UNIT I.

THE STUDY OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

“The mark of a great city isn’t how it treats its special places – everybody does that
right – but how it treats its ordinary ones.” Aaron M. Renn

Geography is all around us and we are now living through a dramatic worldwide
transformation. Nearly all the processes we tend to think of as separate domains Economics,
Political Science, Sociology, communications and media studies, planning, engineering, the law
are all being urbanized in a profound series of transformations. In this course we will talk about
the relations among people, between people and their environments, in cities and towns across
the world. I hope you can find something in this course that makes your heart beat faster and
longer.

Urban geography seeks to explain the distribution of towns and cities and the socio-
spatial similarities and contrasts that exist between and within them. If all cities were unique, this
would be an impossible task. However, while every town and city has an individual character,
urban places also exhibit common features that vary only in degree of incidence or importance
within the particular urban fabric.

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT

TOPIC 1. DEFINITION OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY

 Urban geography is a specialized discipline within human geography. It deals with the

analysis, explanation, and prognosis of urban forms, urban social fabric, and economic
structures and functions. Urban geography addresses research questions from economic,
political, social, and ecosystem geography in their urban contexts at various scales.
 It is a systems-oriented Social Science discipline with great relevance to interdisciplinary
solutions of problems of urbanism and urban areas.
 It deals with the analysis of the complex dimensions of urban social, economic, cultural,
and political processes, patterns, and structures and urban planning processes to build up
or retain local comparative advantages.
 It is a branch of human geography concerned with various aspects of cities. An urban
geographer's main role is to emphasize location and space and study the spatial processes
that create patterns observed in urban areas.
 It is a dynamic sub-discipline that comprises a combination of past ideas and approaches,
current concepts and issues that are still being worked out. It may be likened to: a city
with districts of different ages and vitalities. There are some long established districts
dating back to a century ago and sometimes in need of repair; and there are areas which
were once fashionable but are so no longer, while others are being rehabilitated.

TOPIC 2. HISTORY OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY

A. 19th century
1. Origin of Urban Geography
2. Interest in Urban Origins and Growth
3. Studies of the Site and Situation of Early Cities
4. Connection to Environmental Determinism

Where do cities start, how did they grow, and trying to understand why did they grow
where they did? So looking at things like site where just more specific idea for where
it exactly located and then the situation how the city is related to its surroundings. The
ideas of better cities or more civilize cities developing in some places or good cities
developing in some places which are related to environmental factors.

B. Early 20th century

1. Focus on description and classification
2. Empirical approach with little concern for theory
3. Studies of regional patterns of settlement and urban structure, form and
function

This is the period of regionalism in geography. This period concerns on looking at

empirical things that you can describe and classify that is not too much concern
for theoretical explanations. It involves studying regional patterns of settlement,
urban structures, form and functions, how cities related to their immediate
regional area and how cities formed regions.

C. 1920’s-1930’s
1. Chicago School and Central Place Theory
2. Focus on creating abstract models of spatial patterns and socioeconomic
conditions
3. Concept of the urban hierarchy – optimal distribution of urban markets

This is the period of modeling of cities. The Chicago Schools –a group of

sociologists where creating abstract models about spatial patterns of
socioeconomic conditions of city. We also talk about Central Place Theory when
we looked at location theories and so this emerge during this period of time to try
to understand urban hierarchies and what is the kind of distribution of urban
markets.

D. 1950’s-1960’s
1. Spatial Science
2. Focus on applying statistics and concepts from physics to the analysis and
modelling of urban areas
3. Emphasis on theory building and hypothesis testing
 This is the era of Spatial Science focusing on statistics, concepts from physics are
applied to understanding cities. We talked about gravity model and and so things
like Urban Geography as well and the real emphasis on theory buildings. So the
earlier regional geographers and those studying historical things were not just
interested in explaining why they happened the way it is. In the 50’s and 60’s it
emphasize the idea that spatial statistics could help us understand why things
happened the way they do and help us build theories.

E. 1960’s-1970’s
1. Three strands of research
a. Behavioral (psycho geography)

-focus on human cognition and decision-making

-analyzed daily spatial behaviour of individual- e.g. commuting

By the 60’s and 70’s we end up with kind of these three strands of research
going on. One is called behavioral or sometimes called psycho geography but
sort of thinking about psychology of people living in urban areas. So how do
people think and make decisions, how do they engage in movement spatial
behavior in a city things like commuting and so this was very quantitative in
orientation as statistical.

b. Humanistic
- focus on the “lived experience” of people in cities
- analyzed human connection to place within cities

There is also the idea of humanistic geography. This was a little bit more of trend
on 70’s to focus on things like the lived experience not just counting poverty but
understanding what is like to live in poverty. There is also this idea of human
connection to place. We talked about cultural and social geography. We talked
about the concept of place and so in urban geography – How people develop a
sense of place in the city that some called placeless because there was no sense
of connection to that city.

It was just this kind of lifeless existence in a concrete jungle. So try to

understand the way people connect to cities emotionally.

c. Radical
- focus on exposing economic, political, and social structures in cities that
lead to injustices (poverty, segregation, violence, policing, disinvestment)
- activist agenda “Don’t just describe the world, change it”
 The radical strand also was seen in economic, political, cultural geography,
social geography trying to apply social theories to understanding things and here
we are doing them at the understanding of social phenomena.So here we are
doing that at the urban level the urban scale looking at the economic, political,
social structures how that leads to injustice, poverty, segregation, violence,
policing, disinvestment of certain areas. This was pursued with a very activist
kind of agenda, “Don’t just describe the world, change it.” When you apply
some of those ideas to urban spaces this was one of the strands developing and
emerging really in the 1960’s and 70’s.

F. 1980’s -1990’s
1. Social/Cultural Turn- LA School
2. Focus on culture in the city- race, class, gender, ethnicity
3. Applied social theories to urban geography
-post modernism, post-structuralism, feminism, post-colonialism
4. Embraced multiple perspectives
- interdisciplinary
-analysis of discourse and ideology

By the 80’s and 90’s we had the social and cultural turn. This was the period of
focusing on culture in the city- race, class, gender, ethnicity. The social characteristics
just like in cultural geography but applying to the urban space. Sometimes this was
called the LA School because it was focused on a lot of research on the ideas in Los
Angeles. Applying again the social theories, the post-modernism, post-structuralism,
feminism, post-colonialism all of posts and isms and looking at how we can imagine and
understand the world at the urban world in particular by using those theoretical
approaches.
This field really embraced multiple perspectives so some in this field wouldn’t
even really necessarily call themselves geographers. You know may be urban studies and
the geographers who did this were looking for lots of connections to other fields and a
real focus on analyzing discourse or narrative like how things are explained and
understood and ideology, how people develop these belief systems and political beliefs
and behaviors.

G. Since 1990’s
1. Critical Geography
2. Focus on “interrogating” what is taken for granted- challenge narratives

In 1990’s a field known as Critical Geography focus on urban spaces. Here we

got the notion of interrogating. We think about what kind of things we take for granted?
What kind of things do we take well just the way it is? Why do we think that there is just
 natural that there is a poor and wealthy part of a town? Here we do analyzing
global city regions, transnational urbanism, consumption within the city, look at the
idea about “Right” to the city who has right to move in certain spaces and be in certain
spaces. It is really a kind of looking at how we think about on urban structure and
questioning whether it has to be that way.

