GEOGRAPHY
Urban Geography
*Urban geography is the study of where cities are in a country, of how
cities and towns relate to each other, or of how people are distributed
within a city.
*Traditionally, cities grew up along rivers and coastlines for ease of
transportation and irrigation. Students should remember that many
of the first cities in colonial America grew up along the tidewater and
the fall line. Cities also grew up near places with good supplies
of raw materials or good soil.
*Later, people dug canals to create artificial rivers, and cities
boomed along canal routes. These were later bypassed by railroads.
*Automobiles and airplanes have allowed easier travel between and
within cities. Now cities do not need to even be near sources of
raw materials, as it is so easy to transport things. This means
that more people can settle in the Sun Belt or other places with mild
climates, and, if need be, commute to other parts of the country.
Today over 50% of the US population lives within 500 miles of Knoxville.
*About 77% of Americans and Canadian live in urban areas, although
there is a new trend in which smaller towns are growing faster than
large ones.
*Towns and cities are also growing together along the interstate system
and other highways. The vast, almost uninterrupted urbanised area
stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C., or even Norfolk, is known
as a, or even the, Megalopolis. It covers about 1% of the land
area of the USA, but houses at least 17% of the USA’s population.
*New York City remains America’s largest city, of course, followed by
Los Angeles, then Chicago, although Los Angeles has only surpassed
Chicago in the past 25 years.
*The next largest metropolitan areas in the USA are Philadelphia,
Dallas, Miami, Washington, Houston, Detroit, and Boston. Atlanta
is 11th, if one includes the entire metropolitan area—without it,
Atlanta is pretty small, because it has not been able to annex its
suburbs.
*The ten largest metropolitan areas in Canada are Toronto, Montreal,
Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Hamilton,
and London. The other provincial capitals are also important
cities, although the territorial capitals are pretty small (for
example, Yellowknife and Whitehorse both have just under 20,000 people
each, and the entire territory of Nunavut only has about 29,300
inhabitants—Iqaluit has about 5,200 people).
*Cities tend to fall into webs of relationships. Small towns will
rely on larger ones for services and goods and culture, while large
towns rely on small cities, which rely on larger cities, which rely on
big cities, which are eventually tied to a hub city, and then one of
the three main cities of the United States. For example:
Hampton -> Elizabethton -> Johnson City -> Knoxville ->
Charlotte -> Atlanta -> New York
*This tends to create webs of cities, with a big and important city in
the centre—this is sometimes called Central Place Theory. Most
hub cities also have some specialty, which they can trade with other
hub cities (besides supplying it to their subordinate cities).
This often has to do with whatever that region is best at: Dallas
has the corporate offices of oil companies, Chicago used to have
meat-packing plants, Minneapolis still has major flour mills (Pillsbury
and General Mills are based there). Atlanta still mostly serves
as a distribution centre for the South, although it does have CNN and
Coca-Cola.
*Many countries have Primate City Syndrome (although neither the US or
Canada do). A Primate City is one major city that is much larger
and more important than any other city in the country, which tends to
dominate the nation economically, culturally, and politically.
England, France, and many other European and Latin American countries
have this (although neither Germany nor Brazil does).
*Cities also have their own internal geography. Traditionally,
cities tended to have a central business district that had a mixture of
manufacturing, commercial shops, and residential structures that houses
almost all classes of people. This was because most people had to
walk, or, at best, ride horses or take a buggy to work.
*This began to change as towns built streetcars and, later, major
highways. This tended to create star-shaped cities, as settlement
spread out along a few major transportation routes.
*Pass around the photo history of Johnson City.
*Where people live also changed. Although people of all social
classes used to tend to live together near the central business
district, eventually the wealthier (who could afford transportation)
moved further away, creating a ring of wealthier neighbourhoods around
the CBDs. In time, the wealthiest of these people moved further
out, and the lower middle class moved into their old houses, leaving
only the poorer people downtown. In time, the wealthy moved
farther out, and again, the upper middle class followed the, and the
lower middle class followed them, leaving many downtowns almost dead.
*Eventually, the upper middle class and wealthy people of major cities
tended to form their own suburbs, which might have their own business
districts, but many modern, post-industrial cities have no real central
business districts any more.
*See what students thing might have been Johnson City’s CBD in the
past, and what it might be now, if we still have one. If not, are
there smaller business districts spread around the Johnson City
area?
*Also, do we follow the pattern of city development? Does our
best (or at least most expensive) housing tend to be on the outskirts
of town? Have we followed the highways as we expanded? What
other cities depend on us, and what cities do we depend on?
*To learn some of the major cities of the US and Canada, and to see how
they have been connected by transportation networks, we are going to
try a game: Ticket to Ride.