Geography of city. Von Thunen and other approaches (until 1970s)

Application of the rent’ principle

The principle is: land could be considered as a good and it is subjected to the interplay between offer and demand. Only the richer can afford to locate in the city centre, whether they are economic agents or dwellers.

1) Land uses determine land values, through competitive bidding amongfarmers;

2) Land value distribute land uses, according to their ability to pay;

3) The steeper curves capture the central locations

The bid-rent curve. How economic and space interplay affects the urban-land use matter?• The leader works came from urban economics:

• Alonso W., Location and land use, Cambridge, Harvard UNiversity Press, 1964;

• Muth R. F., Cities and housing, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1969.

• Mills, E. S., Studies in the structure of the urban economy, Baltimora, Johns Hopkins Press, 1972.

Source: Kraus M., Monocentric Cities, in Arnott R. J., McMillen D. P., Urban economics, Blackwell, 2006)

There are the usual assumptions about space:

- A circular city in a uniform plain;

- all employment is in the city center (CBD);

- There are N identical individuals and each of them goes to the center every day to work a certain number of hours to receive a daily wage of y;

- the cost of the trip depends on the distance home / work (it does not take into account the travel time) and it is defined as tx;

- An individual has a utility function v(q,c), where q is the consumption of the services of housing (the house is considered in all aspect as a good and it is included in the consumption function of the individual); c represents his consumption of all the other goods.

Source: Kraus, 2006

An individual’s objective is to maximize v(q,c). In doingso, he is subject to the budget constraint

p(x)q + c = y-tx

Equilibrium housing consumption at a particular location

Source: Kraus, 2006

The mechanism for satisfying the equal-utility condition is spatialvariation in the price of housing.

x1 and x0 represent any two locations such that x1► x0

p (x0) and p(x1) are such that the equilibrium utility level is just attainable with budget lines whoserespective c-intercept are

Y-tx0 and y-tx1.

Net income is lower at x1 than at x0 meaning that the budget line there must be flatter. Thus p (x1) ◄p(x0)

Source: Kraus 2006

We therefore have the following:

Property 1: the rental price of housing decreases with distance from the CBD.

Property 2: Individuals who live farther from the CBD have higher consumption levels of housing:

- As the budget line is flatter at x1 than at x0, and the intersection points with the equilibrium indifferencecurve is e1 and e0 , q1 is greater than q0

Application to different activities within a city

A different perspective-a similar principle.The model of Urban density gradient.

(Source: Clark C., Urban population Density, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 114, No. 4 (1951), pp.490-496

“We can begin with two generalizations the validity of which is now universally recognized:

1. In every large city, excluding the central business zone, which has few resident inhabitants, we have districts of dense population in the interior, with density falling off progressively as we proceed to the outer suburbs.

2. In most (but not all) cities, as time goes on, density tends to fall in the most populous inner suburbs, and to rise in the outer suburbs, and the whole city tends to " spread itself out.“”

(Source: Clark C., Urban population Density, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 114, No. 4 (1951), pp.490-496

“The evidence assembled below appears to be sufficient to show that, in practically every case, the falling off of density, as we proceed to the outer suburbs, follows a simple mathematical equation of exponential decline.

Let x be distance in miles from the center of the city.

Let y be the density of resident population in thousands per square mile.

Then (except in the central business zone):

y = Ae-bx. ”

b is the density gradient, indicating the rate of diminution of density with distance, a negative exponential decline.

A is the density at the center of the city

Clarks’ examples

Source: Berry B., Simmons J., Tennant R., Urban population density: structure and change, Geographical Review, 53,3, 1963, pp. 389-405.

1.5 Urban spatial diffusion processes. London (Source, Gould, 1979)

London, from 5 miles to 40 miles. Before the institution of the Green Belt

The internal structure and the forces of changeswithin a city according to the chicago school of sociology

The concentric zones representation. Still a monocentric modelFive zones:

1) The CBD

2) The zone in transition

3) The zone of independent working men’s home

4) The zone of better residence

5) The commuters’ zone

28/03/2018 Pagina 20

2) Sector model (Hoyt, 1939, studying statistic data on about 60 american cities) “The entire city is considered as a

circle and the various areas as sectors radiating out from the center of that circle; similar types of land use originate near the center of the circle and migrate outward toward the periphery”.

He studied only the residential land use; doing so, he found (with an unsolicited factorial analysis) that one element was always linked with all the other: this was the land value/land rent

Pagina 21

2) Harris and Ullman’s multiple-nuclei theory (1945)Multiple nuclei (Harris and Ullman, 1945, p. 13)

«In many cities the land-use pattern is built not around a single centre but around several discrete nuclei. In some cities, these nuclei have existed from the very origins of the city; in others they have developed as the growth of the city stimulated migration and specialization. An example of the first type is Metropolitan London, in which «the City» and Westminster originated as separate points separated by open country, one as the center of finance and commerce, the other as the center of political life. An example of the second type is Chicago, in which heavy industry, at first localized along the Chicago River in the heart of the city, migrated to the Calumet District, where it acted as a nucleus for extensive new urban development».

It is one of the first proposals of polycentric city

28/03/2018 Pagina 22