H. Recent work in Urban Geography

A. Urban Political Ecology
-focus on urban environment (nature) and power relationships
B. Applied Urban Geography
-Use of Geographic Information System (GIS) and other empirical methods to
study policy issues and “real-life” problems in cities

Recently there has been some working in what is called Urban Political Ecology.
This is the idea of studying the urban environment or nature and how nature gets
constructed and power relationships, economic relationships relating to nature parks,
preservation of natural spaces, river and stream networks and water. How all that is
managed and understood?

There is also a really big field that is Applied Urban Geography using GIS and lot
of other empirical methods these are all kind of ways of studying the data that comes from
cities. All the things that can be counted and analyzing those using the power of
computers and GIS mapping databases to look at policy issues, to look at things like
school segregation or access to grocery stores and to really study real life problems in the
city.

UNIT II. AN URBANIZING WORLD

INTRODUCTION

“Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of
the rich. These are at war with one another.” Plato

Three major transformations have altered the course of human life. The first was the revolution
that led to the development of agriculture around 7000 BC and the growth of Neolithic farming
settlements such as Jarmo in Iraq and Jericho in modern Israel. The second was the pre-industrial
revolution that brought cities into being. The third was the industrial revolution of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries that created the urban industrial forerunners of our present cities. This
chapter begins by focusing on the pre-industrial revolution to examine the origins and
development of the earliest urban settlements, before going on to consider the character of
industrial and post-industrial cities. In this lesson, you will learn about the origin of growth of
cities, its origins and how it changes overtime.

TOPIC 1. THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF CITIES

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT

When and Why did people start living in cities?

The Formation of Cities

Why did cities form in the first place? There is insufficient evidence to assert what conditions
gave rise to the first cities, but some theorists have speculated on what they consider pre-
conditions and basic mechanisms that could explain the rise of cities. Agriculture is believed to
be a pre-requisite for cities, which help preserve surplus production and create economies of
scale. The conventional view holds that cities first formed after the Neolithic Revolution, with
the spread of agriculture. The advent of farming encouraged hunter-gatherers to abandon
nomadic lifestyles and settle near others who lived by agricultural production. Agriculture
yielded more food, which made denser human populations possible, thereby supporting city
development. Farming led to dense, settled populations, and food surpluses that required storage
and could facilitate trade. These conditions seem to be important prerequisites for city life.

Many theorists hypothesize that agriculture preceded the development of cities and led to their
growth.

A good environment and strong social organization are two necessities for the formation of a
successful city. A good environment includes clean water and a favorable climate for growing
crops and agriculture. A strong sense of social organization helps a newly formed city work
together in times of need, and it allows people to develop various functions to assist in the future
development of the city (for example, farmer or merchant). Without these two common features,
as well as advanced agricultural technology, a newly formed city is not likely to succeed.

Cities may have held other advantages, too. For example, cities reduced transport costs for
goods, people, and ideas by bringing them all together in one spot. By reducing these transaction
costs, cities contributed to worker productivity. Finally, cities likely performed the essential
function of providing protection for people and the valuable things they were beginning to
accumulate. Some theorists hypothesize that people may have come together to form cities as a
form of protection against marauding barbarian armies.

PREINDUSTRIAL CITIES

Preindustrial cities had important political and economic functions and evolved to become

well-defined political units. London is an example of a city that was well established in the 
preindustrial era as a political and economic center. While ancient cities may have arisen
organically as trading centers,
 preindustrial cities evolved to become well defined political units, like today's states. Not
all cities grew to become major urban centers.

Neighborhoods in preindustrial cities often had some degree of social specialization or

differentiation. Ethnic enclaves were important in many past cities and remain common in cities
today. Economic specialists,
Cities as Political Centers

While ancient cities may have arisen organically as trading centers, preindustrial cities evolved
to become well defined political units, like today’s states. During the European Middle Ages, a
town was as much a political entity as a collection of houses. However, particular political forms
varied. In continental Europe, some cities had their own legislatures. In the Holy Roman Empire,
some cities had no other lord than the emperor. In Italy, medieval communes had a state-like
power. In exceptional cases like Venice, Genoa, or Lübeck, cities themselves became powerful
states, sometimes taking surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime
empires. Similar phenomena existed elsewhere, as in the case of Sakai, which enjoyed a
considerable autonomy in late medieval Japan.

For people during the medieval era, cities offered a newfound freedom from rural obligations.
City residence brought freedom from customary rural obligations to lord and community (hence
the German saying, “Stadtluft macht frei,” which means (“City air makes you free”). Often, cities
were governed by their own laws, separate from the rule of lords of the surrounding area.

Trade Routes

Not all cities grew to become major urban centers. Those that did often benefited from trade
routes—in the early modern era, larger capital cities benefited from new trade routes and grew
even larger. While the city-states of the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea languished from the
16th century, Europe’s larger capitals benefited from the growth of commerce following the
emergence of an Atlantic trade. By the early 19th century, London had become the largest city in
the world with a population of over a million, while Paris rivaled the well-developed regional
capital cities of Baghdad, Beijing, Istanbul, and Kyoto. But most towns remained far smaller
places—in 1500 only about two dozen places in the world contained more than 100,000
inhabitants. As late as 1700 there were fewer than 40, a figure which would rise thereafter to 300
in 1900. A small city of the early modern period might have contained as few as 10,000
inhabitants.

INDUSTRIAL CITIES

During the industrial era, cities grew rapidly and became centers of population and production.
The growth of modern industry from the late 18 th century onward led to massive urbanization
and the rise of new, great cities, first in Europe, and then in other regions, as new opportunities
brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. In 1800, only 3% of
the world’s population lived in cities. Since the industrial era, that figure, as of the beginning of
the 21st century, has risen to nearly 50%. The United States provides a good example of how this
process unfolded; from 1860 to 1910, the invention of railroads reduced transportation costs and
large manufacturing centers began to emerge in the United States, allowing migration from rural
to urban areas.

Rapid growth brought urban problems, and industrial-era cities were rife with dangers to health
and safety. Rapidly expanding industrial cities could be quite deadly, and were often full of
contaminated water and air, and communicable diseases. Living conditions during the Industrial
Revolution varied from the splendor of the homes of the wealthy to the squalor of the workers.
Poor people lived in very small houses in cramped streets. These homes often shared toilet
facilities, had open sewers, and were prone to epidemics exacerbated by persistent dampness.
Disease often spread through contaminated water supplies.

In the 19th century, health conditions improved with better sanitation, but urban people,
especially small children, continued to die from diseases spreading through the cramped living
conditions. Tuberculosis (spread in congested dwellings), lung diseases from mines, cholera
from polluted water, and typhoid were all common. The greatest killer in the cities was
tuberculosis (TB). Archival health records show that as many as 40% of working class deaths in
cities were caused by tuberculosis.

TOPIC 2. EARLY URBAN HEARTHS

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT
THE FIVE URBAN HEARTHS

1. MESOPOTAMIA

Modern scholars disagree on why the first cities in the world rose in the region
of Mesopotamia instead of elsewhere. Theories range from the ancient alien hypothesis to social
or natural upheavals that forced people to band together in urban centers, to environmental
concerns and even to forced migration of rural communities to cities. None of these theories are
universally accepted while the ancient alien hypothesis is rejected by every reputable scholar.
What is agreed upon, however, is that the moment the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia
decided to engage in the process of urbanization, they changed the way humans would live
forever. The historian Kriwaczek writes:

This was a revolutionary moment in human history. The [Sumerians] were consciously aiming at
nothing less than changing the world. They were the very first to adapt the principle that has
driven progress and advancement throughout history, and still motivates most of us in the
modern times: the conviction that it is humanity's right, its mission and its destiny, to transform
and improve on nature and become her master (20).

This principle Kriwaczek refers to is perhaps no more than the natural inclination of human
beings to gather together for safety from the elements, or it could have its roots in religion and
communal religious practices which, among the benefits they offer, provide an assurance that
there is order and meaning behind the seemingly random events of life. The historian Lewis
Mumford claims that “the habit of resorting to caves for the collective performance of magical
ceremonies seems to date back to an earlier period, and whole communities, living in caves and
hollowed-out walls of rock, have survived in widely scattered areas down to the present. The
outline of the city as both an outward form and an inward pattern of life might be found in such
ancient assemblages” (1). Whatever it was that first gave rise to the development of the cities in
Mesopotamia, the world would never be the same. Kriwaczek writes:

From before 4,000 BCE, over the next ten to fifteen centuries, the people of Eridu and their
neighbors laid the foundations for almost everything that we know as civilization. It has been
called the Urban Revolution, though the invention of cities was actually the least of it. With the
city came the centralized state, the hierarchy of social classes, the division of labor, organized
religion, monumental building, civil engineering, writing, literature, sculpture, art, music,
education, mathematics and law, not to mention a vast array of new inventions and discoveries,
from items as basic as wheeled vehicles and sailing boats to the potter's kiln, metallurgy and the
creation of synthetic materials. And on top of all that was the huge collection of notions and
ideas so fundamental to our way of looking at the world, like the concept of numbers, or weight,
quite independent of actual items counted or weighed – the number ten, or one kilo – that we
have long forgotten that they had to be discovered or invented. Southern Mesopotamia was the
place where all that was first achieved (20-21).

THE RISE OF URUK

The concept of the city, first manifested in the construction of Eridu, did not remain bound by
that area for long. Urbanization spread across the region of Sumer rapidly beginning in c. 4500
BCE with the rise of the city of Uruk, today considered the world's first city. It may well be that
Eridu is in fact the world's first city, as the Sumerian myths maintain, but Eridu was founded c.
5400 BCE, long before the advent of writing (c. 3000 BCE), and, by that time, Uruk was long
established and had created and discarded numerous artifacts which, in the present day, attest to
its size and population and so substantiate the claim that Uruk is the world's first city. The site of
Eridu, on the other hand, provides little to suggest it was ever any more than a sacred center,
perhaps even defined as a large village or town by modern-day standards of scholarship.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
This version of events, of course, comes from Sumerian mythology but there has existed, since
serious excavations began in the mid-19th century CE, ample evidence to suggest that there is
some historical truth behind the poem. Eridu did seem to decline as Uruk rose in prestige, even
though the older city always remained a sacred center and place of pilgrimage.

As further archaeological excavations have proceeded in the Near East, however, scholars have
come to question whether the traditional view of urbanization beginning in Sumer and spreading
north can still be considered valid. The discovery of the settlement of Tell Brak (in modern
day Syria), founded c. 6000 BCE, seems to some scholars to suggest that the Urban Revolution
may have begun in the north and that the claim that it originated in Sumer has only been
accepted because the Sumerians invented writing and so their version of history is accepted as
truth and, of course, because the earliest excavations of the 19th century CE were in Sumer.

While the settlement at Tell Brak is older than Eridu, the question of where cities first rose is
best addressed by defining what is meant by a `city' in ancient times. Professor M.E. Smith of
Arizona State University writes:

The earliest large urban settlement was Tell Brak in the dry farming zone of
northern Mesopotamia. During the Uruk period (3800-3100 BCE) this city
consisted of a central zone of public architecture surrounded by sprawling
suburban settlement over 1 square kilometer in extent. At the end of this period,
the site declined and the focus of urban development shifted to southern
Mesopotamia (The Sage Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, 24).

The problem with this assertion, however, is that it fails to address the definition of `city'. Was
Tell Brak a `city' or a large town or village? Professor George Modelski of the University of
Washington maintains that it was not a city and bases his claim on the 1987 CE work of the
historian Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth. Chandler claims that an
ancient city should be defined by the size of its population. Modelski writes, “One important
estimate concerns Uruk, that on the basis of the work of Robert Adams (1967, 1981), as the
largest city of the very early period” (3). Tell Brak, according to his definition of a city, would be
regarded as more of a settlement since the population does not seem to have been great enough
to qualify it as an urban centre. This, of course, is a modern method of determining what is and is
not a `city' and there is no way of knowing how the ancient Mesopotamians would have defined
the entity of the city or how they regarded a settlement such as Tell Brak.

What is certain, however, is that, for whatever reason, the Urban Revolution began in
Mesopotamia and, it seems certain, in the region of Sumer. 

2. NILE RIVER VALLEY

By 3500 BC a number of the Neolithic farm hamlets along the lower Nile had expanded to
‘overgrown village’ status and formed clusters  of several politically independent units, each
containing sizeable irrigation projects like Qanat. The transition from settled agricultural
communities to cities taken place around 3300 BC when the lower Nile region was unified by the
first pharaoh, Menes. The early Egyptian cities were not as large and as densely populated as
those of Mesopotamian cities because of the practice of changing the site of the capital, usually
the  largest settlement, with the succession of a new pharaoh limited the growth opportunity of
any single city and  the security provided by extensive desert on both sides of the Nile which
meant that once the valley was unified politically, Egyptian cities, unlike those of Mesopotamia,
did not require elaborate fortifications and garrisoned troops for protection.

Egypt is a country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, and is home to one of the oldest

civilizations on earth. The name 'Egypt' comes from the Greek Aegyptos which was the Greek
pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian name 'Hwt-Ka-Ptah' ("Mansion of the Spirit of Ptah"),
originally the name of the city of Memphis.

Memphis was the first capital of Egypt and a famous religious and trade center; its high status is
attested to by the Greeks alluding to the entire country by that name. To the ancient Egyptians
themselves, their country was simply known as Kemet, which means 'Black Land', so named for
the rich, dark soil along the Nile River where the first settlements began. Later, the country was
known as Misr which means 'country', a name still in use by Egyptians for their nation in the
present day. Egypt thrived for thousands of years (from c. 8000 BCE to c. 30 BCE) as an
independent nation whose culture was famous for great cultural advances in every area of
human knowledge, from the arts to science to technology and religion. The great monuments
which ancient Egypt is still celebrated for reflect the depth and grandeur of Egyptian
culture which influenced so many ancient civilizations, among them Greece and Rome.

