A Geography of Urban Places

Robert G. Putnam, Frank J. Taylor, Philip K. Kettle

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317833291
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This book presents a selection of readings to present varied opinions, approaches and reports from various international professional journals. Among the journals represented are: Regional Science Association Journal, The Canadian Geographer, The Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Economic Geography, Landscape, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation and Land Economics.

This book was first published in 1970.

Section B

Making a Living in Cities

Making A Living In Cities

Harold M. Mayer, in the opening paper of this section, overviews the characteristics of the types of economic activity common to urban places, and then deals in detail with examples of well established theories and methods of urban economic function analysis. References are made to many fundamental concepts of urban geography, primary, secondary, tertiary activities and their interrelationships; hierarchy and primate city; scale economies; trade areas; place utility. Special emphasis is given to transportation.

… the location of economic activities, and hence of urban places within which these activities are performed, depends upon transportation, and transportation geography and urban geography are practically inseparable.

The bulk of the paper examines the method of functional analysis available to the geographer interested in studying the urban economic base. Again, well established theory is discussed, the basic-nonbasic approach, the input-output approach, the minimum or average requirement approach, and factor analysis. Considerable space is devoted to outlining the basis of each and the problems related to their use. All of the approaches

… are concerned with the flows into and out of cities and regions and all of them develop the concept that the basic economic support of an area lies in the specialized functions which it performs for people and establishments outside of the area.

Mayer early establishes that urban socio-economic advantages

… depend upon the individual making a living. The economic base, therefore, constitutes the reason for the development and growth of most cities.

Hans Blumenfeld in The Economic Base of the Metropolis argues vehemently and somewhat convincingly against the “basic-nonbasic” theory of urban economy for large cities. He also attempts to show how, in his opinion, the theory has been abused. Blumenfeld maintains that

It is thus the “secondary”, “non basic” industries, both business and personal services, as well as “ancillary” manufacturing, that constitute the real and lasting strength of the metropolitan economy. As long as they continue to function efficiently, the metropolis will always be able to substitute new “export” industries for any that may be destroyed by the vicissitudes of econo-mic life.

The paper provides for the student an example of argument and an example of how to substantiate argument. Blumenfeld makes his paper quite readable by using many examples from his own experience and a liberal selection of quotations from related work.

The Functional Bases of Small Towns, by Stafford, provides an easily read and understood application of simple statistics to geographic research. The economic function of small urban places is particularly well covered in the study of towns as central places. While this paper does provide insight into making a living in small urban places, it is the use of coefficient of correlation and regression that distinguishes it. Stafford relates his work to that of several other researchers, indicating how a seemingly isolated piece of research can be integrated with, and contribute to, the larger area of study.

The Function Of Cities

The following papers are selected as examples of studies in specific economic functions of urban places.

Two developments of human culture have been outstanding during the past century: The rapid advance of technology and the growth and spread of cities. Neither would have been possible without the other. Together they have made a revolution in the organization and pattern of land use. Transportation is the basis of both.

With this, Mayer introduces his paper on transportation and the city. In it he summarizes the development of the transportation methods, and shows how each has affected the city, morphologically and functionally. Mayer leaves little doubt about his feelings on the city-making characteristics and potentialities of the dominant urban modes of transport.

Voorhees, in Transportation Planning and Urban Development concentrates on the automobile. Congestion of cars produces traffic. Traffic is discussed from the point of view of factors causing congestion and the results. In conclusion some generalities are made on transportation solutions.

In Retail Structure of Urban Economy and Emerging Patterns of Commercial Structure in American Cities, the commercial function of urban places is discussed. The first paper, by Kelley, focuses attention largely on the ‘regional shopping centre’. In so doing, however, comparisons are made with other types of retail organization and structure. The development and characteristics of the ‘regional shopping centre,’ the factors of location and the relations of the centre to the CBD are discussed at length in the paper. The scope of the Vance paper is considerably wider. Here the author provides the student with a well organized model of subject research and presentation. After an introduction, he deals in the theory of commercial location based upon recent developments and the historical growth of the retail function in America. The last half of the paper is an application of the principles established to the San Francisco Bay Area. In this section the method of research is outlined and much of the data plotted on maps.

William Goodwin in The Management Center in the United States raises the question of considering functions not easily classified by writers on the economic base of cities. After establishing the importance of the management function, he develops an easily understood spatial and functional analysis making excellent use of graphics in distribution maps, scatter diagrams, tables, and graphs.

Reference to the central business district is made in several of the above papers. It is a spacial entity which has received considerable attention because of critical changes that have taken place and because it is the focus of major renewal activity in almost all major cities. In Public Policy and the Central Business District and The Core of the City: Emerging Concepts the functions and problems of this zone are discussed and projections are made for its future. Boyce raises the question of whether the CBD will or should continue to exist.

City and Region

Certainly one of the most critical areas of concern for urban geographers and planners alike has been the area into which present day cities are expanding, and the much larger sphere of influence beyond. Each city is surrounded by its hinterland, umland, suburbia, exurbia, slurbs. These, and other terms coined by researchers, relate to some aspect of the region served by and serving the city at the centre.

Spelt, in Towns and Umlands, defines umland — its functions, and the relationships and feelings that have developed between the city and this area. Considerable space is devoted to the problem of fixing boundaries. Many examples of devices used for boundary definition are cited. Bonn, Germany is used to introduce some thoughts on regional planning.

External Relations of Cities: City — Hinterland, by Epstein, compares the functions of city and of hinterland. The distribution of functions is dynamic. Many shifts that have taken place relate to increased individual mobility. Residence and economic functions, once tied to the city proper, have relocated outside the corporate limits. Epstein examines the centrifugal and centripetal forces operative today causing shifts in the pattern of land use in city and region.

