GEOG 340: Day 3

1. GEOG 340: Day 3 Phases of North American Urban Development

2. Housekeeping Items • The Geography Department is having a welcome back social in the map library/ lounge (next door) at 10:30. Please come out and meet faculty and your fellow students. Normally, we have pizza, but it’s little early to source it at that time of day. • For those of you familiar with West Linley Valley, it is facing its ‘last stand’ and concerned citizens are holding a public meeting on Wednesday, September 18th at 7 p.m. in the Kin Hut in Departure Bay (Kinsmen Park).

3. Housekeeping Items • We need to start signing people up for specific discussion topics and dates. • I will hand out the instructions for the major assignment today and put it up on the web site. I will also walk you through it. • Any other questions or concerns?

4. Phases of North American Urban Development • Each “set of urban settlements is both the product of, and a continuing framework for, processes of economic, technological, demographic, political, and social change” (p. 47). What does this mean? • Five distinct phases: • Frontier era (pre-independence) • Mercantile era – further development of central places (1790 to 1840) • Expansion and realignment in response to early industrialization (1840-1875)

5. Phases of North American Urban Development • Full-blown industrial era (1875 -1920) • Fordist mass production (1920-1945) We will deal with more recent developments later. • Frontier establishments were created by the colonizing powers (Spain, France, Great Britain, and Holland) were a variety of purposes: trade, commerce and administration, conversion of the indigenous populations, and maintaining a military presence.

6. Phases of North American Urban Development • Spain: Sante Fe, St. Augustine, San Antonio, Santa Barbara, , Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. All of these, except St. Augustine became part of Mexico until they were wrested away by the United States in the 1840s. • Holland: New York (later taken over by Britain). • France: Quebec, Montréal, Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans. • Britain: Jamestown, Williamsburg, Boston, Newport, Charleston, Philadelphia, and numerous settlements in Canada.

7. Phases of North American Urban Development • With the founding of Jamestown in 1607, tobacco was first grown for export back to Britain, and in 1619 Africans were kidnapped from their homes to work the tobacco fields in Virginia. • Britain banned the slave trade in 1807, but it was maintained in the U.S. until 1865, and lingered afterwards in disguised forms. • Some settlements in the U.S. had an explicitly religious or spiritual purpose (Provincetown, Boston, and Philadelphia).

8. Phases of North American Urban Development • These new towns became “gateway cities” – assembling staples for export, distributing imported goods, and providing an administrative function. Later on the settlements began to link in a hierarchy rather than remaining separate. • Some towns, in particular, served an entrêpotfunction – centralizing the import and export role of the other towns, especially in relation to an increasingly large hinterland.

9. Phases of North American Urban Development • In the mercantile era, the links between communities grew, in the U.S. investment was increasingly staying “onshore” (not so in Canada), the U.S.’s independence required more administration, and westward expansion required more frontier towns for service and administration (e.g. Santa Fe). [For an overview of the James Vance’s mercantile model, see pp. 51-52.] • Growth also occurred along river ports – St. Louis and New Orleans. To compete the Atlantic seaboard merchants created inland canals, such as the Erie (1825).

10. Phases of North American Urban Development • Cities began to develop a specialized function based on comparative advantage. • Eastern ports began to export early manufactures from New England. • Growing immigration (mainly from Europe) provided a source of labour, as did rural-to-urban migration fuelled by advances in agricultural productivity, especially later. • Cities and towns were organized on the basis of walking and horse carts or horses, and they were loosely segregated on the basis of class and caste (see p. 53).

11. Phases of North American Urban Development • Immigration was also extensive in Canada (see next page). The development of an increasingly extensive railway network allowed for a massive expansion of trade and settlement. In the U.S., its development was like a spider web; in Canada it was much more linear as settlement tended to hug the U.S. border. The creation of a coast-to-coast railway was the basis/ condition for Confederation in 1867.

13. Industrialization • Railroads helped create national markets and economies of scale. • New towns grew up or were strengthened with specialization functions – power sites where industries were able to take advantage of ready sources of power, mining towns, transportation hubs, and heavy manufacturing towns. Can you think of examples of each? • Industrialization tended to occur where craft industries pre-existed , with their available capital, wholesaling, and transportation networks; where there traditions and skills of entrepreneurship; where there were the largest pools of labour, and the largest and most affluent markets.

14. Principles of urban growth • Rank-size rule (Pi = P1 ÷ Ri). Pi is population of the city, Riis the rank of city by population size, andP1is the population of the largest city in a country. In theory, if the largest city has a population of 1 million, the fifth largest should have a population of 200,000. • However, some countries have so-called primate cities, which outsize their nearest rivals. For instance, London is seven times as large as the next biggest city in Britain, Birmingham. • Calculate the ratios for these cities: 1. Toronto (5,741,400) 2. Montreal (3,859,300) 3. Vancouver (2,391,300) 4. Calgary (1,242,600) 5. Ottawa (1,239,100)

15. Principles of urban growth • Central Place Theory- developed by Walter Christaller, a German geographer, this rather abstract theory that, all things being equal, a spatial patterning of cities, towns, villages, and hamlets will evolve in a sort of patchwork quilt across the landscape, as determined by people’s willingness to travel for various goods and services. • As we noted last week, cities offer a broader range of amenities (referred to by geographers as “higher-order goods and services”), smaller settlements fewer. • What would be some examples ? • Shortcomings of the model – can you think of some?

16. Industrial cities • Immigrants and industrial workers found themselves crowded into ramshackle slum dwellings, sometimes more than one family to a flat, and with minimal light and fresh air. • They worked long hours and, in some cases, were locked into their factories to keep out union organizers.