One of the reasons for the enduring popularity of Egyptian culture is its emphasis on the
grandeur of the human experience. Their great monuments, tombs, temples, and artwork all
celebrate life and stand as reminders of what once was and what human beings, at their best, are
capable of achieving. Although ancient Egypt in popular culture is often associated
with death and mortuary rites, something even in these speaks to people across the ages of what
it means to be a human being and the power and purpose of remembrance.

Egypt has a long history which goes back far beyond the written word, the stories of the gods, or
the monuments which have made the culture famous. Evidence of overgrazing of cattle, on the
land which is now the Sahara Desert, has been dated to about 8000 BCE. This evidence, along
with artifacts discovered, points to a thriving agricultural civilization in the region at that time.
As the land was mostly arid even then, hunter-gatherer nomads sought the cool of the water
source of the Nile River Valley and began to settle there sometime prior to 6000 BCE.

Organized farming began in the region c. 6000 BCE and communities known as the Badarian
Culture began to flourish alongside the river. Industry developed at about this same time as
evidenced by faience workshops discovered at Abydos dating to c. 5500 BCE. The Badarian
were followed by the Amratian, the Gerzean, and the Naqada cultures (also known as Naqada I,
Naqada II, and Naqada III), all of which contributed significantly to the development of what
became Egyptian civilization. The written history of the land begins at some point between 3400
and 3200 BCE when hieroglyphic script is developed by the Naqada Culture III. By 3500 BCE
mummification of the dead was in practice at the city of Hierakonpolis and large stone tombs
built at Abydos. The city of Xois is recorded as being already ancient by 3100-2181 BCE as
inscribed on the famous Palermo Stone. As in other cultures worldwide, the small agrarian
communities became centralized and grew into larger urban centers.

3. THE INDUS VALLEY

The Indus Valley Civilization was a cultural and political entity which flourished in the
northern region of the Indian subcontinent between c. 7000 - c. 600 BCE. Its modern name
derives from its location in the valley of the Indus River, but it is also commonly referred to as
the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and the Harrapan Civilization.

These latter designations come from the Sarasvati River mentioned in Vedic sources, which
flowed adjacent to the Indus River, and the ancient city of Harappa in the region, the first one
found in the modern era. None of these names derive from any ancient texts because, although
scholars generally believe the people of this civilization developed a writing system (known
as Indus Script or Harappan Script) it has not yet been deciphered.

The Indus Valley Civilization is now often compared with the far more famous cultures
of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but this is a fairly recent development. The discovery of Harappa in
1829 CE was the first indication that any such civilization existed in India, and by that
time, Egyptian hieroglyphics had been deciphered, Egyptian and Mesopotamian sites
excavated, and cuneiform would soon be translated by the scholar George Smith (1840-1876
CE). Archaeological excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization, therefore, had a significantly
late start comparatively, and it is now thought that many of the accomplishments and “firsts”
attributed to Egypt and Mesopotamia may actually belong to the people of the Indus Valley
Civilization.

The two best-known excavated cities of this culture are Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (located in

modern-day Pakistan), both of which are thought to have once had populations of between
40,000-50,000 people, which is stunning when one realizes that most ancient cities had on
average 10,000 people living in them. The total population of the civilization is thought to have
been upward of 5 million, and its territory stretched over 900 miles (1,500 km) along the banks
of the Indus River and then in all directions outward. Indus Valley Civilization sites have been
found near the border of Nepal, in Afghanistan, on the coasts of India, and around Delhi, to name
only a few locations.

Between c. 1900 - c. 1500 BCE, the civilization began to decline for unknown reasons. In the
early 20th century CE, this was thought to have been caused by an invasion of light-skinned
peoples from the north known as Aryans who conquered a dark-skinned people defined by
Western scholars as Dravidians. This claim, known as the Aryan Invasion Theory, has been
discredited. The Aryans – whose ethnicity is associated with the Iranian Persians – are now
believed to have migrated to the region peacefully and blended their culture with that of the
indigenous people while the term Dravidian is understood now to refer to anyone, of any
ethnicity, who speaks one of the Dravidian languages.

Why the Indus Valley Civilization declined and fell is unknown, but scholars believe it may have
had to do with climate change, the drying up of the Sarasvati River, an alteration in the path of
the monsoon which watered crops, overpopulation of the cities, a decline in trade with Egypt
and Mesopotamia, or a combination of any of the above. In the present day, excavations continue
at many of the sites found thus far and some future find may provide more information on the
history and decline of the culture.

HARAPPA & MOHENJO-DARO

Harappa did not conform to either Egyptian or Mesopotamian architecture, however, as there

was no evidence of temples, palaces, or monumental structures, no names of kings or queens or
stelae or royal statuary. The city spread over 370 acres (150 hectares) of small, brick houses with
flat roofs made of clay. There was a citadel, walls, the streets were laid out in a grid pattern
clearly demonstrating a high degree of skill in urban planning and, in comparing the two sites, it
was apparent to the excavators that they were dealing with a highly advanced culture.

Houses in both cities had flush toilets, a sewer system, and fixtures on either side of the streets
were part of an elaborate drainage system, which was more advanced even than that of the early
Romans. Devices known from Persia as “wind catchers” were attached to the roofs of some
buildings which provided air conditioning for the home or administrative office and, at Mohenjo-
daro, there was a great public bath, surrounded by a courtyard, with steps leading down into it.

As other sites were unearthed, the same degree of sophistication and skill came to light as well as
the understanding that all of these cities had been pre-planned. Unlike those of other cultures
which usually developed from smaller, rural communities, the cities of the Indus Valley
Civilization had been thought out, a site chosen, and purposefully constructed prior to full
habitation. Further, they all exhibited conformity to a single vision which further suggested a
strong central government with an efficient bureaucracy that could plan, fund, and build such
cities. Scholar John Keay comments:

What amazed all these pioneers, and what remains the distinctive characteristic of
the several hundred Harappan sites now known, is their apparent similarity: “Our
overwhelming impression is of cultural uniformity, both throughout the several
centuries during which the Harappan civilization flourished, and over the vast
area it occupied.” The ubiquitous bricks, for instance, are all of standardized
dimensions, just as the stone cubes used by the Harappans to measure weights are
also standard and based on the modular system. Road widths conform to a similar
module; thus, streets are typically twice the width of side lanes, while the main
arteries are twice or one and a half times the width of streets. Most of the streets
so far excavated are straight and run either north-south or east-west. City plans
therefore conform to a regular grid pattern and appear to have retained this layout
through several phases of building. (9)
4. THE YELLOW RIVER

In Chinese history, the Yellow River is not just a river; it stands for the origins of culture and
civilization. It played an important role in the early development of Chinese civilization. Chinese
refer to the Yellow river as "the Mother River" and "the Cradle of Chinese Civilization". That is
because the Yellow River was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilizations in the Xia (2100–
1600 BC) and Shang (1600–1046 BC) eras - the most prosperous region in early Chinese history.

Moreover, the Chinese regard yellow as a color of ancient origins: an emblem of the loess land
the Yellow River flows through, the emperor, the yellow skin of Chinese, and the
legendary Chinese Dragon, from which Chinese are said to descend from.

Yellow River civilization developed from the Neolithic Age, over 3,000 years ago, when a lot
of regional cultures were booming. Some were consumed, and others became extinct, as
"China" grew.

In agriculture and technology, the Yellow River civilization was more advanced and progressive
compared with the other contemporary civilizations in the world. Therefore, the Yellow River
civilization of around 3,000 years ago was called "the precocious civilization".

Just like in Egypt, Chinese also had huge structures that were built for the rulers. They also had
an organized religion. This one is not so much on gods and goddesses but more of balance in
nature and life.

The valley of the Huangho, the Yellow River(Yellow in color due to Loess) was the birthplace
of the Shang civilization that came into existence around 1800 BC. The most significant feature
is that individual cities, such as An-Yang, were linked into a network of agricultural villages; a
town wall did not separate an urban subculture from a rural one. This form of ‘urban region’ is
notably without precedent in the early civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Nile and the Indus.

5. MESOAMERICA

This is the last hearth to develop. Mesoamerica is that area defined by related contiguous cultures
from the arid areas of northern Mexico to the tropical areas of Guatemala and Honduras in the
south.  The area encompasses great ecological, linguistic and cultural diversity.  It is one of the
regions of the world where the agricultural revolution arose independently, and the great
civilizations of Mesoamerica were built upon foods such as maize, beans and squash.

Beginning about 6,700 BCE in the highlands and river valleys of central Mexico, selective
harvesting and then purposeful planting of teocinte, a wild early relative of maize, led over time
to the cultivation of corn and development of agriculture.  Similar selection and cultivation of
beans, squash and other plants led to one of the world’s great agricultural revolutions.  The
origins of village life led to population increase, specialization of labor, craft production,
religious hierarchies, architectural traditions, writing systems, astronomical observations,
calendars, and long distance trade.  Ultimately, complex, stratified urban societies developed in
various regions of Mesoamerica, including Central Mexico, West Mexico, the Gulf Coast,
Oaxaca, and the Maya area.  Each made distinctive contributions to Mesoamerican civilization,
and to the heritage of all humankind.

One of the great agricultural revolutions in human history took place in the valleys and river
drainages of central Mexico, beginning in the 7th millennium BCE.  By 1500 BCE village life
based on agricultural food production spread in the Valley of Mexico and communities began to
grow. 

After the rise of complex societies in the Valley of Mexico, by about 200 CE one emerged
supreme.  Teotihuacán was founded about 100 BCE, but by about 300-700 CE it had grown to
become one of the world’s preeminent cities in size and culture.  Teotihuacán was arranged
along the mile-long Avenue of the Dead, at the north end of which stands the Pyramid of the
Moon and on the east the massive Pyramid of the Sun.  To the south was the Ciudadela, within
which is the Temple of Quetzalcoatl with its facades of alternating feathered serpents and rain
gods.  Beyond the city’s monumental axis sprawled the neighborhoods of Teotihuacán, with
areas of craft specialization and homes of elites with beautifully painted murals.  At its height
about 600 CE, Teotihuacán, with a population of up to 150,000, might have been the largest city
in the world.  Its influence extended broadly across Mesoamerica.  Following the fall of
Teotihuacán about 750, subsequent civilizations in the Valley of Mexico included the Toltec at
Tula, Hidalgo, ca. 900-1200, and the Aztecs, 1325-1520, at Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City.

The earliest cities in the New World appeared around 200 BC—in southern Mexico (Yucatan),
Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. Thus, Mesoamerican people were entering a stage of
development equivalent to the Neolithic of the Old World at a time when Mesopotamian cities
were 2,000 years old. Of the several civilizations that evolved in Mesoamerica, the Mayan,
which flourished between AD 300 and AD 1000, was the most culturally advanced. Cities such
as Tikal, Vaxactum and Mayapán were centers of small states ruled by a leader drawn from a
priest-hood and organized into a loose confederation. Mesoamerican society was highly
stratified, with the elite occupying central city land around the palaces and temples, and the
lower classes occupying the periphery of urban settlement. City design was highly advanced.

TOPIC 3. THE GLOBAL CONTEXT OF URBANIZATION AND

URBAN CHANGE

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT

The global urban pattern is changing in three main ways as a result of: urbanization: an increase
in the proportion of the total population that lives in urban areas; urban growth: an increase in the
population of towns and cities; urbanism: the extension of the social and behavioral
characteristics of urban living across society as a whole.

Urbanization is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change.Urbanization is

also defined by the United Nations as movement of people from rural to urban areas with
population growth equating to urban migration.The United Nations projected that half of the
world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008.Urbanization is closely linked to
modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization.

As more and more people leave villages and farms to live in cities, urban growth results.The
rapid growth of cities like Chicago in the late 19th century and Mumbai a century later can be
attributed largely to rural-urban migration and the demographic transition.This kind of growth
is especially commonplace in developing countries.

The United States and United Kingdom have a far higher urbanization level than China, India,
Swaziland or Niger, but a far slower annual urbanization rate, since much less of the population
is living in a rural area.

Urbanization can be planned or organic.Planned urbanization, (e.g., planned communities), is

based on an advanced plan, which can be prepared for military, aesthetic, economic
or urban design reasons.Organic urbanization is not organized and happens
haphazardly.Landscape planners are responsible for landscape infrastructure (e.g., public parks,
sustainable urban drainage systems, greenways, etc.) which can be planned
before urbanization takes place, or afterward to revitalize an area and create greater livability
within a region.Planned urbanization and development is the aim of the American Institute of
Planners.

THE URBANIZATION OF THE GLOBE

The current high level of urbanization at the global level is a relatively recent phenomenon. At
the end of the nineteenth century the extent of world urbanization was limited, with only Britain,
North-West Europe and the USA more than 25 per cent urban in 1890. With less than 3 per cent
of the world’s population living in towns and cities, levels of urbanization elsewhere were
insignificant. In the USA, urban development was confined primarily to the cities of the east
coast and emerging Midwest.

The spread of urbanization in Europe, North America and the Middle East is apparent, as are the
rising levels of urbanization in Africa and Asia, which were almost wholly rural in 1950. Over
the course of the past half- century, a world in which most people lived in rural areas has been
transformed into a predominantly urban world. This trend has influenced not just the physical
location of population but also the organization and conduct of economic and social life of most
people on the planet both urban and rural dwellers.

URBANIZATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Urbanization tends to correlate positively with industrialization. With the promise of greater
employment opportunities that come from industrialization, people from rural areas will go to
cities in pursuit of greater economic rewards.

Another term for urbanization is "rural flight. " In modern times, this flight often occurs in a
region following the industrialization of agriculture—when fewer people are needed to bring the
same amount of agricultural output to market—and related agricultural services and industries
are consolidated. These factors negatively affect the economy of small- and middle-sized farms
and strongly reduce the size of the rural labor market. Rural flight is exacerbated when the
population decline leads to the loss of rural services (such as business enterprises and schools),
which leads to greater loss of population as people leave to seek those features.

As more and more people leave villages and farms to live in cities, urban growth results. The
rapid growth of cities like Chicago in the late nineteenth century and Mumbai a century later can
be attributed largely to rural-urban migration. This kind of growth is especially commonplace in
developing countries.

Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and expense
in commuting, while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, entertainment, and
transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the
opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition. Due to their high
populations, urban areas can also have more diverse social communities than rural areas,
allowing others to find people like them.

Regional differences in rates of urbanization throughout the world provide clear evidence of the
relationship between urbanization and industrialization. The key role that cities play in dynamic
and competitive economies and the relationship between the scale of a national economy and the
level of urbanization is illustrated by the fact that most of the world’s largest cities are in the
world’s largest economies.

In 1990 the world’s twenty-five largest economies had over 70 percent of the world’s ‘million
cities’ and all but one of its twelve agglomerations with 10 million or more inhabitants. Despite
such categorical evidence, the relationship between urbanization and level of economic
development is complex, with many factors at work, and while economic growth may result in
increased levels of urbanization, higher levels of urbanization in turn can stimulate more
economic growth. We can illustrate this in the context of the Third World, where a number of
factors can mediate the relationship between urbanization and economic growth.

These include the following:

1. The nature of economic activity within each sector of the national economy can affect
urbanization. For example, the type of agricultural enterprise can affect the scale of urban
settlement. High-value crops that provide good incomes for farmers and workers within intensive
farming systems can support rapid growth of local urban centers to the point where agricultural
surpluses support a relatively urbanized population.

2. The nature of land ownership is important in determining whether profits are spent or invested
within the country or taken abroad.

3. Cultural preferences for a type of lifestyle can influence the level of urbanization.

4. Government policies and the activities of state institutions are also important. An increasing
share of national income is controlled by the public sector. Since most government employees
are urban residents, most public spending flows to towns and cities.

ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF URBANIZATION

Urbanization has significant economic and environmental effects on cities and surrounding areas.
As city populations grow, they increase the demand for goods and services of all kinds, pushing
up prices of these goods and services, as well as the price of land. As land prices rise, the
local working class may be priced out of the real estate market and pushed into less desirable
neighborhoods - a process known as gentrification.

Growing cities also alter the environment. For example, urbanization can create urban "heat
islands," which are formed when industrial and urban areas replace and reduce the amount of
land covered by vegetation or open soil. In rural areas, the ground helps regulate temperatures by
using a large part of the incoming solar energy to evaporate water in vegetation and soil. This
evaporation, in turn, has a cooling effect. However in cities, where less vegetation and exposed
soil exists, the majority of the sun's energy is absorbed by urban structures and asphalt. During
the day, cities experience higher surface temperatures because urban surfaces produce less
evaporative cooling. Additional city heat is given off by vehicles and factories, as well as
industrial and domestic heating and cooling units.

TYPES OF URBANIZED REGIONS

The increasing scale of urbanization, urban growth and development of national urban systems
has given rise to a number of different forms of urbanized regions:

1. The city-region. This is an area focused on the major employment centre in a region and
encompassing the surrounding areas, for which it acts as the primary high-order service center.
The functional relationship between a city and its region was a key feature of central place
theory.

The city-region remains an appropriate description of mono-centered urban areas of up to a

million people found in the less densely populated parts of even the most highly urbanized
countries. Variants employed for statistical purposes include functional urban regions (FURs)
and standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs).

2. Conurbation. This is the term coined in 1915 by Geddes to describe a built-up area created by
the coalescence of once-separate urban settlements. With improvements in transportation and
communications the functional influence of the conurbation has spread beyond the limits of the
built-up area, so the term is now widely used in the UK and elsewhere to describe multi-nodal
functional urban units. The functional relationships within a conurbation differ from those of a
city-region; in essence, while there is a degree of dominance by the largest city, the other urban
places also have their own functional linkages.

3. The urban field. This is a unit, similar to the conurbation, used in the USA. An urban field is
generally regarded as a core urban area and hinterland of population at least 300,000, with an
outer limit of two hours’ driving time. Defined in this manner, urban fields range in population
size from 500,000 to 20 million and cover one-third of the USA and 90 per cent of the national
population. Urban fields are more spatially extensive than European conurbations, since they are
based on higher levels of personal mobility. The southern California ‘urban field’ extends 150
miles from north to south and includes Tijuana in Mexico (in the process creating a transnational
city in which the largest ‘Mexican’ city is Los Angeles). The concept may become increasingly
relevant for understanding the functional reality of urbanized regions out with the USA as similar
levels of mobility are achieved through improvements in transport and communications.
4. Megalopolis. This is the term introduced by Gottmann in 1961 to describe the urbanized areas
of the north-eastern seaboard of the USA encompassing a population of 40 million oriented
around the major cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC.
Gottmann subsequently defined a megalopolitan urban system as an urban unit with a minimum
population of 25 million. The central importance of transactional activities (in terms of
international trade, technology and culture) would indicate a location at a major international
‘breakpoint’ (such as a port city). A megalopolis would typically have a polynuclear form but
with sufficient internal physical distinctness for each constituent city to be considered an urban
system in its own right. The cohesiveness of the megalopolitan system depends on the existence
of high-quality communications and transportation facilities. This megalopolitan phenomenon
was identified initially in six zones: the archetype model of the North-Eastern USA, the Great
Lakes area extending from Chicago to Detroit, the Tokaido area of Japan centered on Tokyo-
Yokohama and extending west to include Osaka Kobe, the central belt of England running from
London to Merseyside, the North-West European megalopolis focused on Amsterdam Paris
Ruhr, and the area around Shanghai. Since then, twenty-six growth areas of the USA have
exhibited megalopolitan patterns while similar trends are evident in Brazil (between Rio de
Janeiro and São Paulo), in China and in Europe.

5. Ecumenopolis. This is the term employed by Doxiades in 1968 to describe a projected

urbanized world or universal city by the end of the twenty-first century. Although highly
speculative, the ecumenopolis concept does focus attention on the potential consequences of
unrestrained urban growth and underlines the importance that is currently being attached to the
concept of sustainable urban development.

UNIT III. URBAN STRUCTURE

INTRODUCTION

Housing is the largest user of space in the city, and exerts a profound influence on the structure of
metropolitan regions. Here we focus on the households that acquire, occupy and exchange the dwelling
units produced. We begin by examining the nature of residential mobility in the city, and then consider
how the aggregate of decisions by individual agents affects the process of neighborhood change.

One of the most critical phenomena in the real estate sector to reduce the environmental impact and
climate change is sustainable houses. “All nature strives for self-preservation,” said the philosopher
Cicero. And residents of megalopolises, too, increasingly began to think about the future of cities and
how to improve the environmental background around their place of residence. One of the most
innovative urban developments in the twenty-first century is the design of buildings and entire
neighborhoods in sustainable architecture.

Housing is a shelter that provides primary living conditions such as safe housing, drinking water, and
healthy food for humans. Even in developed countries, low-income families often have no housing for
economic reasons or face health and safety problems caused by poor housing quality.
PRESENTATION OF CONTENT

TOPIC 1. RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGE

WHY PEOPLE MOVE

Intra-urban mobility constitutes the vast majority of moves made by individuals and households
within advanced Western nations. Residential relocation can be voluntary or involuntary. Although forced
relocations, due to property demolition or eviction, can be significant in particular parts of a city, most
individuals and households move by choice. Nevertheless, the stimulus for a voluntary move may be
externally induced. It is generally agreed that the most important reasons for relocation refer to the
characteristics of the housing unit. In Rossi’s (1955) classic study of residential mobility in Philadelphia,
more than half the movers cited too little or too much living space as a contributory factor, with 44 %
identifying it as the primary reason behind their desire to move. Adjustment moves accounted for 52 % of
reasons for moving home in a study by Clark and Onaka (1983), with housing characteristics including
space, quality and design of the unit, and a desire to shift from renting to owner-occupation of major
importance. Neighborhood characteristics were of lesser importance, as were accessibility considerations,
with households generally prepared to trade off a longer journey to work to obtain housing with more
amenities at less cost.

