Quotes

“I thought digital technology would eventually reverse urbanization, and so far that hasn't happened. But people always overestimate how much will change in the next three years, and they underestimate how much will change over the next 10 years.” Bill Gates

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
—Bill Vaughn

As growth becomes denser, highway costs rise while transit costs decline. - Anonymous

If car ownership is mandatory, [the place is] not urban. - Donald Baxter

A street is a spatial entity and not the residue between buildings. - Anonymous

...if someone charges that the New Urbanism is about hating cars, we can say no, that it is only when convenient walking and convenient driving conflict that we place the pedestrian above the driver; where they do not conflict, there is no dilemma. - Bruce Donnelly

For more interesting quotes please check out the following site
http://www.walkablestreets.com/quote5.htm

Urbanization Facts

Urbanization: Facts and Figures

Total Population Growth
· In 2000, world population reached 6.1 billion, and is growing at an annual rate of 1.2%, or 77 million people per year.

· In 1950, 68% of the world’s population was in developing countries, with 8% in least developed countries.

· By 2030, it is expected that 85% of the world’s population will be in developing countries, with 15% in LDCs.

· The other side of the coin is that the percentage of the world’s population that lives in developed countries is declining, from 32% in 1950 to an expected 15% in 2030.

· By 2050, the number of persons older than 60 years will more than triple, from 606 million today to nearly 2 billion. The number of persons over 80 years of age will increase even more, from 69 million in 2000 to 379 million in 2050, more than a five-fold increase.

Ubanization: Global Facts and Figures
· In 1800, only 2% of the world’s population was urbanised

· In 1950, only 30% of the world population was urban.

· In 2000, 47%. of the world population was urban

· More than half of the world’s population will be living in urban areas by 2008

· By 2030, it is expected that 60% of the world population will live in urban areas.

· Almost 180,000 people are added to the urban population each day

· 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.

Urbanization: Regional Comparisons
· The population in urban areas in less developed countries will grow from 1.9 billion in 2000 to 3.9 billion in 2030.

· But in developed countries, the urban population is expected to increase very slowly, from 0.9 billion in 2000 to 1 billion in 2030.

· The overall growth rate for the world for that period is 1 per cent, while the growth rate for urban areas is nearly double, or 1.8 percent. At that rate, the world’s urban population will double in 38 years.

· Growth will be even more rapid in the urban areas of less developed regions, averaging 2.3 per cent per year, with a doubling time of 30 years.

· The urbanisation process in developed countries has stabilised with about 75% of the population living in urban areas. By 2030, 84% of the population in developed countries will be living in urban areas.

· Latin America and the Caribbean were 50% urbanized by 1960 but are now in the region of 75%.

· Though Africa is predominantly rural, with only 37.3 % living in urban areas in 1999, with a growth rate of 4.87%, Africa is the continent with the fastest rate of urbanisation.

· In 1999, 36.2% of the Asian population was urbanised and the urban growth rate is in the region of 3.77%

· The urban population of developing countries is expected to reach 50% in 2020.

· By 2030, Asia and Africa will both have higher numbers of urban dwellers than any other major area of the world.

Urban Agglomerations, or More Mega Cities
· In 1950, there was only one city with a population of over 10 million inhabitants: New York City.

· By 2015, it is expected that there will be 23 cities with a population over 10 million.

· Of the 23 cities expected to reach 10 million plus by 2015, 19 of them will be in developing countries.

· In 2000 there were 22 cities with a population of between 5 and 10 million; there were 402 cities with a population of 1 to 5 million; and 433 cities in the .5 to 1 million category.

This information found at http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/3160_99185_backgrounder5.doc

I also came across another really great site that has fact sheets and data tables. It is really interesting to see the changes and growth that has ocurred over the past years. I suggest you take a look. There is alot of good information on the site. The site is listed below:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005wup.htm

some cartoons on urbanization

For more please feel free to look at the following link

http://www.indianink.org/winning_cartoons.pdf

Chapter 15

Major Problems of Urbanization

• Overcrowding
  


• Inferior, inadequate and sometimes dangerous housing




• Low income/wages




• Poor educational environment




• Social disorganization




• Poverty



• Poor public services



• Inadequate transportation



• Rise in crime rates



• Political corruption



• Loss of land



• Increased air, water and land pollution
• please refer to the following link for more information regarding the effects of water quality
• http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/urbanrun.html



• Growth of slums



• Sprawl
  

Consequences of sprawl in the United States
Increases traffic
Pollutes air and water.
Worsens the damage from floods.
Destroys agricultural land, parks, and open space.
Costs cities and counties millions of dollars for new water and sewer lines, new schools, and increased police and fire protection.
Creates crowded schools in the suburbs and empty, crumbling schools in center cities.

