Chapter 13 - Urban Patterns: Key Issue 1

Why Do Services Cluster Downtown? Rubenstein, pp. 406-410

CBD Land Uses

1. Define central business district (CBD):

2. In the past _____________ services clustered in the CBD. Changing shopping habits have

_____________ the importance of _____________ services in the CBD.

3. With reference to the CBD:

a. retailers with a ____________ threshold prefer the CBD.

WHY?

b. retailers with a ____________ range prefer the CBD.

WHY?

Give several examples in the chart below:

High Threshold Retailers High Range Retailers

4. What is the 3rd

type of retail activity in the CBD?

5. Why do business services cluster in the center of the CBD?

Competition for land in the CBD

6. What is the difference in the price of land in the CBD vs. a rural area?

7. Which TWO distinctive characteristics of the CBD are a result of the high cost of land?

1.

2.

8. Compared to other parts of the ___________ the CBD uses more space _______________ and

____________ ground.

9. Why are there no skyscrapers in Washington DC?

10. What does this mean for DC?

11. Make notes on the types of activities excluded from the CBD?

ACTIVITY Why is it excluded?

SKYSCRAPERS What are they? Activity on different floors…

CBDs Outside North America

12. What is different about a CBD in a European City?

13. What do many CBDs outside N. America ban? Why?

Next to each picture, summarize the characteristics of CBD in each region:

NORTH AMERICAN CBD

EUROPEAN CBD

CHARACTERISTICS:

CHARACTERISTICS:

Urban Patterns: Key Issue 2

Where Are People Distributed Within Urban Areas? Rubenstein, pp. 410-418

1. Read the first section of this key issue and for each of the three models, annotate the diagrams below and do

the following:

1) identify the model by name

2) name the geographer(s) who devised the model by name

3) identify and label the key parts of the model

4) Abullet@ in other important characteristics and/or features of the model

THREE MODELS OF URBAN STRUCTURE

2a. What are census tracts?

2b. What types of data are reported by the US Census Bureau regarding the population of each census tract?

3. What is social area analysis?

4. In European cities, the wealthy tend to live in the inner-ring of cities and in a spine extending out from it.

(a) What are the advantages of the southwestern extending spine of Paris?

(b) What are the advantages of living in the inner-ring, near the city center?

5. List three points about the conditions of European suburbs, where the poor live.

(a)

(b)

(c)

6. Cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America resemble European cities in their structure. This is not a coincidence

because . . .

7. Draw and label a

sketch of a “pre-

colonial city”

APPLYING THE MODELS OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA

Less Developed Countries

European cities

8. Colonial cities often contained a new “European sector” to the side of the pre-colonial city. Contrast their

various elements in the table below.

“Old Quarters” - the pre-colonial city “European district” - the colonial addition

9. Describe how the elite spine developed in modern Mexico City.

10. What are the causes of squatter settlements?

11. Use the third paragraph in this section to make a simple flowchart which depicts stages in the development

of a squatter settlement.

12. Describe services and amenities in a typical squatter settlement.

Squatter Settlements

14. Label the parts on the Model of a Latin American City:

Urban Patterns: Key Issue 3

Why Do Inner Cities Face Distinctive Challenges?

Rubenstein, pp. 418-423

1. Complete this statement regarding the basic problems of the inner city:

● INNER CITY PHYSICAL ISSUES

2. What is the major problem faced by inner-city residents?

3a. Describe the inner-city process known as filtering.

3b. What is the ultimate result of this process?

4. What is redlining and its result?

5. What is urban renewal?

6. Complete the box below regarding public housing.

Inner cities in the United States contain concentrations of ____________________ people who face

a variety of physical, ______________, and _________________ problems very different from those

faced by _____________________ residents.

PUBLIC HOUSING

A. Who (primarily) builds and maintains public housing?

B. Percentages of public housing in the US . . .

a. Public housing accounts for ___% of all housing in the US.