Induced moves are related to employment and life-cycle factors. Traditionally the life-cycle
concept refers to the explicit material needs of families as they move through the various stages of the
reproductive cycle. A number of major life-cycle events have been related to residential adjustment or
relocation. More recently the life-cycle concept has been reformulated as the less-deterministic concept of
the life course. This avoids age stereotypes and acknowledges that economic and cultural factors can
induce households at the same life-cycle stage to adopt different residential behaviors.

Fundamentally, people move in the expectation of achieving a superior living environment. This premise
underlies the ‘value expectancy’ model, in which migration behavior is seen as the result of:

1 individual and household characteristics (e.g. life-cycle, household density);

2 societal and cultural norms (e.g. community mores);

3 personal traits (e.g. attitude to risk);

4 opportunity structure (e.g. areal differentials in economic opportunity);

5 information (e.g. volume and accuracy).

TEN LIFE-CYCLE EVENTS RELATED TO RESIDENTIAL ADJUSTMENT OR RELOCATION

1. Completion of secondary education

2. Completion of tertiary education

3. Completion of occupational training

4. Marriage
5. Birth of the first child

6. Birth of the last child

7. First child reaches secondary-school age

8. Last child leaves home

9. Retirement

10. Death of a spouse

Source: D. Rowland (1982) Living arrangements and the later family life cycle in Australia. Australian Journal of Ageing 1, 3–6

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW HOME

Whether the decision to move house is voluntary or forced all relocating households must:

1. specify an ‘aspiration set’ of criteria for evaluating new dwellings and living environments;

2. undertake a search for dwellings that satisfy these criteria;

3. select a specific dwelling unit.

New dwellings may be evaluated in terms of site characteristics (attributes of the dwelling itself) and
situational characteristics (the physical and social environment of the neighborhood). The lower limits of
the household aspiration set are defined by the characteristics of the dwelling currently occupied, while
the upper limits are set by standards to which the household can reasonably aspire. In most instances
these standards will be determined by income constraints but, as the value expectancy model suggests,
other factors may be involved, including a desire to avoid certain areas that do not conform to a particular
lifestyle.

On the basis of their aspiration set, individuals initiate a search procedure to locate a suitable new
dwelling. This search has a spatial bias. This may be illustrated by conceptualizing the city as comprising
four types of space:

1. Action space is the most extensive and refers to those parts of the city with which the individual is
familiar, and includes a subjective evaluation of places. Generally, the longer an individual lives in a city
the larger the action space and the greater the differentiation. New areas are assimilated into the action
space as travel and information spread.

2. Activity space is the territory within which daily movement takes place and is normally organized
around often-used nodes, including home, workplace, friends’ houses and shopping centers.

3. Awareness space indicates the extent of the territory on which a household has information concerning
housing opportunities. This area is conditioned by the household’s action and activity spaces.

4. Search space is a subset of awareness space within which possible new residential locations are
evaluated.
The geography of these spaces affects the outcome of the residential relocation decision. In addition to
information gained from active experience of the city, households also obtain information on new housing
opportunities from secondary sources, including newspapers. The relative importance of different
information sources varies for different households.

Access to information is also affected by search barriers that can:

1. raise the costs of gathering information (e.g. due to lack of transport, or time constraints on women
with young children);

2. limit the choice of housing units and locations available (e.g. due to financial constraints, or
discrimination in the housing market).

The eventual choice of new dwelling is based on the increase in satisfaction (place utility) produced by a
move. It is important to recognize, however, that in all cities there are many households where residential
location is constrained to the point where behavioral models are of limited significance. These subgroups
include poor people, elderly people, unemployed people, transient people and special-needs groups such
as lone-parent families and former inmates of institutions, as well as homeless people whose living space
is the street. Focusing on the constraints involved in residential relocation underlines the fundamental
importance of housing-market structure in conditioning residential mobility.

NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGE

The aggregate of individual household residential decisions is reflected in the changing socio-spatial
structure of city neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are in a constant state of flux. Some analysts have sought
to understand neighborhood dynamics by identifying stages in the process of neighborhood change. It is
important to recognize, however, that the life-cycle analogy inherent in many models can be misleading,
since, unlike biological species, neighborhoods do not follow a predetermined course of growth or
decline. At any stage in a neighborhood’s decline it may reverse direction (owing to inward investment)
and begin a period of revitalization. Similarly, upwardly mobile neighborhoods may have their progress
halted owing, for example, to negative externalities (such as the construction nearby of a noxious
facility).

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT

TOPIC 2. HOUSING PROBLEMS AND POLICY

The availability of shelter is a basic human need. Western governments have adopted different attitudes
towards meeting this need. At one extreme, housing is regarded as a consumer good rather than a social
entitlement. In the USA the government provides only 1% of the total stock in the form of social housing,
primarily as a complement to private urban-renewal programmes, and this effort is directed mainly at the
poor, one parent households, non-working families with dependent children or the low-income elderly. At
the other extreme, in Eastern Europe housing was long considered a universal right and an essential part
of the ‘social capital’, although in practice the inability of state resources to meet housing demand led to
the promotion of alternative forms of provision, including housing co-operatives and owner occupation.
The intermediate position is illustrated by the states of Western Europe, in which housing is considered to
be a limited social right, and where the state has intervened in the housing market to ensure a basic level
of shelter for the majority of the population. In the absence of intervention, between one-quarter and one-
third of the total population of most Western European countries would be unable to meet the full
economic cost of the housing it occupies.

TRENDS IN HOUSING TENURE IN THE UK

The extent of state support for housing provision and its distribution among tenures varies. In the UK,
central government has played a key role in determining the quality and quantity of housing available for
different social groups, with most assistance generally being directed to the owner-occupied sector (via
mortgage-tax relief) and the social rented sector (e.g. via rent subsidies). The private rented sector has
remained largely unassisted and subject to a lengthy period of rent control and regulation. The effects of
this policy regime are revealed in the changing tenure structure of Britain’s housing stock.

Over the course of the twentieth century a major transformation was effected in the tenure balance of
housing in the UK. Prior to the First World War almost 90% of households rented their accommodation
from private landlords, 2% rented from local authorities and the remainder was owner-occupiers. By 1991
the position had been largely reversed, with only 7% of households still renting privately compared with
68% owner-occupation and 25% who were council tenants. Most of the transformation occurred during
the post-Second World War period.

THE DECLINE OF PRIVATE RENTING

The principal factors underlying the decline are:

1. Slum clearance. The private rental sector included a high proportion of the oldest and poorest
dwellings, many built before 1919. From the 1930s onwards slum-clearance programmes demolished
hundreds of thousands of these houses.

2. Policies to deal with overcrowding. The Housing Acts of 1961, 1964 and 1969 increased controls
over multiple occupations, and thereby reduced the number of private tenants.