Chapter 14

Urban Culture as defined by wikipedia

Urban culture is the culture of cities. Cities all over the world, past and present, have behaviors and cultural elements that separate them from otherwise comparable rural areas.
In the US and UK, "urban" is often used as a euphemism to describe hip hop culture or subsets of black culture; being these defined groups as a type of urban tribe. Hence names for cultural artifacts like urban music could be seen as a new term for "Race music". It can also refer to the greater availability of cultural resources (such as art, theatre, events, etc) as compared to suburban or rural areas.

Music

Dance

Grafitti

Theatre

In NYC, I know that many local people go to many of the parks in the city. My favorite park to go to when I visit is Washinton Square Park, there is always some sort of entertainment to enjoy. The site below will give you some historic information about this amazing gathering place.

http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=6537

Chapter 13

How Neighborhoods Change?
I believe neighborhoods change greatly by those living in them and the help of organizations, the government and policies.

I found alot of interesting websites regarding the upgrading of slums and other programs out there for bettering the housing for people here in the United States. I would like to share a few of them with you.

Below is the link to an article for Community Driven Development
http://www.worldbank.org/urban/upgrading/docs/CDD/cdd-urban-upgrading.pdf

The Urban Institute has alot of great and interesting information and I highly encourage everyone to navigate through it with the link provided below.
http://www.urban.org/housing/index.cfm

I found a program called NeighborWorks in which poor and deteriorating communities are revitalized. I had never heard of it before, but found it to be pretty beneficial to those living in poor communities.
http://www.nw.org/network/training/programs/nr.asp

Chapter 12

Why has residential segregation presisted?

• physical distance restrictive - money and time
• maximization of conflict between social groups
• maximization of the political voice and influence resulting from spatial clustering
• greater degree of social control - possible with homogeneous residential groupings
• territorality

The Foundations of Residential Segregation in the US

1. Social status - an attribute of "gentrified" neighborhoods
2. Household type - adult communities/single room occupancies
3. Ethnicity - African American/Chinese/Jewish/Mexican/Puerto Rican/etc.
4. Lifestyle - familists/careerists/consumerists

Residential Ecology

1. Human Ecology
2. Factorial Ecology

Human Ecology

• Each as an ecological unit - a particular mix of people that had come to dominate a particular niche in the urban fabric
• adopted a view of the city as a social organism with a social interation governed by a struggle for existence
• social interaction seen as an expression of symbiosis

Factorial Ecology

• socioeconomic status, family status and ethnicity should be regarded as representing the main dimensions of social space
• physical space should not be thought of as independent of social space

Changes to the Foundation of Residential Segregation

• economic rearrangements in the 1980s due to occupational polarization, baby boom generation and ethnicity
• new class fractions, household types and new lifestyles
• increase materialism
• social isolation of vulnerable and disadvantaged (elderly, immigrants, single parent families, etc)

The New Mosaic - "Lifestyle" Communities

• New York City
• Los Angeles
• Washington DC
• Dallas
• Chicago
• Cleveland

Chapter 11

The Urban Assistance Program is Guided by a Vision of Sustainable Cities

The Urban and Local Government Strategy proposes an agenda for working with both national and local governments to develop sustainable cities, which are first and foremost:

• "Livable"--committed to ensuring that the poor achieve a healthful and dignified living standard; that provide systems for adequate housing, secure land tenure, credit, transportation, health care, education, and other services for households; and that address environmental degradation, public safety and cultural heritage preservation for the benefit of all residents. And to be livable, cities must also become:
• "Competitive"--providing a supportive framework for productive firms, to promote buoyant, broad-based growth of employment, incomes and investment.
• "Well governed and managed"--with representation and inclusion of all groups in the urban society; with accountability, integrity, and transparency of government actions in pursuit of shared goals; and with strong capacity of local government to fulfill public responsibilities based on knowledge, skills, resources and procedures that draw on partnerships.
• "Bankable"--that is, financially sound and, at least for some cities, creditworthy. Financial health of municipalities requires the adoption of clear and internally consistent systems of local revenues and expenditures, transparent and predictable intergovernmental transfers, generally accepted financial accounting, asset management, and procurement practices, and prudent conditions for municipal borrowing.