Gaffney in Urban Expansion — Will it Ever Stop? and Clawson in Urban Sprawl and Land Speculation attack a universal problem of North American cities, sprawl. The concern is for space — the amount of space consumed and the wasteful character of its consumption. The cause is seen to be economic. Gaffney’s

… thesis … is that urban land prices are uneconomically high — that the scarcity of urban land is an artificial one, maintained by the holdout of vastly underestimated supplies in anticipation of vastly overestimated future demands.

The authors describe, document and explain the problem in detail.

Some solutions are offered. Neither author is particularily hopeful or very realistic when one considers the record of the individuals or institutions responsible.

14

Making a Living in Cities: The Urban Economic Base

Harold M. Mayer

People live in or near cities in order to secure advantages which would not be possible under non-urban conditions. Among these advantages are the satisfaction of many desires: social, religious, recreational, and economic, but most of them depend upon the individuals making a living. The economic base, therefore, constitutes the reason for the development and growth of most cities. Even essentially non-economic functions, such as defense, recreation, and pilgrimages to historic and religious shrines, constitute important income-producing activities for the cities and regions within which they occur. Knowledge of the economic base of cities, therefore, is an indispensable prerequisite to an understanding of urban geography.

Characteristics Of Urban Functions

Jean Bruhnes, two generations ago, called urban land uses such as houses and streets “unproductive occupation of the soil.”¹ He was referring, of course, to the classical concept of the economist that the significant inputs into an economic system are land, labor, and capital, and that the natural resources of the site, including its agricultural, mineral, or silvicultural productivity, are the only productive forms of land use. More recently, Chauncy Harris pointed out that cities are efficient instruments for utilizing resources productively, including labor, which must concentrate in and near cities in order to perform its increasingly specialized roles, and that, in proportion to the amount of land used, urban land is thus extremely productive, in the sense that it creates utility by the processing, transfer, and distribution of goods and services.²

Economists and geographers find it useful to divide income-producing activities into several categories, which they designate as primary, secondary, and tertiary.³ Primary activities are those which produce utility, and hence income, by extraction of the resources on the site, whether the resources are renewable, such as agricultural produce or waterpower, or are non-renewable, such as minerals and petroleum. Secondary activities are those in which goods are handled; included in that category of economic activities are manufacturing and transportation: any activity which involves the changing of the form or location of commodities. Tertiary activities involve either the performance of services or change in ownership of goods, as in wholesale and retail trade. With increasing complexity of society and its economic activities, there is an ever-increasing amount of record-keeping and “paper work”; some authors prefer to categorize these activities as quaternary, rather than tertiary.⁴

Few cities have as their most important functions the primary activities. Even though many urban places are directly dependent upon such activities, they actually function as manufacturing or service centers, utilizing the resources produced nearby or performing services for the organizations and people who, in turn, are directly involved in the primary activities. If the resource is non-replaceable, the urban center which serves the extractive operations may have a precarious economic base, and may decline or disappear when the resource is exhausted or becomes non-competitive in the market with other sources or substitute resources. Such places may become “ghost towns” unless other activities can be introduced to replace the declining ones.

Urban land is valuable, then, not for its inherent productivity of natural resources, but, rather, because of its location with relation to the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary activities: the handling of goods and the performance of services.⁵ Since land is valuable only for its present and prospective uses, and all urban functions, most of which are economic in character, take place on land, it follows that studies of the economic base must constitute essential parts of the field of urban geography as well as major components of the research which is an integral part of the process of city and regional planning. Because urban functions are highly localized and concentrated, the spatial aspects of the urban economy are the foci of the geoggrapher’s interest in economic base studies.

Communities which depend mainly on primary economic activities — the extraction of resources — directly or indirectly for their support, are, of course, resource-oriented with respect to their locations: they are located close to the resources. Those urban places which depend mainly upon secondary activities — manufacturing, assembling, and packaging of goods — may be resource-oriented in location, or market-oriented, depending upon many variables, such as the relations of weight, bulk, and value of the goods, and hence their ability to stand transportation costs as raw materials, semifinished goods or components, or manufactured products, or they may be “footloose” and free to locate anywhere between the source of their resource inputs and the final markets.⁶ As transportation costs are reduced relative to other costs, there is a noteworthy tendency for an increasing proportion of the manufacturing industries to become footloose or market-oriented.⁷ This tends to accentuate the population and economic growth of the larger urban agglomerations, and to augment their attractiveness for still more activities and population; there is thus a “multiplier effect.”

Wholesale trade may be regarded as a form of secondary economic activity in the sense that goods are handled and stored; orders are assembled for distribution, and warehouse buildings represent forms of industrial structures. Wholesale facilities, therefore, are subject to the same effects as are manufacturing establishments. They may be located in proximity to the manufacturing establishments, but more commonly they are located close to the major markets — the larger urban centers. On the other hand, competition for centrally-located urban land by other uses generally forces wholesale establishments having warehousing requirements to the peripheries of the larger cities, while the wholesale office establishments and display rooms may remain in more central locations. In general, improvements in transportation and changes in the methods of marketing, including the rise of chain stores, standard brands, and emphasis upon reduced inventories requiring storage, has reduced the relative importance of warehousing as an element in the urban pattern. The current trend is to consider wholesaling and warehousing as an “interface” or intermediate stage in a transportation route which, in turn, is part of a total distribution...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Section A City Origin and Location
• Section B Making a Living in Cities
• Section C The Effects of Urbanization