The Uncertain Future of the Urban Core

Christopher M. Law

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138051041
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351600682
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1988. Inner city problems in advanced countries are being exacerbated by the decentralisation of economic activities and higher income groups. Only offices and tourism offer some prospects of growth, but these vary in their potential from one city to another. This book assesses changes in the structure of urban areas, concentrating on the process of decentralisation and the consequences for the inner city and city centre. It examines and evaluates policies and makes suggestions for the future management of the city.

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The Changing Urban System and the Evolution of Metropolitan Spatial Form

The purpose of this chapter is to review the changes affecting the core areas of metropolitan regions in advanced countries and to provide an overview for the chapters which follow. It will begin by placing contemporary trends in the context of the changing geography of population and employment, both urban and rural. This will then be followed by an examination of the evolving internal structure of metropolitan regions concentrating, in particular, on the process of decentralisation. This discussion will focus on the topics of population, employment, industry, retailing and offices. The chapter will conclude with an analysis of the evolving form of metropolitan areas, likely future trends and the underlying causes of the changes noted.

TRENDS IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT

For many centuries the growth and spatial pattern of cities was predominantly influenced by the locational requirements of economic activities. People had to move to where jobs were and their spatial preferences had little influence upon the geography of towns, except possibly in the case of resorts. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the main economic basis for the growth of urban areas was the expansion of manufacturing employment, with ancillary transport and mineral extracting activities sometimes also being significant. Although the provision of services was an essential part of the urban economy, the size of this sector in most cities was largely determined by that of the basic industries. During this period new industries developed and old ones were transformed by new process technology. Despite the considerable improvements in transport, the cost of materials, energy and transport itself varied considerably from one place to another, resulting in uneven development. In particular, the advantages possessed by large cities in terms of accessibility, markets, labour and external economies, often enabled them to have higher rates of population and employment growth. It was during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that large metropolitan areas with populations of over 1,000,000 first appeared, including cities in our study such as Manchester, Pittsburgh and Hamburg. For much of the nineteenth century urbanisation was synonymous with the concentration of population and its most noticeable achievements were the new metropolises. In contrast, by the late nineteenth century, rural areas were experiencing depopulation consequent upon the decrease of agricultural jobs and their disadvantages in terms of infrastructure and higher costs for the attraction of manufacturing industry.

The twentieth century has been significant for a freeing of locational constraints upon economic development in advanced countries. There have been many innovations, but amongst those of the greatest importance we can note electricity, the telephone and the development of motor vehicles. The improvement (over many years) of the road system, and the development of limited access highways has also been significant. The advantages which were previously largely confined to urban areas, and particularly to metropolises, are no longer so restricted, and many small towns and rural areas have all the necessary infrastructure to support a wide range of economic activities. In addition, the former cultural isolation of these areas has been successively reduced by the radio, television and now video. These improvements have thus allowed (but not determined) a dispersal of activities both within countries and within metropolitan areas. It can also be noted that many of the new industries developed in the twentieth century are much more locationally footloose than the older industries, often producing goods of high value and relatively low weight from large numbers of components. Further, many of the growth sectors of the twentieth century are services rather than manufacturing, and sometimes, unlike the services of the nineteenth century, are less tied to local markets. As the number of manufacturing jobs has declined and the size of the service sector increased, it is possible to speak of a post-industrial society. The removal of locational constraints has opened up many possibilities and enabled the spatial preferences of the population to play a greater role than hitherto. This is particularly seen in the growth of towns dependent upon the tourist trade and retirement. The possibilities discussed above are reflected in three main trends which have affected spatial changes in population, employment and urban growth in recent years.

The first trend can be described as inter-regional. Within any of the developed countries there can be found some major regions experiencing faster, and others slower, rates of population and employment growth. Often the slower include the very areas which in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries proved attractive to industrial development, perhaps because of the possession of minerals, but which no longer have overwhelming advantages. In Britain since the First World War there has been a shift from north to south (Law 1980), which in a modified form is still continuing (Table 1.1). The earlier buoyancy of the South-East and West Midlands regions has been halted, mainly because of the decline of Greater London and the Birmingham conurbation, but the rest of southern England continues to grow.

In the United States the post-war period has witnessed the growth of southern and south-western areas, often referred to as the Sunbelt, in contrast to the slow growth of the northern and north-eastern areas, the old manufacturing belt, now referred to as the Frostbelt, Snowbelt or Rustbelt (Table 1.2).

Similar trends are to be found in France (Boudoul and Faur 1982), and also West Germany (Wild 1981) where southern regions are also showing higher rates of increase. Whilst it would be over-simplistic to explain regional changes in terms of one factor, it is obvious that these favoured areas do possess one common perceived advantage, namely a better climate. Regions less well placed with respect to this factor have experienced slower growth or decline.

