Finishing off last timeFinishing off last time

Suburbanisation and counter-urbanisation

Last couple of paragraphs of

http://ih-igcse-geography.wikispaces.com/6.1.Urbanisation

2

Who are leaving the cities and Who are leaving the cities and why?why? •As can be seen

from the graph, in 1930-40, the population of the inner city shrunk but the greater London are did not, implying that those who moved out of the centre, mostly ended up in the suburbs – suburbanisation.

•What were the pushes – a hang-over from the Victoria era that pushed them out?

•So urbanisation in the UK and other highly developed countries is not increasing and London for example has actually lost population over the past 70 years.

3

Who are leaving the cities and Who are leaving the cities and why?why?•Post-WW2, the cnetral

London and the Greater London population both fell.

•This shows that movement was taking place out of the city – counter-urbanisation.

•There were 2 ways to move out – the first batch, moved just far enough away so they could commute, either by train or car. These people moved to the towns and villages in Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire. They were the better off, who could afford the travel expenses.

• And what happened in outer London that pulled them in that direction?

4

Who are leaving the cities and why?Who are leaving the cities and why?•What were the pushes on ‘counter-urbanisors? •What were the pulls?•Later on, in the 1980s, some of the new high-tech firms did not start up in the big cities at all, but chose nicer (and cheaper) surroundings as these industries are often called ‘footloose’.

•The older heavy industries were tied to particular places where the raw materials were but these new industries only needed small amounts of materials or components and so had a greater choice of location. These new industries often looked for localities on the outside of towns near a good road network.

•So the highly skilled people who want to work in these industries tend to live in small towns and villages around the work place, for example, there is a lot of high-tech industry along the M4 motorway and the workers can choose pretty villages in the Cotswold and Chilton Hills to live in.

5

ReviewReview

•1. What is urbanisation?

•2. Where did it happen first of all?

•3. Where is most urbanisation taking place now? Why?

•4. What are the causes of urbanisation?

•5. What is suburbanisation? Why did it happen?

•6. What is counterurbanisation? Why did it happen?

2. What affects the rate of urbanisation and the

emergence of mega-cities?

7

We looked at some of the We looked at some of the reasons …reasons …•Businesses settle in cities because the

infrastructure of transport, services, labour and so on are there

•While people go there for improved job prospects, better schools and health facilities etc. We have got an idea of why, but have yet to tackle what affects of how fast it happens.

•Only 20 years ago there were only 171 million cities but now there in excess of 400.

8

• Take a look at the graph on the left – I know the x-scale is not regular – the graph would not let me do that, but you can see the drift. Note this is a bit of an odd graph the pink numbers on the right refer to the world total line and the violet numbers on the right refer to the continent bars.

• The lilac in Europe is increasing, but taking a look at the yellow for Asia!

9

But are there any patterns as to why But are there any patterns as to why this is happening?this is happening?

• To find GDP per capita you need to take the total income generated by a country, area or district – this is the Gross Domestic Product. You then divide the GDP by the population to get the income per person – ‘per capita’ means for each head.

• Now in general I hope you can see that the poorer the country is (the lower the GDP), the faster its cities are growing, and that for the richest countries, the growth is virtually non-existent. The latter idea ties in with the counterurbanisation we discussed in the last section.

10

But are there any patterns as to why But are there any patterns as to why this is happening?this is happening?

• Here is another graph pattern:• We know that one of the pulls

towards the city is the possibility of a higher income.

• The numbers along the bottom is the urban/rural income gap.

• At 1, the urban/rural incomes are roughly the same.

• At 2, the urban income is twice as much as the rural one.

• At 3 it is 3 times as much• What is the pattern?

11

Mega-citiesMega-cities• Cities with more than 10 million

population

•How many are in HICs?

•Which are the largest 3 mega-cities?

•Which continent has the most?

12

One final idea: One final idea: What is a primate city?What is a primate city?

• A primate city is one that has much more than twice the population of the next biggest city. An example is Lima (Peru) that is more than ten times larger than the next settlement or Mexico City in Mexico.

• The presence of a primate city in a country may indicate an imbalance in development — usually a progressive core, and a lagging periphery, on which the primate city depends for labour and other resources. [Core = middle periphery =

edge]

• What this means is that while the primate city can develop, the rest of the country has a hard time keeping up, because all the jobs and investment and services are concentrated there.

13

One final idea: One final idea: What is a primate city?What is a primate city?

• To an extent this applied to the UK

• London had a substantially higher standard of living until redevelopment became a key issue for the EU and UK government.

