Unit 6 Urban Land Use Patterns

Unit 6: Urban Land Use Patterns ● Central Business District (CBD) ○ Less than 1% of the urban land area but contains a large % of the services ○ Public Services ■ City Hall, Courts, County and State Agencies ■ Convention centers and sports center normally in downtown to increase commerce in the CBD ○ Business Services ■ Advertising Agencies, banks, financial institutions ■ Other service providers results to increase in collaboration and in person meetings ○ Consumer Services ■ Retailers with a high threshold ■ Retailers with a high range ■ Retailers that served people who worked in the CBD ○ Competition ■ High demand for less space in the CBD which encourages vertical development ● Underground CBD ○ When there isn’t space above the ground for needed network, they are placed underground ○ Underground passages can help shield them from harsh weather ○ Burgess Concentric Zone Model ■ Created in 1923 by E.W. Burgess ■ Model to explain the distribution of different social groups in urban areas ■ City grows outward from central area into a series of rings ● CBD is the innermost ring where non residential activities occur ● Zone in Transition: area eventually taken with the CBD ● Zone of working-class: Older houses ● Zone of Better Residence: New houses for middle-class families ● Commuter Zone: Beyond the continuous built-up ○ Hoyt Sector Model ■ Created by land economist Homer Hoyt in 1939 ■ Model to explain city development into a series of sectors not rings ■ As a city grows, activities spread outward in a sector from the center ■ City grows outward from the center, low-rent area could expand from the CBD to the city’s outer edge ○ Ullman/Harris Multiple Nuclei Model ■ Created by C.D. Harris and E.L Ullman in 1945 ■ Model to explain that city is a complex structure that includes more than 1 center around which activities revolve around ● Ports, universities, airports, and parks ○ Annexation ■ The process of adding land to a city ○ Density Gradient ■ U.S. becomes less and less dense as people go further from the city’s center ○ Suburban Sprawl ■ If the density gradient is flat it means that people and services are spread out over larger areas ○ Suburban segregation ■ Social Class ● Similar priced houses are built in close quarters to one another, which creates a specific range for income ■ Land Uses ● Seperated from commercial and manufacturing that are in compact areas ○ Urban Transportation ■ Cars and trucks give large-scale development of suburbs at further distances from the city center ■ Motor vehicles use a huge amount of space in the U.S. Cities ● ¼ of lands to roads and parking lots ● Land area is specifically for parking vehicles, that could be used for something else more valuable ■ Alternative Fuel vehicles ● Diesel ○ Burn fuel more efficiently ○ Could be produced partly with vegetable oils ● Hybrid ○ Less fuel is burned because the energy is recaptured through an eclectic engine ● Ethanol ○ Fuel is made through distilled crops such as corn ● Plug-In Hybrid ○ Electric motor gives the power at all speeds ○ Gas engine can recharge battery and also plug the cat in an electrical outlet ● Hydrogen Fuel Cell ○ Hydrogen is pushed through a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) and mixes with oxygen from the air, which makes an electric charge ○ Urban Transportation Benefits ■ Public transit is best fit for taking large number of peoples ■ More cost effective and energy efficient ○ Urban Transportation Limits ■ Place higher values on privacy and flexibility of a car and ignore the benefits of public transit ■ Not there in most U.S. cities ○ Deterioration ■ Filtering ● Large houses are subdivided into smaller houses for poorer families ● Gradually, landlords stop maintaining the properties when its no longer affordable ■ Redlining ● Drawing lines on a map to figure out what areas will refuse to loan money to purchase or renovate a house ● Illegal but difficult to enforce ■ Public Housing ● Mid-20th century, many inner city houses were taken apart and made into public housings ○ Housing specifically for poorer families, who have to pay 30% of their income to rent ● A housing authority chosen by the local government maintains the buildings and the federal government pay for any expense that isn’t covered by rent ○ Gentrification ■ Process where middle-class people move into old inner city in which they renovate the housing ■ Most U.S. cities have at least one renovated inner-city neighborhoods ■ Attracting factors ● Closer to recreational activities ● Traveling time to reduced to CBD ● More architectural character than those in suburbs ○ Underclass ■ Inner-city residents are addressed as underclass because they have no way out of economic and social problems ■ Higher rate of unemployment, literacy, crime ■ An affordable house is hard to get ■ Ignore good learning habits ○ Poverty ■ Inner-City residents don’t have a way out because they live in a culture of poverty ○ The Eroding Base Tax ■ Inner-city residents require public services but they pay only a little bit of what is needed in order to fund those services ■ Two choices to close the gap between cost of operating and funding public services ● Reduce Services ● Raise Tax Revenues