Patterns of urban land use reflect a compromise between forces which centralise and those which decentralise, with the balance between them shifting over time.
Assess the validity of this assertion based on contemporary patterns of urban development.
Patterns of Metropolitan Development (Gregory K. Ingram, 1997)
1. Urbanisation and Economic Development
Across countries, there is a strong relationship
between the level of economic development and the degree of urbanisation.
The most
rapid growth in urban populations thus occurs
as countries move from low-income to middle-income levels
Urbanisation levels rise with income as
resources are moved from the primarily rural
agricultural sector to the more urbanised industry
and service sectors
the attractiveness of urban areas for the location of industry and services stems from scale economies in production, lower transport costs, modest use of land by industry and services as an input to production, externalities among firms (postive), linkages across firms and potential agglomoration economies
The paper states 'if this view holds global levels of urbanisation will increase'. Has it?
China and India contain nearly two-thirds
of the population in all low-income countries,
and both already have large cities and above
average rates of economic growth. If the
urban population of China or India doubles, will their large cities also double in size?
Evidence indicates that existing large cities in
large developing countries grow at roughly
the same, or a bit lower, rate as the overall
urban population. In addition to country size,
the type of government also infuences the
growth of large cities.
In countries with unitary
governments, large cities have tended to
grow faster than the urbanisation level, while
large-city growth has been slower in countries
with federal governments
2. The Distribution of Population with Cities
In industrial countries, large cities (over 2.5 million inhabitants) have higher densities than small cities and both large and small
cities tend to be decentralised with population densities that decline slowly as distance from the city centre increases
In developing countries, the population densities of large cities also decline slowly as distance from the centre increases, whereas the population densities of small cities drop off rapidly.
In terms of overall density patterns,
large cities in industrial and developing
countries are quite similar with high densities
and flat density gradients
Over time, a universal finding is that metropolitan
populations have become more de-centralised (population density gradients become flatter) due to the effects of increases in income (promoting housing consumption) and improvements in transport performance (higher speeds and lower costs relative to incomes) (Meyer and Meyer,1987).
Population growth in large cities usually does not increase the population density of high-density areas, but promotes densification of less-developed areas and expansion at the urban fringe
In particular, population densities in the most central zones frequently decline as households are displaced by the expansion of other activities. This is a very robust finding in both industrial and developing countries and has been observed in cities as diverse as Bangkok, Bogota, Mexico City, Shanghai and Tokyo.1
Development towards the periphery is
driven by lower land prices and lower development
costs
Peripheral development is also permitted by the wide availability of motorised modes of passenger transport in the cities of both industrial and developing countries. The shift from walking to motorbuses travelling
on streets, the most common transit mode in developing countries, typically triples travel speeds from 5 km per hour to 15± 20 km per hour
The Population is large cities is more variegated than in small cities.
large cities (industrial or developing) have an original center or CBD but also a number of sub-centres which form a polycentric development pattern
Paris is a good example
Small cities do not have this.
Households typically prefer larger dwelling units. House prices < at the periphery of cities, large households are often more decentralised
Bogota. In the centre, average household size = 2 people and house hold size increase regularly with distance from centre, reaching 5 persons at the periphery. The pattern is consistent with urban location theory
household income and distance from the centre does not have a consistent relationship
3. The Distribution of Employment within Cities
Studies within cities over time indicate that there is a marked tendency for employment to decentralise the proportion of jobs in the centre falls over time and most new growth in employment is located out of the centre of large cities (Meyer and Gomez-Ibanez,1981).
Analysis of US data indicates that industry is
attracted by freeways and special facilities
such as airports, but not by central locations
In developing countries, urban industrial employment exhibits
strong patterns of decentralisation
In Shanghai, for exam- ple, decentralisation stems from the development of both specialised satellite industrial towns and rural industry. A third of Shanghai’s industrial workers were rural in 1991
Employment is typically more centralised in an urban area than is the population.
The typical commuter in an urban area commutes from a residence more distant from the centre to a workplace less distant from the centre
There are also similar job location patterns within cities by type of industry. Manufacturingemployment is more decentralised than
service employment
manufacturing needs more space, better infrastructure, and improved freight transport by truck. Reduced need for freight truck in cities = < congestion. As manufacturing moves out, services move in. Retail remains prominent in the centre but is eventually replaced by law, finance etc.