• From the graph, you can see that housing is still an issue,

House prices

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Year

Ho

use

pri

ces

(£)

NORTH LONDON WALES SCOTLAND

14

Bangkok – Primate CityBangkok – Primate City• Bangkok Population 9 million and Thailand population: 63

million so that Bangkok contains 14% of the population• Examples of the effects of primacy

Although all areas have banks, 80% of the lending goes on in Bangkok, nearly x6 the rest.

All the main government departments are there and this means that Bangkok’s needs are met first, often at the expense of the other areas.

Over ¾ of the best universities are in Bangkok, and with many of the best schools there too, with 50% of the scholarships to university going to people from Bangkok, x 3½ what you would expect

Income difference: Bangkok residents earn from x 2 to x 7 as much as the other regions.

Access to health care: 60% of the doctors and 50% of nurses work in the city

Households with running water: 80% against 10% outside the city.• Efforts to reduce the primacy

Increase the number of universities in the provinces Job creation in rural areas Improved basic health care schemes for all

Urban patternsUrban patterns

Top part ofhttp://ih-igcse-geography.wikispaces.com/6.3.+Rapid+urbanisation

16

• Land use is general term with a somewhat obvious meaning. It is what the land is used for – by humans. That is, humans take the natural environment and change it for their own purposes. These uses include residential, institutional, business, industrial, agricultural, forestry, and parks among others.

• These broad categories can be subdivided. For example residential land use can involve single-family dwellings on large or small plots, or large groups on estates of semi-detached or terraced houses. The most intensive residential land-uses are found in large blocks of flats where the population density can be very high.

• Institutional land uses are mostly occupied by public buildings such as schools, universities, government office buildings, art galleries, and museums and hospitals. These facilities are most commonly located in urban or suburban areas.

17

How is the land used in urban How is the land used in urban areas?areas?• Go to any town or city and there is an area towards

the centre, usually right in the middle, where you will find a scene like this:

• It is of Sheffield but it could be just about anywhere.

• What do you notice about the sky line?

• From what you already know why is this?

• What kind of activities are carried on here?

18

How is the land used in urban How is the land used in urban areas?areas?

• It is also likely to be the place where roads from different places meet. If there is still a railway, then the main line station will not be far away.

• There may be a bus terminal, where many buses from elsewhere in the area stop and turn around.

• This known as the Central Business District or CBD for short.

Were these the sort of things you noticed?

19

• In many towns, just beyond the limits of the CBD you will find several streets of terraces houses that open straight onto the road

20

• This picture from the 1950s of Atherton in Lancashire shows the houses, and also other features of the area just outside the CBD, that have either gone away or been changed for other uses.

21

But why is there a concentration of But why is there a concentration of cheap housing in so many different cheap housing in so many different

urban areas?urban areas? •Think when they were built. •In the Victorian era in particular in the United Kingdom but in other parts of Europe and North America, factories were growing up all over the place.

•They were still powered by steam engines that used coal to boil the water. The coal either needed to be local or brought in by train – the railway station was near the middle of the urban area.

•It was bulky and there were no lorries to bring it from the station, so the shorter the distance to the factory the better.

•Then of course the railway was the main way of sending finished goods to other towns and cities.

22

But why is there a concentration of But why is there a concentration of cheap housing in so many different cheap housing in so many different

urban areas?urban areas? •These factories grew up where the raw materials and the coal were easily available but these places were often had a shortage of labour.

•So cheap housing was needed to be provided for people migrating from the country. There was no cheap and easy local transport system, so the workers had to walk to work.

•So the factory owners built the housing crammed around the factory both for cheapness and for the ease of the workers getting to the factory. These areas close to the factories were smokey and dirty and not very good places to live. There was no space to grass or trees and no parks. The streets were narrow and it was dark and crowded.

23

Once the factories were up and running Once the factories were up and running ……• ……there would be more

money in the town and the shops in the CBD would selling more and the shop keepers doing better. They and the factory foremen and supervisors would form part of an emerging middle class that would need somewhere to live. So the landowners around the edge of the inner area would build houses to sell to this new group – semi-detached villas were wanted, mainly to rent, by the new middle class. They would not want to be too far from the centre to walk to the town centre where they worked but the roads were wider.

• Each house had a small front garden and usually a larger back garden – no yard for them with a petty at the bottom! Notice the Bay windows? This was a common feature of the foreman’s house. They were far enough away not to get the smells and pollution from the factories and so much healthier.