C. Why are the high-rise public housing “projects” built during the 50’s and 60’s now considered

unsatisfactory?

D. How are recent public housing projects and “scattered-site” public housing of today different?

7. Why has urban renewal been criticized?

8a. Define gentrification:

8b. Who is attracted to move into gentrified areas? Why?

8c. Why has gentrification been criticized?

9. Complete the boxed statement regarding the population of the inner city.

● INNER-CITY SOCIAL ISSUES

10. List and briefly describe four specific social problems of inner-city residents.

A.

B.

C.

D.

Inner-city residents frequently are referred to as a permanent _____________________ because

they are _______________ in an unending _________________ of economic and social

______________________.

11. What financial crisis does the high proportion of low-income residents in the inner city create?

12. What two choices does a city have to solve this problem? Which have most chosen?

13. Sketch a small graph

to show (approximately)

how federal aid to inner-

cities grew and shrank:

Urban Patterns: Key Issue 4

Why Do Suburbs Face Distinctive Challenges?

Rubenstein, pp. 424-434

1. Regarding ANNEXATION:

(a) What is annexation?

(b) What is required before an area can be annexed by a city?

(c) In the past, why did peripheral areas desire annexation?

(d) What has changed?

INNER CITY ECONOMIC ISSUES

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

FEDERAL AID TO INNER CITIES

2. What is the definition of a CITY?

3. What is a CENTRAL CITY?

4. What is an URBANIZED AREA?

5. What is the METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREA (MSA)?

6. What THREE things does the MSA include?

LOCAL GOVERNMENT FRAGMENTATION

7. The ________________ of local government in the US makes it difficult to solve regional problems

like… (give 4 examples)

8. What is a COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENT?

9. What is a Federation?

10. What is MEGALOPOLIS?

11. Where are Megalopolis’ in the United States?

THE PERIPHERAL MODEL

1. List the elements of an urban area according to the peripheral model.

2. Complete the table below.

P E R I P H E R A L A R E A S

Problems that they LACK Problems that they HAVE

3. Describe the formation of an EDGE CITY in the flowchart below.

4. Describe the density gradient of an urban area.

5. How has the density gradient changed in recent years? (2 ways.)

(a)

(b)

6. Define sprawl:

7. What is meant by the statement that: the “periphery of US cities look like Swiss cheese”?

8. What has prevented the peripheries of European cities from looking like “Swiss cheese”?

9. In what two ways are suburban areas “segregated”?

a.

b.

10. What is a greenbelt?

11. What is smart growth?

12. Describe how “smart growth” laws have been designed in Maryland, Oregon, and Tennessee.

SUBURBAN SEGREGATION

13a. What percentage of people prefer the suburbs to the inner city?

13b. What “varied attractions” do the suburbs offer?

14. In what TWO ways is the modern residential suburb segregated?

Maryland Oregon Tennessee

PEDESTRIAN PHASE STREETCAR PHASE AUTOMOBILE PHASE

15. What are zoning ordinances?

16. Why have businesses moved to suburbs?

17. Why has retailing suburbanized?

18. Why have factories and offices suburbanized?

TRANSPORTATION AND SUBURBANIZATION

19. Read “Transportation and Suburbanization” and “Motor Vehicles” to fill in the flowchart describing

how developments in transportation affected the residential pattern of American cities.

20. Identify 2 ways in which the US Government has encouraged the use of motor vehicles by its

citizens?

(a)

(b)

21a. What percentage of a city is devoted to motor vehicles?

21b. Identify 2 ways in which motor vehicles use land in urban areas.

(i)

(ii)

22. What is rush hour and how much of a city’s traffic does it account for?

23. List four ways in which public transportation is better than the automobile.

a.

b.

c.

d.

24. Briefly describe what has happened (or is currently happening) to each of the following modes of

public transportation in US cities.

• Trolleys

• Buses

• Rapid transit (subway and fixed light rail)

25. How does the North American situation compare to that in Europe and Japan?