Building Blocks of the Strategy

Four main activities are proposed for new emphasis of the World Bank's urban support:

1. 
   Formulation of national urban strategies--helping constituents understand and articulate how the urban transition can contribute to national goals of broad-based growth and poverty reduction, and identifying the economic roles and development requirements of different types of cities within the country.
2. 
   Support to city development strategies--facilitating participatory processes by which the local stakeholders define their vision for their city, analyze its economic prospects, and identify priorities for action and for external assistance to implement the strategy.
3. 
   Scaling-up programs of services for the poor--including through upgrading of low-income urban neighborhoods based on community-based initiatives that are supported by a wide coalition of public and private sector partners.
4. 
   Enhanced assistance for capacity-building--supplementing "retail" municipal management operations by supporting intermediary networks, such as municipal associations, as mechanism for "wholesaling" technical assistance, training and sharing of experience; and providing direct advisory services outside of lending operations on a variety of urban management issues.

For more information on Urban Development, please check out the following website. I found it to be very helpful and full of information.

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTURBANDEVELOPMENT/0,,menuPK:337184~pagePK:149018~piPK:149093~theSitePK:337178,00.html

Chapter 10

Lewis Mumford once said, "in the state of building at any period one may discover, in legible script, the complicated process and changes that are taking place within civilization itself."

30 years later, a sociologist, Ruth Glass characterized a city as "a mirror...of history, class structure and culture."

Architecture and design of buildings are extremely important. We look for things to be both fuctional and attractive.

For this chapter, I would like to share some buildings around the world which are both of these things. I will be showing you them from the past as well as the present.

For more great buildings around the world, feel free to check out the following website

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings.html

Chapter 6

• Between 1928 and 1933 residental construction fell by 95% in the United States.


• A million households lost their property through forclosure.


• By 1933 half of ALL home mortgages were in default.

The Hoover administration responded by creating a credit reserve for mortgage lenders and a fund for making loans to nonprofit corporations formed to build or upgrade housing for low-income families.

The first is called the Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932

for more detailed information regarding it, please look at the following site

http://www.fhfb.gov/Default.aspx?Page=70

The second is called the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932

To see what the president said regarding this please refer to the following site

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=23170

The following year, Roosevelt created the Federal Housing Administration for stimulating construction and helping out families.

The Department 's website has alot of great information that could help families out today

http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/fhahistory.cfm

With the new administration up and working, more and more houses were being built and "sprawl" was occuring. Neighborhoods were being built outside of the large cities and suburbanization was being to occur.

Due to sprawl, automobile ownership after 1945 was on the rise and freeways/highways were being created to get people from one place to the next.

This was the real start of life as we see it today.

Chapter 5

Urban Sturcture in the Industrial Era

During this time period, thre was much visible growth and intensive building and rebuilding. This can be seen as the template for cities today.

Cities during this time, were broken up into "sections."
These sections included:

• Central Business Districts



• Department Stores and Shopping Districts

• Downtown Office Districts



• Warehouse Zones

With the creation of these sections, the cities became more organized and it was easy for people to see where to find the things they needed.

A study done in 1878-1928 by Homer Hoyt developed a sector model or urban land use based on generalizations of rental values.

The generalizations are as follows:

• Rent, and therefore a socioeconomic status, varied within cities primarily by radial sectors.



• The highest rents were to be found in a single sector that extended out continuously from the CBD.



• Intermediate rents, many times associated with middle class income neighborhoods, were found in sectors on either side of the high-rent sector.



• Low rents, associated with working class and low-income families, were found on the side of the city opposite the high-rent sector.

Chapter 4

World City - term coined by Patrick Geddes to describe cities in which a disproportionate share of the world's most important business(economic, political, cultural) is conducted and that serve as headquarters to transitional corporations


Check out the following site for more info:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city


Top World Cities

• London, England
  

• New York, New York, USA
  

• Tokyo, Japan

Distinctive Features of World Cities Include:

• Increasing control over the production and transmission of news, information and culture


• Marked economic and social polarization and intense spation segregtion involving:

~a growing international elite, dominated by a transnational producer-service group

~pronounced inner city gentrification and redevelopment for luxury use

~a large informal economy

~a large and growing group of multiply disadvantaged people

• Massive concentrations of new immigrant groups


• Heightened political conflict over issues of urban growth and management and intensified race and class conflict
  

Regional Control Centers - large concentrations of national and regional headquarters of large corporations, well-developed banking facilities, dense networks of producer-service companies and concentrations of important educational, medical and public-sector institutions.

Examples of these places include:

• Atlanta

• Boston









• Houston

Specialized Producer-Service Centers - third-tier of cities, specialized producer-service centers tend to be more narrowly defined while they depend on world cities and nodal centers for high-order producer services suc as banking and advertising. They are specialized in management and technical production.

