolitan areas merging into disjointed and decentralized urban
landscapes with varying-sized urban centers, subcenters, and satellites and
unexpected justapositions.

32. End of Chapter 11

33. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• What activities and structures are typically found in a
city’s Central Business District (CBD)? Why are these
activities and structures located in the CBD? What kinds
of activities and structures are typically found in Edge
Cities? How do CBDs and Edge Cities differ?
– The CBD is the principal hub of shops and offices, together with
some of the major institutional land uses such as the city hall,
libraries, and museums. Normally the CBD has the densest
concentration of shops and offices and contains the tallest
buildings. The CBD is also a center of transportation
connections, and thus usually contains the main rail and bus
stations as well as the major hotels. Edge cities are nodal
concentrations of shopping and office space that are situated on
the outer fringes of metropolitan areas, typically near major
highway intersections.

34. • What are the patterns of congregation in the
local community? Do different groups tend to
cluster in particular areas? Why is this so?
– Information on the congregation of some groups
may be obtained from the U.S. Census (see their
web page at http://www.census.gov/). The
congregation of other groups, such as those defined
on the basis of sexual orientation or lifestyle, may
be more difficult to determine from public records
but students may have a better idea of these
congregations based on their own knowledge of the
community.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

35. • What are the main characteristics of European
cities? What are some of the differences
between western and eastern European cities?
What accounts for these differences?
– Most European cities are far older than their
American counterparts, and developed before the
invention of the automobile. Many were based
around earlier fortifications or were ecclesiastical
centers. Pages 432–435 in the textbook lists a
number of distinguishing factors for European cities.
Eastern European cities experienced 44 years of
socialism and central planning, resulting in the
construction of huge public housing estates and
industrial zones.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

36. • How do European Cities differ from the
cities of North America? What accounts
for these differences?
– See the notes to Question #3, above.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

37. • Can urban landscapes be symbolic? American cities
such as New York and San Francisco have many
symbolic structures, such as the Empire State Building
and the Golden Gate Bridge. How do these structures
symbolize these cities? Does your own community
have any symbolic structures?
– The structures noted above, the Empire State Building and the
Golden Gate Bridge, are only two examples of the many
symbolic structures in urban landscapes. These structures
come to symbolize the entire city—for example, a film or
television show need only focus on the structure for a few
seconds for the viewers to identify the location of the story.
These symbolic structures are further perpetuated in tourist
souvenirs, and in many other ways.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

38. • What is the concept of feng shui (pronounced
“fung-shway”)? How has the application of this
concept influenced the design of Asian
architecture and landscape planning?
– Feng shui, or geomancy, is an ancient Chinese
concept of design. It is based on Taoist ideas of the
natural order of the universe, suggesting that the
placement of structures be in harmony with cosmic
energy and forces. It can be applied at the macro
level, such as in laying out cities, or at the micro
level, such as in the interior design of rooms.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

39. • What are some of the problems faced by cities in the
periphery? How are these problems similar to and
different from the problems of core cities? How can
these problems be solved?
– Peripheral cities face numerous problems, often fueled by their
rapid growth. Problems include overcrowding and shortages of
housing, crime, poor health care and sanitation, transportation
(traffic jams, accidents, pollution), provision of fresh and clean
water, removal of sewage, and other environmental problems.
Some core cities face these problems as well, though usually
to a lesser degree. Declining industrial cities that have not
made the transition to a postindustrial economy are especially
prone to problems of decaying infrastructure, while rapidly
growing postindustrial cities face housing shortages and
heavy reliance on automobile transportation. See pages 438–
448 in the textbook for further information.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

40. • What urban problems are most
characteristic of the local community?
How did these problems arise, and what
is being done about them?
– Information on local urban problems may be
obtained from municipal planning offices, or
from citizen groups organized to address
one or several urban problems. Local
histories may also shed some light on the
origins of contemporary problems.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

41. • What decay in urban infrastructure is visible in
the local community? What actions have or
could be taken to address it?
– This question lends itself to field study. Have the
students look around the area and report on
infrastructural decay. The municipal government
may be a source of information about infrastructural
decay as well as measures being taken to address
it. See pp. 429–431 in the textbook for some
information on the problems of urban decay.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes