Models of Urban Structure
Cities are not simply random collections of buildings and
people. They exhibit functional structure: they are
spatially organized to perform their functions as places of
commerce, production, education, and much more. One
of the most important forces determining where certain
buildings or activities are located within a city deals with
the price of land. This tends to be the highest in the
downtown area and declines as one moves outward from
the center. The United States is the only country in the
world in which the majority of the people live in the
suburbs. Even though house prices may be higher in the
suburbs, the land value is lower (a downtown apartment
complex will produce much more revenue per year than a
few suburban homes occupying the same amount of
space). In every other country the majority resides in
either rural or urban areas.
Before preceding, it is important to define some commonly
used terms in referring to city structure. The central
business district (CBD) (or GdowntownH) is the core of the
city. High land values, tall buildings, busy traffic,
converging highways, and mass transit systems (e.g.,
South FloridaKs GTri-RailH) mark the American or
European CBD. An urban zone is a sector of a city within
which land use is relatively uniform (e.g., an industrial or
residential zone). The term central city is often used to
denote the part of an urban area that lies within the outer
ring of residential suburbs. A suburb is an outlying,
functionally uniform part of an urban area, often (but not
always) adjacent to the central city. All of these urban
regions or zones lie near or adjacent to each other and
together make up the metropolis. The term hinterland is
a German word meaning the Gland behindH the city (the
surrounding service area).
Modeling the North American City
As cities evolved, they
displayed increasing
complexity over time.
The concentric zone
model (A) resulted
from a study of
Chicago in the 1920s by
Ernest Burgess. This
model was drawn up at
a time when the full
impact of the Industrial
Revolution came to
bear on the American
City. Burgess
recognized five
concentric functional
zones. At the center
was the CBD (1). The
zone of transition (2)
was characterized by
residential deterioration and encroachment by business
and light manufacturing. The zone of independent
workersK homes (3) was primarily occupied by the blue-
collar (wage-earners, manual laborers) labor force. The
zone of better residences (4) consisted mainly of the
middle-class. Finally, the commutersK zone (5) was the
suburban ring, consisting mostly of white-collar workers
who could afford to live further from the CBD. This
model was dynamic. As the city grew, the inner zones
encroached on the outer ones.
Remember, the model was developed for American cities
and had limited applicability elsewhere. It has been
demonstrated that pre-industrial cities, notably in Europe,
did not at all followed the concentric circles model. For
instance, in most pre-industrial European cities, the center
was much more important than the periphery, notably in
terms of social status. The Burgess concentric model is
consequently partially inverted in these instances.
In the late 1930s, Homer
HoytKs sector model (B)
was published, partly as
an answer to the
drawbacks of BurgessK
concentric zone model.
As technology dealing
with transportation and
communication was
improving, growth
alone created more of a
pie-shaped urban
structure. Hoyt
discovered that land
rent (for residential,
commercial, or
industrial) could remain
consistent all the way
from the CBD to the
cityKs outer edge.