24

Once the factories were up and running Once the factories were up and running ……

• The roads of semi-detached houses often still today spread out quite a long way, but the further you are from the centre, the smarter they got and the further they were from the road. These would be for shop owners perhaps or factory managers.

• Note the top floor with small windows – a live-in maid or 2 perhaps?

25

Once the factories were up and running Once the factories were up and running ……

•Further out still, there would factory owners and other seriously rich people lived with lots of servants and gardeners, and probably carriage and coachman .

26

Geographical models and urban Geographical models and urban areasareas•This was such a common pattern of

urban development that in 1925 a man called Ernest Burgess, having studied Chicago in the USA in great depth came up with one of the first urban geographical model based on these concentric rings.

•It was a very simple idea but it fell out of favour after WW2 because geographers thought it was too simple.

•It worked fine until roads and road transport imprinted their impression on our cities. It also took no account of electricity taking over as the main power supply, nor did the new industries, such as food processing and small domestic machine for example, fit into the pattern at all.

27

Geographical models and urban Geographical models and urban areasareas

•This problem was to an extent overcome by Herman Hoyt.

• He used the idea that the factories tended to be built along roads, railways and rivers in wedges to make the most of the transport routes.

• The low class residential housing was built alongside it and the high class housing would tend to choose the nicest parts ,leaving the middle class housing to do its best to keep away from the factory smells and pollution.

This looks a bit like the LEDC model. But how is

it different?

28

• These patterns do seem to have some validity but the most important issue is that different kinds of residential and industrial and commercial land use do separate themselves out into different parts of an urban area. A really up-market house will not be built in the middle of blocks of flats or a row of terraces, any more than a big store is built in the middle of a housing estate.

• In addition, there are new sorts of urban land use not taken into account by either Burgess or Hoyt. The out-of -town shopping centre and business park are examples.

29

• The CBD is crowded and if you want to create a new building for a store there you have a number of problems. Parking is in short supply and therefore expensive. The land is expensive.

• It is already occupied by buildings and even if you could buy one up, before you could make your new development, you would have to clear the site, while nor damaging the surrounding businesses, which add hugely to the cost.

• Much better to find a piece of underused land on a major road outside the town, provided free parking, and build your new store on one or at most 2 floors – not the 4 or even 5 floors you would have had to build in the CBD.

• Similarly it is the same for new industries. To build in the old industrial areas, you would have to clear the ground, and often that would mean decontaminating it before you could lay a single brick, all at a huge cost.

• The narrow streets in these older areas would making access for delivery lorries difficult too. Much better to build outside the urban area on a main road.

30

• Recently, the narrow approach streets in urban areas have caused traffic chaos. It is all very well for vehicles who are visiting the town, but if the urban area is on a through-route to somewhere else, it can become impossible, especially if large heavy lorries go that way regularly. One solution has been to build by-passes around congested areas. Once the by-pass is in place, superstores and small industrial parks are keen to develop the land either side, as the transport links are so good and there is plenty of space at a much lower cost that in the urban centre.

• Often there is unused land between the old urban area and the by-pass, which in the last 20 years has rapidly become filled in with large housing estates with medium to high density housing – terraces and semi-detached houses with the smallest of gardens, with developer getting in as many units as the planning authority will allow.

• However, in recent times, these plans seemed to have slowed to a stop due to the credit crunch which has affected the building trade particularly badly.

31

But why do similar land-use function But why do similar land-use function group together in urban area?group together in urban area?

• The CBD, is where you find the shops, offices, banks, administrative building and so on. These organisations all want to be within easy reach of the whole urban area and also those coming in from outside. This means being at the junction of the main transport routes and as close to the centre as possible. They can afford to pay the higher land prices and so squeeze other potential users out. One way to make the higher prices achievable is to build up and so cram a lot into a small area.

• The old industrial area, around the CBD, has almost disappeared in some towns. But many still have pockets of small workshops, like car-repair, body shops (for fixing and re-spraying cars!), and general engineering operating in run-down areas, underneath railway arches for example.

• Why are they there? They have been there for a long time. They are noisy and dirty but being out of the way, they do not upset anyone. No-one can think of anything more profitable to do with the land.

• Houses of similar type tend to be where they are for a particular reason, so you would not find a mansion in the middle of a council housing estate

32

HomeworkHomework

•Using the map version of google maps, or a photocopy of a town plan if you happen to have one, of the nearest town/city that you use regularly (in case of a v. large one like London, see the sheet) to work on.

•Then switch to the aerial view of google maps + your knowledge + discussion with parents, to shade in the different types of land-use using this key( or one similar of your own design)