Introduction	What is a city?: functions and purposes. Land value and urban growth in the United States. Systems of cities and central place theory: threshold and range. World patterns in urban growth: links between economic development and urbanization. World urban morphology: diversity in the United States, Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia. The primate city vs. rank size rule. Social areas in North American cities.
Goals	Students should become familiar with the significant ideas about urbanization listed below.
Notes on Readings	Chapter 10, pp 394-405 provides an introduction to the importance of cities to humans. Be sure you understand the mobilizing function, decision making capacity, generative functions, and transformative capacity of urban areas. You read the rest of Chapter 12 for the unit on Population. Chapter 11 focuses on the structure of cities, that is, why they are shaped and arranged the way they are. Pay special attention to the diagram on p. 428 explaining accessibility, bid rent, and urban form. Be sure you can describe the different models for structures in North American cities including the different zones (CBD, zone in transition etc), European cities and their characteristics, Islamic cities, and cities in the Periphery. The problems of urban areas are explained well. Most fun to read is the material on the polycentric metropolis--like cities in Texas! Can you identify the different nodes (p.453) in cities you know?
Outline Notes	Significant Ideas about Urbanization Cities have been an enduring part of human settlement patterns since ancient times. Chapter 10 describes the origins and evolution of cities as focal points of political states in the Indus Valley, China, Southwest Asia, Meso-America, Greece, Rome, and Europe. Cities developed at different times in different cultural hearths. Note the four fundamental aspects of the role of towns and cities in human economic and social organization described on pp 394-395. Cities have evolved in stages which are linked to dominant modes of transportation, technology, and economic systems. In the United States, the system (connected network) of cities evolved through five stages of development extending over 200 years. Each stage was marked and determined by prevailing modes of transportation and industry. Chapter 10 explains these stages. Some cities reflect the essence of the culture at whose focus it lies. Site and situation strongly influence the growth and prosperity of an urban area. A city's relative location affects its linkages and economic domination over a large and productive hinterland and ensure its well-being. A city's site plays a role in its origin and early survival. There is a relationship between urban growth and economic development. The cities in the world which are growing most rapidly are located in the developing world. Cities in the developed world are growing at much slower rates. When the economic base of a city is strong, it grows; when it is weak, the city stagnates. The character of cities reflect what people do for a living, that is, the city's primary functions. Orlando is different than Pittsburgh. The difference lies in the functions each city fulfill. World urbanization is not evenly distributed. Western Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia are highly urbanized (84% of all Texans live in cities). However, urbanization is gaining rapidly elsewhere as a condition of economic development. The world's least urbanized realm is Africa; large numbers of people are moving from rural to urban areas. Cities are growing together to form giant urban agglomerations or megalopolises. Read Chapter 10 to find examples of megacities in different regions of the world, notably North America, Western Europe, Japan, South and East Asia. Cities serve important functions in different societies. Cities are places of incredible creativity, cultural creation, excitement, and innovation. Central Place Theory and concepts of accessibility and land use help to explain why small urban places like villages lie close together, while larger cities lie far apart. Cities are arranged in hierarchies. There are many small cities; very few large cities. The locations of these cities follow a regular pattern, a pattern disturbed by physical barriers, resource distributions, and other factors. But by and large, cities are arranged in space in hexagonal regions. Cities show regularity in the arrangement of places within the city. Cities are spatially organized to perform their functions. Models of urban structure are illustrated and described in Chapter 11. Models of urban structure reveal how the forces that shape the internal layout of cities have changed, transforming the single center city of old into the now common multiple nuclei or poly-centric metropolis. Cities vary from region to region in the world. Chapter 11 provides details on the differences and similarities between and among cities in the core and periphery in North America, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Links to Other Resources	Another excellent resource if you wish to know more about specific cities in the world is this site City Profiles. The New Urbanist movement attracts criticism and positive reviews. What do you think? Urban Age, a worldwide investigation into the future of cities, focused on four themes, provides information about world cities.