3. Housing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation aided by improvement grants was often followed by tenant
displacement and the sale of properties for owner-occupation, particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods.

4. Poor investment returns. The comparatively poor rate of return from investment in private rented
housing was apparent by the late nineteenth century. With the extension of the principle of limited
liability, the development of the stock exchange and building societies, the expansion of government and
municipal stock and increased overseas investment opportunities, capital flowed out of private rented
property into these alternative investment opportunities. During the twentieth century, increased public
intervention and, in particular, rent control further reduced the attraction of housing investment, while the
increasing cost of repair and maintenance also eroded profits.

5. The ethic of home-ownership. Although there were some building for private rental in the inter-war
period, the bulk of private house construction during the building boom of the 1930s, when interest rates
were low and land, materials and labor cheap, was for owner-occupation.

6. Subsidies and tax allowances. In contrast to the subsidies provided to council tenants and the tax
advantages for owner-occupiers, only since 1973 have private-rented tenants received rent allowances.
 Landlords of privately rented housing were not permitted to set a ‘depreciation allowance’ against their
tax liabilities, and this encouraged them to sell for owner-occupation.

An investigation into the decline of the private rented sector by the House of Commons Environmental
Committee (1982) concluded that private rented housing fell short on all the criteria for sound investment
—the level of risk, liquidity, expected return on capital, and management responsibility—when compared
with alternative opportunities. In London the large commercial landlords were withdrawing from the
market, selling off their freeholds to insurance companies and friendly societies, which in turn were
selling long leaseholds to owner-occupiers.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC-SECTOR HOUSING

The decline of private rented housing, the traditional source of shelter for those denied access to the
owner-occupied sector, led to direct government intervention in the provision of housing. The growth of
municipal housing also stemmed from:

1. the failure of nineteenth-century housing associations to demonstrate that it was possible to

provide decent dwellings in sufficient numbers at a rent affordable by the low paid;
2. increased working-class militancy over housing conditions, vividly displayed in the Glasgow rent
strikes of 1915;
3. the shortage of housing in the post-First World War era;
4. a gradual shift away from the Victorian ideology of self-help and the pervading belief in the
efficiency of the market mechanism.

HOUSING AFFORDABILITY

Housing affordability is measured by the proportion of household income spent on obtaining housing.
Since the early 1980s several structural forces in the UK have operated to make housing more expensive
in relation to incomes:

1. Increases in unemployment during periods of recession have reduced incomes and effectively debarred
households from the owner-occupied sector. For existing mortgagers this has led to problems over
mortgage repayment and in some cases substantial negative equity.

2. As a result of global economic restructuring and the changing nature of labor markets in advanced
capitalist societies, those with low levels of skill and limited education have the greatest difficulty in
entering the job market and securing an income sufficient to meet the market cost of housing.

3. The private rented sector has continued to decline, and rents have increased following the easing of rent
control.

4. There is reduced access to social rented housing as a result of government policies such as the ‘right to
buy’, and constraints on new public sector construction.

Housing affordability is a problem for places as well as for people. Many people cannot find housing near
their workplace or find work at a reasonable distance from where they can afford to live. In many areas
workers crucial to the local economy, such as teachers and police, cannot afford to live in the
communities they serve. The problem is particularly severe in cities with overheated housing markets.
These include high-tech hot-spots in places like Boston, Denver and San Francisco where rents increased
by more than 20% in the late 1990s, and global cities such as London.
The starkest indication of an affordability crisis, however, is represented by the growing incidence of
homelessness, which is most visible in the inner areas of large cities, where the sight of people sleeping in
doorways and living in cardboard shelters is redolent of conditions in the Third World city.

HOMELESSNESS

Homelessness is an extreme form of social exclusion, caused by a combination of personal and structural
factors. Most homeless people leave their home either because parents or friends are no longer willing to
accommodate them or because of the breakdown of a relationship. Structural factors underlying
homelessness include insufficient construction of affordable housing, gentrification, cutbacks in welfare
budgets, stagnating or falling real incomes, and the rise of part-time and insecure employment.
Discriminatory practices can also contribute to the problem for some social groups. Those most at risk of
homelessness include unemployed people, single mothers, disabled people and frail elderly individuals,
runaway youths, battered women and children, immigrants and refugees, substance abusers and
deinstitutionalized mental patients. While many of the homeless are highly visible (e.g. beggars and
rough-sleepers), most are not noticeably different from other citizens. The invisible homeless have to
cope with the day-to-day strain of living in temporary accommodation, hostels, bed-and-breakfast hotels,
or in cramped conditions with friends and relatives.

Definitions of homelessness vary between countries, making estimates of the number of homeless persons
difficult. In the UK the number of those officially homeless rose from 53,100 households in 1978 to
146,000 households (460,000 persons) in 1994. These figures exclude people not accepted by the local
authority as homeless or who are not felt to be in ‘priority need’. The latter category excludes most single
people and childless couples who approach local authorities for housing assistance. A 1995 report on
single homelessness in London enumerated 47,000 persons living in squats, bed-and breakfast
accommodation or sleeping rough, none of whom had been accepted as being in priority need and
therefore officially classified as homeless. In Britain as a whole, at any time during the 1990s, over
500,000 people lacked a permanent roof over their heads. In Canada more than 26,500 different
individuals make use of Toronto’s emergency shelter system each year; and this does not include the
number who sleeps rough. In the USA the national total of homeless people in 1995 was estimated at
between 500,000 and 600,000. In New York half the 80,000 homeless live on the street and the remainder
in public or private emergency sheltered accommodation. One in five are parents and children, one-third
young adults aged between 16 and 21 years, and the remainder single people, of whom 80% are men.

As many as 90% of the residents of sheltered accommodation are from ethnic minority groups even
though such groups constitute only 40% of the city population.

In Los Angeles, where the city council has employed barrel-shaped ‘bum proof benches and sprinkler
systems to discourage people from sleeping in parks, the homeless established a series of encampments in
the heart of the city.

ALTERNATIVE HOUSING STRATEGIES

An international review of alternative housing strategies reveals a wide range of schemes designed to
overcome the shortage of decent and affordable housing. These include:

1. equity sharing, in which the occupier owns part of the equity in the house and rents the rest from a local
authority, with the option to buy the remaining equity as they can afford it;
2. sale of public land to private developers on condition that it is used to provide low-cost ‘starter homes’;

3. local authority building for sale, or improvement of older houses for sale;

4. sheltered housing, a common form of accommodation for the elderly in Britain. The Anchor Trust
houses 24,000 tenants in 21,000 sheltered units, two-thirds of tenants being dependent on state benefits;

5. self-build housing, whereby the eventual occupiers purchase a plot and organize construction. It
accounts for 80% of detached housing in Australia, 60% in Germany and 50% of all new building in
France;

6. homesteading, in which the ‘sweat equity’ of people’s self-help efforts reduces the amount of cash the
homesteader is required to put into the scheme. In practice, the skilled nature of the work involved often
requires the use of contractors. Although initially seen as a means of providing low-income homes, the
high costs of rehabilitation and the skills required work against this.

A further problem is that the selection of homesteaders depends on their ability to meet the costs rather
than on their housing needs, with the result that, unless restrictions can be applied, gentrification may take
place, in contradiction of the original spirit of the idea.