The second trend involves the decline of large cities and the growth of small towns and rural settlements. Whereas in the past it appeared that the larger the settlement the faster its rate of growth, this trend appears to have been completely reversed, with the smallest settlements often growing fastest, only modified by the inter-regional performances discussed above. Brian Berry (1970) in an early paper mentioning the possibility of this occurrence, referred to it as an ‘inversion of geography’. He has also named this trend as counter-urbanisation (Berry 1976), whilst others have referred to it as deconcentration. In Britain all the major conurbations are losing population, whilst small towns and rural settlements (in most parts of the country) are growing (Table 1.3). Areas such as mid-Wales and the southern Uplands of Scotland which experienced depopulation for over 100 years, now have above average rates of increase. Studies of manufacturing employment change by Keeble (1976) and Fothergill and Gudgin (1982) have also emphasised the shift to less urbanised areas and the decline of jobs in conurbations. A similar picture can be found in the United States where the regional dimension referred to above modifies the trend (Table 1.4). Thus, whilst the major metropolitan areas of the Frostbelt are in decline, those in the Sunbelt continue to grow.

In France the major cities were still growing until recently, but the results from the latest (1982) census show that for the period 1975–82 they were either declining or had a reduced rate of increase (Ogden 1985). This is a new trend in population redistribution in France where, as elsewhere, it was believed up to the late-1960s that large cities had overwhelming advantages to attract new growth, and that above a certain size they would be immune to decline (Thompson 1965).

The third trend concerns changes taking place within urban regions. If a metropolitan area is divided into concentric zones, such as urban core, suburbs and rural fringe, then studies have shown that population and employment are declining in the inner zones and increasing in the outer ones essentially as the result of the process of decentralisation. For Britain, Spence et al (1982) have shown this process at work for the period 1951–71 (Table 1.5).

For Europe, Hall and Hay (1980) have examined these trends and found them significant in the northern and western parts of the continent whilst for the United States the process has been studied by Berry and Cohen (1973). These studies provide very clear evidence for the process of decentralisation. One problem in comparing the process is that the exact rate of decentralisation will depend on the definition of zones adopted. Unfortunately, the definition of zones is usually very arbitrary depending on the administrative units in use so that the rings are not exactly comparable.

Over the whole period since the Industrial Revolution it is possible to categorise the sequence of urban development in terms of absolute centralisation, relative centralisation, relative decentralisation, and absolute decentralisation (Van der Berg et al 1982). These can be grouped together as phases of urban growth namely, urbanisation, when the core is growing rapidly; suburbanisation, which is when both core and suburbs are growing and deurbanisation, when the core is declining rapidly. Van der Berg et al (1982) also suggest a possible future fourth phase of reurbanisation when growth will return to the core based on the notion that city governments will have successfully solved the problems of the central city.

Table 1.4: United States population change by urban size

	Population	Population Change (Annual Rates per 000)
	1980 (000)	1960–70	1970–80
United States SMSAs*	226,505	12.6	10.9
Metropolitan	165,993	15.8	9.6
3,000,000 + .	60,099	15.9	3.7
1,000,000–2,999,999	41,664	18.3	12.1
500,000–999,999	25,532	14.9	11.8
250,000– 99,999	21,266	14.3	14.9
Less than 250,000	17,432	12.8	15.2
Non-metropolitan	60,511	3.8	14.4

*SMS As = Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas

Source: Long (1981)

Table 1.5: Metropolitan population and employment change in Britain by urban zone, 1951–71

	Million Cities
	Population Change (%)		Employment Change (%)
	1951–61	1961–71	1951–61	1961–71
Urban Core	–3.7	–9.0	3.1	–10.4
Metropolitan Ring	10.2	13.1	8.9	17.3
Outer Metropolitan Ring	7.2	14.7	2.6	10.5

Source: Spence et al (1982)

These three trends described above, inter-regional shifts, deconcentration and decentralisation, take place in the context of macro-level changes. Since the mid-1970s the rates of population increase and economic growth have slowed (Table 1.6). It appears likely that in advanced countries the size of the population will either stay level or only show a small increase in the remaining years of the century. For urban and regional development there is a zero-sum game. Whereas previously in a period of population growth all areas were able to show increases, albeit at different rates, the situation now is that an increase in one area will be compensated by a decrease elsewhere. Relating this to the trends described it can be seen that large northern cities face a difficult future with a high probability that if present changes continue they will decline. The slower overall rate of economic growth may make it more difficult for those governments which favour redistributive policies to shift development to the poorer cities and regions.

These three trends are clearly inter-linked. When the rate of growth of large metropolitan areas was first seen to be declining, it was suggested that this merely reflected underbounding in the definition of urban regions. Since the popul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. The Changing Urban System and the Evolution of Metropolitan Spatial Form
• 2. The Planning of Core Areas
• 3. The Case Study Cities
• 4. The Residential Function of the Urban Core
• 5. Employment in the Core
• 6. Retailing in the Urban Core
• 7. Offices in the Core
• 8. Transport and Urban Change
• 9. Conclusion
• List of References
• Index