Urbanization in the Less Developed Countries wk 8

This chapter examines urbanization in the less developed countries in the global and historical context. Current trends and projections shows urban population increasing at twice the general population growth rate in the less developed countries.

The world's core regions, where urbanization was largely an outcome of economic growth, urbanization in peripheral regions has resulted from demographic growth that preceded economic development.

Colonization and the expansion of trade around the world allowed Europeans to influence thw world's economies and societies. A demorgraphic Transition in peripheeral regions -is a fairly recent trend that has generated large increases in population well in advance of any significant levels of industrialization or rural ecoomic deveopment.

What is “sprawl”? What causes it?

Changing Metropolitian Form wk 7

Changes have occured throught the use of trucks and automobiles

1. Suburban infill, as automobiles began to compete with transit systems (1920-1945)
2. Suburban sprawl and economic decentralization, after automobiles became the dominant form of transportation, served by new roads and freeways
3. Splintering urbanism(1973-present), consisting of a highly fragmented matrix of lower-density land uses, a product of the limitations of automobiles, and the possibilities of new communications technologies.
   
   Suburban Infill: Urban Form of the Early Fordist City (1920 – 1945)
   Fordism
   Mass Production and Mass Consumption
   Took place at a national and macro level
   National corporate-monopoly firms used strategies of:
   • Lowering costs with mass production
   • Making higher profits by keeping prices relatively high, but still affordable

The Great Depression and Housing
Residential construction fell by 95% between 1928 and 1933, and over 1 million families lost their homes through foreclosure. In 1933, 49% of home mortgage debt was in default
New Deal legislation focused on three areas
• Bailing out banking industry
• Restructuring banking
• Creating jobs by creating demand
All had major impacts on housing and urban form.

What is "sprawl"? What causes it?

Sprawl is also known as suburban sprawl and it is the spreading out of a city and its
suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area. (wikipedia.org)
The people who live in these neighborhoods are normally single-family and use vehicles
to and from work. You would tend to be able to pick out a sprawling neighborhood if
there were little options of transportation and "pedestrian friendly." According to
Wikipedia, Sprawl is also linked with increased obesity since walking and bicycling are
not viable options for commuting.
Sprawl is actually rather controversial. What it does is increase the amount of people
who have to drive thus increasing traffic and poluting land areas. So environmentalists
are up in arms over what sprawl causes. Sprawl does spread out an area thus giving
people more land, but the environmental issues are still one of the biggest problems
caused by urban sprawl

Western Urbanization Since WWII (Chapter 5)

Two Meanings of "Fordism"

• 
  Micro: A strategy for individual economic organizations combining vertical integration, assembly lines, and comparatively high wages to ensure stability and capture scale economies in order to produce large quantities of goods at low cost.
• 
  Macro: A form of economic organization including production, income distribution, consumption, and public goods and services based on the mutual reinforcement of mass production and mass consumption.

Three Pillars of Postwar Fordism
• Expansion of Mass Higher Education
o Between 1940 and 2000, college graduates as a percent of the adult population increased by almost 600%.
o Given that the adult population itself more than doubled during this time, this amounts to more than a 1400% increase in the higher education industry.
o Between 1940 and 1970, the increase over 300%
o This expansion of higher education created tremendous demand and acted as a stimulus to the economy
• Military Economy
o Public spending on military also created final demand and stimulated the economy
o Aeronautic nature of much military hardware favored plants located in the Sunbelt.
o Politics of military appropriations also favored Sunbelt.
• Suburbanization
o Created tremendous demand
Some cities become service centers
• Corporations require large management structure for control – "technostructure"
• Engels’ Law – affluence produces more service consumption
• Governments become major service providers
• Best sites for service provision and consumption are large cities



Urban patterns
• Importance of world cities – NYC preeminent in US but also Chicago and LA
• Contraction of manufacturing belt cities
• Rise of high-tech cities and those conducive to the "creative class"
• Sunbelt cities as centers of high-tech, professional services and retirement
• Hierarchy of cities in global economy
• Some cities left out or only with marginal connection
• Cities divided between "haves" and "have nots"


Immigration
As globalization penetrates less developed countries, it
• Introduces competition from foreign agricultural goods
• Drives rural people off land to cities
• Creates a segment of better paid (by domestic standards but still low paid compared to developed countries) workers
• Creates high demand (due to large numbers and some middle class), driving up prices
• Increased pressure for immigration to developed countries
o Remittances

Chapter 4: Urban Systems in Transition

The changes that have occurred to the U.S. and European urban systems as a result of the transition to an advanced form of capitalism that is increasingly global in its scope.

