Urbanization

1. Urbanization Geog100 Genevieve Depelteau

2. Urbanization is IRREVERSIBLE!!

3. Urbanization facts • In 1800, only 2 percent of the world’s population was urban • By 2030, it is expected that 60% of the world population will live in urban areas. • 70 million people a year • Almost 180,000 people are added to the urban population each day. Every week, addition of a city of more than 1 million residents every week! • It is estimated that there are almost a billion poor people in the world, of this over 750 million live in urban areas without adequate shelter and basic services. • Core/peripheries • Core 65-95% urbanized

4. Urbanization: definition • “The process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more and more people begin living and working in central areas” • “the quality or state of being urbanized or the process of becoming urbanized”

5. WHAT IS THE MAIN role of cities? Cultural innovation Political System and decision-making Center of economic development The mobilizing function: organizing labour, capital, raw materials The generative function: competition and innovation The transformative capacity

6. What make cities and town distinctive? And what are the similarities between cities And towns across the globe? What are the relationships and interdependence between cities and towns? What are they different sizes? Why are some cities prosperous during a certain time and not after? And what are the causes?

7. Week 1: Urbanization Week 2: Urban structure • Role of cities over time • Factors and reasons for urbanization • Spatial transformation: evolution of the urban system • The economic city: spatial theories • Logic of space inside a city • Urban forms and logics behind its organization • Informal versus informal cities

8. We can understand a city only if we know something about the reasons behind its growth !!Urban origins: Fertile Crescent • Agricultural surplus • Population growth • Imbalance between resources and population • The social organization: the emergence of an elite

9. GobekliTepe: 10th-8th millennium BC (Neolithic) - beginning of the world agriculture started here beginnings of grain cultivation, took place here

10. Urban origins: Uruk (50-80,000 people) – Babylonia 4000 to 3100 BC

11. Ancient cities already highly populated e.g. Edo (Tokyo) 180,000 in 1000 AD

12. The root of European Urban expansion • Patchwork of feudal kingdoms • Rurally oriented • Few towns: Ecclesiastic or university centers, defensive strongholds, trade and market, administrative centers • Will become the nodal centers of a global world-system

13. 1400: Emergence of trading cities in Europe still remain now: Paris, Vienna, Bruges, etc.

14. 15th-17th century: colonial gateway cities • Mark the appearance of colonial cities – urban systems into the world’s peripheral region • Colonial towns were 1) military, 2) administrative centers, or 3) organized to collect and export products from mines or plantations • Accra, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Calcutta, New York, etc. • E.g. Native American cities are replaced by Spanish colonial cities

15. Industrialization and urbanization • In 1800 less than 2% of the world’s population live in towns and cities • By 1950, 16% of the world’s population was urban • In England, the urban population jumped from 17% in 1801 to 72% in 1891 • Emergence and importance of cities in the world economy

16. Urbanization during the Industrial Revolution Factors contributing Factors facilitating • Higher agricultural productivity • Industrialization: warehouse, factories • Growing trade around the world: cereals could be imported from America • Development of land transportation: e.g. public transport • Decrease death rate • Police • Sanitation • Fire department • Public transport

17. Shock cities: Manchester and Chicago • An urban place experiencing infrastructural challenges related to massive and rapid urbanization • E.g. Manchester (cotton) in England • Grew from 15,000 habitants in 1750 to 70,000 in 1801, 500,000 in 1866 • The Industrial City: main purpose is to fabricate, assemble, and distribute manufactured growth • The opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894. Ocean-going ships could now navigate the 58 kilometres to the newly opened Port of Manchester

18. Shock cities: Chicago (reading more) • 4,200 in 1873 to 500,000 in 1880, 1,7 million in 1900, and 3.3. million in 1930 • The city was founded in the 1830s and grew rapidly from real estate speculation and the realization that it had a commanding position in the emerging inland transportation network, controlling access from the Great Lakes into the Mississippi River basin. • Hundreds of thousands of hogs and cattle were shipped to Chicago for slaughter, preserving in salt, and transport to eastern markets. • New urban phenomenon: highly segregated areas • 1880 and 1890 censuses showed that more than three-quarters of Chicago’s population was foreign-born immigrants

20. Second Part: Interlocking Urban Systems Def. An interdependent set of urban settlements within a specified region Regional –> National –> International Interdependence Hierarchical urban system exhibit common attributes and features in term of space and size Cities function as market centers and result in a hierarchical system of central places

21. Beginning of land-use: relation between distance and food price; transportation and price of land • Johann Heinrich von Thünen theory in 1826 • The Isolated State, developed the first serious treatment of spatial economics and economic geography, connecting it with the theory of rent • Rent will be the outcome of profit you can make at the market in relation of cost of production and distance

22. Central Place Theory • To explain the observed hierarchy of central places • 1) range: the maximum distance that consumers will normally travel to obtain a particular product or service • 2) threshold: the smallest market area necessary for the goods and services to be economically viable • Once the threshold is determined, the market will expand until it reaches the range

23. 1) Central Place theory: Walter Christaller (1933) • Central place theory is a spatial theory in urban geography that attempts to explain the reasons behind the distribution patterns, size, and number of cities and towns around the world • Christaller began to recognize the economic relationships between cities size and shape and people’s shopping behavior

24. Central place theory Low-order goods High-order goods • Low order goods are things that are replenished most frequently such as food and other routine commodities that are perishable or that can go bad really first. People use them often and they do not need to compare prices • A high order good is usually a high cost good that is only bought occasionally like cars • Because they require a large threshold and people do not purchase them regularly, many businesses selling these items cannot survive in areas where the population is small. Therefore, they often locate in large cities . .

25. Central place theory • Under ideal circumstances: flat plain, good transportation. • humans will always purchase goods from the closest place that offers the good, and whenever demand for a certain good is high, it will be offered in close proximity to the population • Towns and cities tend to be arranged in clear hierarchies, with hexagonal-shaped market areas of different sizes .

26. Central place theory: results • The larger the settlements are in size, the fewer in number they will be, i.e. there are many small villages, but few large cities. • The larger the settlements grow in size, the greater the distance between them, i.e. villages are usually found close together, while cities are spaced much further apart. • As a settlement increases in size, the range and number of its functions will increase . • As a settlement increases in size, the number of higher-order services will also increase, i.e. a greater degree of specialization occurs in the services • There is a distinctive relationship between the population size of cities and their rank with the overall hierarchy (rank-size rule)

27. Canada’s urban system is a excellent example of such a hierarchy

28. The central places and the emergence of World Cities • 17th century: London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Genoa, Lisbon, Venice • 18th century: Paris, Rome, Vienna were added to the list • 19th century: Berlin, Chicago, Manchester, New York, St-Petersburg • Today: less with the deployment of imperial power and trade and more with transnational corporate organization, international banking, supranational government, etc. • Sites for most of the leading global markets for commodities, investment capital, foreign exchange, etc. • Sites of clusters of specialized, high-order business services, property development, law, etc. • Sites of corporate, professional associations and national headquarters • Sites of leading NGOs • Sites of leading cultural industries

29. World cities: Today • Different world cities fulfill different roles within the world-system

30. World cities: Today

31. Megacities • Very large cities characterized by a high degree of centrality within their national economy • Common in sheer size: must of them number 10 million or more in population • Link between megacities is more important than the link they each have with smaller metropolitan areas within their own country

32. 1950: 2 cities over 10 million, 2009: 21, and 2025:29