4. Location Patterns and Transport
Trips to work and school are major components of travel
In industrial and developing countries, the patterns of population and employment decentralisation, obviously have profound implications for transport because they are important determinants of the work-trip travel pattern.
The typical direction of causation in historical studies of metropolitan development has been to view transport as a determinant of land use
Large transit systems built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a major impact on their cities’ development patterns, improving access to the central business district and promoting relatively high-density development along well-defined
transit corridors.
If transport is a determinant of land-use development, what impact will the construction of a large transit system have on the development pattern of an existing metropolitan area? Will it increase residential densities or centralise employment?
More recent analyses of experience with new
subway systems in the US show that costs
have been well above, and ridership levels well below, forecasts or projections made when the projects were reviewed and approved
YouTube video - bus network the most effective method of urban transportation
The construction costs of metros in
developing countries are so high that they
crowd out many other investments and can
even have consequences for macroeconomic management
The pattern of decentralisation in older metropolitan areas and the low densities of newer auto-oriented cities make it more costly to serve urban travellers by transit. Moreover, superimposing transit systems on existing cities has had minimal effects
on land-use patterns. These two facts have led many analysts to argue that land-use controls should be used as an instrument to
affect urban travel demand.
Residential location theory predicts that commuters will commute down the rent gradient, trading off transport costs to gain location rent savings; it does not predict that commuters minimise travel time. The fact that residents of British New Towns commute out (mainly by train) from these towns to their jobs in nearby large cities, and that workers in those towns drive away from their jobs to homes in the surrounding countryside is what residential location theory predicts.
5. Land Markets
Location theory shows that the declining density gradients are systematically related to underlying land-rent gradients. It predicts that the land-rent gradients will be less steep than the density gradients because capital is substituted for land in the production of housing
Like other prices in an economy, land
prices perform two roles:
In their allocative role, land prices indicate
the value of land to produc ers and signal how
land should be used.
In their distributive role, land rents and increases in land values produce returns to land-owners
6. Housing, Residential Location and Labour Markets
In both industrial and developing countries, the proportion of income spent on housing by households within a particular city is higher for low-income households than for high-income households
Low rent neighborhoods are often not necessarily effective location proxies for low income-households
7. Infrastructure and Basic Services
Traditionally, infrastructure investment has been provided by the public sector but this is not changing in both industrial and developing countries
Latin America - privitisation of infrastructure services such as telecommunications, electric power and transport services
Asia - private investment in infrastructure through concessions and contracts
The infrastructure needs of industry are important to an increase in economic productivity
U.S.A - macro-level studies suggest that infrastructure services contribute significantly to economic growth (Munnell, 1992)
Conclusion
Development patterns in developing and industrial countries with market based economies exhibit similar patterns of decentralisation of both population and employment.
The largest metropolitan areas converging to similarly decentralised structures with multiple sub-centres, highly decentralised manufacturing employment and emerging specialisation of the CBD in service employment
Decentralisation of population and employment increases reliance on road-based transport for both passengers and freight
Industrial countries have experienced decreases in transit use as auto ownership levels have risen.
Land markets are strong determinants of decentralisation, and cities without land markets exhibit quite different development patterns from cities with even poorly functioning land markets
In market-based cities, land rents are closely related to development densities.
Analyses of urban housing markets indicate that demand patterns are similar across cities in developing and industrial countries but that supply-side impediments vary widely - resulting in a range of ratios of housing prices to incomes.
Similarly, the provision of public sector infrastructure provision varies widely across cities.