Examples of this type of city include:

• San Jose
• Detroit
• Pittsburgh

Dependent Centers - fourth tier of cities, small and dependent. The fortunes of these cities depend on decisions made regionally, nationally and globally.

These centers can be identified by 4 subcategories:

1. Traditional manufacturing centers...Buffalo, Chattanooga, Erie
2. Industrial /military centers...Huntsville, Newport News, San Diego
3. Mining/industrial centers.....Duluth, Charleston
4. Resort/retirement/residential centers...Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Las Vegas

Chapter 3

Vance's Mercantile Model

~the developent of North American urban system is based upon this model

~the model was proposed/developed by James Vance, Jr. who was an urban geographer

~Vance states that long-distance trade and external influences are extremely important inforging the geometry of the urban hierarchy through 5 stages.

5 Stages Developed by James Vance Jr.
Exploration

Harvesting of natural resources

Emergence of farm-based staple production

Establishment of interior depot centers

Economic maturity and central place filling

Due to the fact that many new industrial technologies needed s pecific locations or proxomity to raw materials, new towns were created and smaller towns grew even larger. Four categories of such new places include:

• Power sites...industries that consumed large amounts of energy moved to places near falling water...they used the falling water as their energy sourge...an example would be Harrisburg, PA


• Mining towns...coal and ore towns developed to supply the industrial economy...an example would be Norton, VA


• Transportation centers...towns emerged that were accessible by the canal and railroad networks...an example would be Roanoake, VA


• Heavy manufacturing towns...towns dependent on large amounts of raw materials...an example would be Pittsburgh, PA which was a steeltown

1840-1875 Early Industrial Expansion

~at this point in time, many people immigrated to the United States and went to America's fast growing cities in search of jobs

For more information on immigration now and in the past look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

or

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis

Chapter 2

Urban Origins

There are 5 regions that provide early evidence or urbanization and urban civilization. They include:

• Mesopotamia
  
• Egypt
  
• The Indus Valley
  
• Northern China
  
• Mesoamerica

Mesopotamia

• provides the earliest evidence of urbanization


• 3500BC


• contained about 35,000 people

Egypt

• 31oo BC


• large irrigation projects/agrigultural


• between 2000 and 1400 BC urbanization continued with the founding of capital cities

The Indus Valley

• 35,000 people


• 2500 BC


• Harappan cities were likely the two first planned towns

Northern China

• 1800BC


• 1384 capital city was An'yang


• irrigated agriculture

Mesoamerica

• 500 BC


• between 300-700AD Teotihuacan contained 200,000 people


• Mayan cities date to 100 BC with populations as high as 50,000 people


• Mayan civilizations reached its peak from 300-900AD

Chapter 1

"Urban" settlements vary greatly from one country to the next. In the United States, our definition comes from the Bureau of the Census. To them, the term urban applies to the territory, population and housing units within urbanized areas and urban clusters. Below I will list a few terms and definitions to help with the understanding urban settlements.

Urbanized Area - densely settled area with at least 50,000 people and a density of at least 1,000 people per square mile at the urban core and 500 people per square mile in the surrounding territory

Urban Cluster - an urban core with a population density of at least 1,000 people per square mile and at least 500 people per square mile in the surrounding territory that together create a population of 2,500 people but less than 50,000

It wasn't until 1950 that the Bureau of Census began to use standardized defintions. There term has changed 3 times since then. In 1950 it was called stantard metropolitan area. In 1960 it changed to standard metropolitan statistical area and in 1983 it changed to metropolitan statistical area. The expansion of large neighboring metropolitan areas led to another term being adopted. In 1990 the term metropolitan area was adopted. In 2000, the term core based statistical area became effective. With continual growth here in US cities, there is a constant need for new terms, ideas and theories to be adopted especially with urbanization being studied more.

Urbanization has a great affect on not only individuals but on the economy and the country as a whole. Urbanization is seen as a process which has an impact on everyone from those living in the large cities to those living on farms. It affects people, jobs, land, government. There are demographic changes, cultural changes, economic changes, social changes, technological changes, environmental changes and the list goes on. Urbanization is something that effects everyone and if for one minute you don't believe that, you are seriously mistaken.

1ST POSTING...MUCH MORE TO FOLLOW

Although my first posting on my blog is extremely late...I have been making entries via word document all along. I couldn't really figure out how to do this whole blogging thing since I have never done it before. Now that I sat down and tried to figure it out it is extremely easy. I look forward to transferring all of my entries into the program and hope you all enjoy them.

For all my postings the material will be based on the text book Urbanizaton by Paul L. Knox and Linda McCarthy. The material will be supported from other evidence and information found online through various reputable websites.