Unit VI.  Cities and Urban Land Use Patterns and Processes

Unit 6 addresses the origins and influences, particularly site and situation, of urban settlements as students explore cities across the world and the role of those cities in globalization. They examine the spatial distribution of the world’s largest cities, comparing them across regions and analyzing patterns of connectivity and accessibility. Within cities, students identify patterns of development and make inferences about their economic and political influences at regional, national, and international levels of scale. Students examine the hierarchy of urban settlements on the landscape, applying the rank-size rule and central place theory at regional and national scales to evaluate mobility patterns and economic and political relationships.  Statistics such as census data are used to reveal the challenges of urban places, including density, sprawl, demands of infrastructure, and mobility.

Students examine patterns of change over time and modern challenges to sustainability from urban growth. On both local and global scales, they look at the ways that cities are improving sustainability through new approaches to growth, such as mixed-land-use zoning, smart growth policies, and public transportation–oriented development at local and international scales.

This unit reinforces what students learned in the units on politics and culture as they consider the role cities play as key centers of global markets, culture, and politics and contrast the roles of urban and rural areas.

Unit VI. Questions

1. How does site influence the origin, function, and growth of cities?
2. How does situation influence the origin, function, and growth of cities?
3. How has transportation facilitated urbanization and suburbanization?
4. How has communication facilitated urbanization and suburbanization?
5. Describe Borchert’s epochs of urban growth.
6. How do improvements in agriculture and transportation influence urbanization?
7. How does population growth influence urbanization?
8. How does migration influence urbanization?
9. How does economic development influence urbanization?
10. How do government policies influence urbanization?
11. What is a squatter settlement?
12. What factors contribute to the formation of squatter settlements?
13. What are consequences of the rapid growth of squatter settlements?
14. What is rank-size rule?
15. What is the law of the primate city?
16. What is Christaller’s central place theory?
17. Describe the gravity model.
18. Describe the Burgess concentric-zone model.
19. Describe the Hoyt sector model.
20. Describe the Harris-Ullman multiple-nuclei model.
21. Describe the galactic model.
22. Describe the Latin American urban model.
23. Describe the African urban model.
24. How does the infrastructure of cities affect economic development and interconnection within a metropolitan area?
25. What are some examples of sustainable development within urban areas?
26. What are examples of quantitative data about the demographic composition and population characteristics of cities?
27. What are some examples of qualitative data regarding the demographic composition and population characteristics of cities?
28. How does housing and insurance discrimination affect cities?
29. How does housing affordability affect cities?
30. How does access to food stores and public services affect cities?
31. What are disamenity zones?
32. What are zones of abandonment?
33. What is gentrification?
34. What land use and environmental problems are associated with the growth and decline of urban communities?