The Polycentric Urban Region: Towards a research agenda (Kloosterman and Sako Musterd, 2000)
Polycentrism: "basically denoting the existance of multiple centres in one area, seems to have become one of the defining characteristics of the urban landscape in advanced economies
one of the most interesting features of modern urban landscapes is the tendency of economic activity to cluster in several centres of activity
distinct from a monocentric urban system with a sharp divide between city and suburban hinterland
the spatial clustering of any activity
Monocentric:no longer applicable as they are based on the ideal-typical constriction of industrial cities with 19th century transport technology which is easily quantified
Trucking
ended central railroad monopolies as urban export nodes
ended horse drawn wagons as the major mode of transporting goods
New transport technologies enabled people and economic activities to move out creating huge suburbs and out of town locations for business
the deconcentration of economic activity undermined the commuting pattern "up the rent gradient" that characterised the monocentric model of people moving from the suburbs to the city centre
Assumed: the handling of goods was the dominant form of production and households would have just one member who commutes
The predominant urban activity is now the handling of information and the production of services
constraints for these activities do not lie in the cost of moving goods from one place to another but are determined by the extent to which they need face to face contacts
some argue that the spatial disintegration of work that is enable by info. tech. would further fragment the spatial distribution
choosing an optimal residential location now involves taking into account 2 people - this has given a strong boost to cross-commuting and undermined the notion of monocentricity
commuting from home to work is no longer the sole reason commute - this trend has affected patterns of economic activity and of spatial mobility
Cross-commuting
Differences in interurban and intraurban polycentrism:
Political entity:
Functional relationships:
Physical form:
Identity and representation of the polycentric urban region:
Towards a property market paradigm of urban change (D'Arcy and Keogh, 1997)
The changing nature of production relationships in both manufacturing and services, combined with significant changes in communications and to a lesser extent transportation tech. have radically altered the economic fundamentals underpinning urban regions.
Conventional treatment of urban change adopted by economists and others is centered on an analysis or urban structure which is driven by changes in the location dynamics of industrial firms, the service sector and households, and their implied spatial requirements.
Forces of urban change are necessarily constrained by the existing built environment and mediated through a land and property market process which may be highly specific to the urban area in question .
Consequently, changes in the economic and spatial structure of urban regions are inevitably shaped by RE market dynamics .
Traditional approaches to the analysis of change in urban systems have focused on the changing determinants of the location decisions of firms and households and the implications these have for the economic and spatial structure of cities.
Space-access trade-off models have attempted to rationalise urban land use patterns in terms of location dynamics of firms and households under certain simplifying assumptions with regards to the location of employment centres, the structure of transport costs, and transportation tech.
Monocentric model yields a pattern of urban land use with service sector activities outbidding other users for central locations
Location dynamics are now primarily influenced by changing production and communication technologies in specific user groups and the importance of transport cost conditions have been reduced
Cities in Europe and other developed countries have followed a consistent pattern of urban development:
This trend is followed by decentralisation: the suburbanistion of population into the area immediately surround the core
goods handling industries, industrial production, and wholesale and retail distribution have moved outward to exurban locations since the late 1950s, largely as a result of changing transportation tech.
Upon inudustrialisation, urban development proceeds through the growth of high density ubran core, rural-urban migration, declining agricultural activity, and growing industrial employment
1970s - labour intensive 'routine' office functions also decentralised, although initially this tended to invole relatively short distances to satellite subcentres. Decentralisation of service activities continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with relocation occuring over greater distances, and for a wider range of functions, facilitated by significant advances in communication tech.
Cheshire (1995): indicates greater variation in the pattern of urban development during the 1980s. Pronounced trend away from decentralisation to relative recentralisation amoung some northern European FURs. Cheshire suggests 'cumulative causation' explanation in terms of FURs to create and build upon environments capable of attracting and retaining skilled residents.
Urban Economic Activity:
At its simplist - generates requirements for land and property which might be met by the existing stock of buildings or through new development. This is mediated through the property market process, which determines values, allocates spaces in buildings between competing uses, stimulates production of new space through development and redevelopment
Think about physical and legal aspects of property
Important - is the existing stock physically capable of meeting current requirements? Existing space is the legacy of past development decisions, often reflecting fundamentally different historic circumstances, varying degrees of physical mismatch can be expected
Prevailing pattern of property rights is important . Stock of buildings can be seen as a stock of legal interests which serve a variety of use and investment objectives. In principal the mix of property rights should be easier to change than the physical stock of buildings, and represents an important short term or medium term adjustment mechanism in the property market.
freehold owner-occupiers
existing leases
Received theory: trade establishes property prices which provide meaningful representations of value and property rights will be acquired by those who value them most highly. Therefore, existing property will be put to its most valuable use and held in a form which most closely meets the diverse requirements of users and investors.
When the value of new property, net of (re)development costs exceeds the existing value of a site, appropriate new development will occur, supplying additional use and investment rights into their segment of the market
This has a lack of institutional or behavioral content
the complexity of the property market and the restricted availability of information creates a role for agents and advisors. Agent involvement varies across Europe - in highly developed markets, agents are involved in the majority of transactions, whereas in others, they tend to be involved in a small proportion
The property market translates pressure for economic change into RE capacity which will partly or fully support that change.