For the United States, 3 epochs are identified:

1. spanning (1945-1972), corresponded with a period of postwar economic recovery and growth
2. between (1972-1983) was a brief but important period that corresponded with a phase of economic crisis and reorganization
3. since 1983, the U.S. urban system has been experiencing yet another phase of change, dominated this time by the effects of high-tech economic development and new telecommunications technologies

The reorganization of U.S. business following World War 2 that led to the regional decentralization of the economy also made for certain amount of metropolitan consolidation that promoted the growth of regional business centers like Houston.



The pattern of Control Centers- cities with a high proportion of corporate headquarters- changed to reflect the growth of cities like Atlanta, Houston, New York, and Detroit.

• How did the economic crisis between 1972 and 1983 affect the US urban system?

By the late 1970s productivity had fallen to less than 1 percent annual growth. At the end of the 1970s the average U.S. family only had 7 percent more real purchasing power than it had had a decade before. Between 1970 and 1983 the average weekly wages of U.S. workers fell, in real terms, from $375 to $365.

Most Americans even in the year 2007 are living pay check to pay check. I think that so ridiculous because we are the richest country and we have some much poor people around.

Chapter 3: The foundation of the American Urban System

The evolution of U.S. urban system through five distinctive epochs that together established the foundations for the contemporary urban system. In Knox, this set of urban settlements is both the product of and continuing framework for, processes of economic, technological, demographic, political and social change.
* New patterns of settlement
* New kinds of towns and cities
* New patterns of trade and migration between towns and cities

5 epoch of Urban Development:

1. the frontier urbanization around which the U.S economy was organized until independent nation hood
2. a period of merchant trading, or mercantilism, during with there emerged a more extensive system of local marketing and service centers (central places).
3. characterized by an expansion and realignment of the urban system in response to early industrialization, the mechanization of agriculture and immigration
4. industrialization on the effects of principles of industrial location on the development and adaptation of the urban system
5. corresponds with the emergence of Fordism and mass- produced automobiles, trucks, and aircraft which significantly changed the spatial organization of the urban system

• How did creative destruction manifest itself on the urban landscape?

As soon as the differential is large enough, some disinvestment will take place within core cities, leading to deindustrialization there; meanwhile the capital is invested in the new ventures that are located elsewhere.

Chapter 2: The Origins and Growth of Cities

This chapter follows the evolution of cities from their origins about 5,500 years ago through the Industrial Revolution that began in the English Midlands in the mid 1700s. As describe in Knox, Urban System is a complete set of urban settlements of different sizes that exists within a given territory

• Territorial limits set the bonds of an urban system
• Cities and urban life are recent features in the long span of Human existence
  
• Theories of urban origins come together to offer the reasons for why cities originated.
• Mesopotamia, Egypt, The Indus Valley, Northern China and Mesoamerica provide the earliest evidence for urbanization and urban civilization
• Evidence- street patterns, religious precincts, and different neighborhoods.

Urbanization spreads out from the 5 regions of urban origin so that by 1000 A.D. successive generations of city-based empires. The regional specializations and long-distance trading patterns emerge that provided the foundations for a new phase of urbanization based on merchant capitalism.


What role has empire and military power played in forming urban systems?

1. The need for people to gather together for protection inside the safety of military defenses.

   "warfare may often have made a significant contribution to the intensification of urban developments by including a concentration of settlement for purposes of defense and by stimulating craft specialization."--Wheatley

My Urbanization Blog

Hey Everyone, My blog is up and I'll be posting my thoughts about the chapters soon. I'm looking forward to using this "blog". its my first time ever using a blog.