Samenvatting Stadsgeografie
Literatuur Tentamen
Hoorcollege 1 – De Mobiele stad
Chapter 2 Urban Geography – Changing approaches
Four fundamental themes in urban geography
1. The internal geographies of cities of various kinds
2. The relationships between cities and their wider contexts
3. Exploring and accounting for global urban diversity
4. Different ways of thinking about, defining, theorizing and researching the city
Thinking across the history of urban geography (internal structure of cities)
- Chicago school: human ecology, competition between groups of people: economics and
culture form city. I.e.: paying rent, communities based on ethnicity/lifestyle
Models: Burgess’ concentric zone, Hoyt’s sector model
- Social sciences: positivist.
- Structuralist approach across the social sciences with Karl Marx: emphasizing inequality and
the exploitation of the working class: capitalist regime of accumulation.
- Urban managerialist approach: emphasizing conflict, racism and inequalities in wealth and
power.
Cities in wider contexts
Places should not be seen as closed, bounded, but as open and interconnected -> network
approaches
Global urban diversity
Current trends in urbanization: diversity of cities and urban lifestyles around the world. There is been
looked at cities in the Global South while applying wester urban theory. Need of a new cosmopolitan
theory: theory based on post-modern city Los Angeles.
Thinking about the city
Long evolution of theory, much debate and thinking in terms of theory.
Chapter 12 Urban Geography – Transport and mobility
in cities
Transport impacts the shape of the city, but also ecologies, societies, cultures and economies.
1
,Urban form and mobility
Enhanced personal mobility -> growth of cities: suburbs and decentralization of the city. In many
cities of the Global South the transition from the walking city to the car based city has been
extremely rapid. The result of this is that walking and non-motorized vehicles have not declined to
anything like the extent that they have in the cities of the North. Thus, we have partially transformed
cities that rely significantly on the car, competing with the chaotic still present walking and non-
motorized transport city, because the growth of the transport city was not based around public
transport.
Car use in cities globally
Densely populated cities have lower numbers of car use (less fuel consumption)
The impacts of care based mobility
- Environmental: fuel consumption and emissions (most severe in area of heavier traffic: area
where lower incomes live)
- Health: poor air quality (in cities), death, injuries and impact on urban ecosystems
- Economic: cost of congestion (fuel and time loss)
- Social: not owning a car can mean no access to employment, education, retail and other
facilities, also loss of space for urban social life (-> social exclusion)
Tackling car based mobility
Substitution and switching mechanisms:
- Linking trips: single trip addressing a number of purposes
- Technology: electronic communication instead of physical travel
- Trip modification: trip is modified by type (I.e.: mobile goods delivery)
- Mode switching: car sharing, public transport and cycling instead of drive alone car travel
- Destination switching: creating more local destinations
- Time switching: traveling at less congested off-peak times reducing travel time
Case study: geographies of urban cycling
Regional and urban variations in cycling levels: Flanders and Wallonia
Case study: curbing car use in cities: some international examples
- Public transport networks as alternative
- Pleasant urban design for walking and cycling
- Financial or physical car accesses measures
- Curitiba: develops around public transport network
The mobilities turn in urban geography
New mobilities paradigm within the social sciences: urban life depends on immobile platforms such
as petrol stations, roads etc.
Hagerstrand 1970 – What about people in regional
science?
Regional science is one of the possible instruments with which to guide policy and planning (i.e. with
regards to spatial distribution of needs). We have to take into account location, culture and
2
, individual when researching something or setting up a theory (i.e. Central Place Theory: principles do
not apply at every situation).
A location has space coordinates, but also time coordinates: time-space concept. The concept of a
life path or a day path is a time-space walk (visualized in prisms) with constraints:
1. Capability constraints: limited by biological construction and/or tools he can command
I.e.: sleeping, eating, arms reach (extended by tools), voice and eyes
2. Coupling constraints: joining other individuals, tools and materials to do activitities limited by
time
I.e.: go to work, school
3. Authority constraints: limited by control are or domain
I.e.: rules, laws, norms
Viewed in a time-space perspective, then, we have two diverse systems in interaction. One is the
predominantly time-directed warp of individual life-paths, which make up the population of an area
and the capability constraints. The other is the more space-oriented set of constraints of domains
and bundles to which the individual may or may not have access according to his needs and wants.
Access to liveability items involves much more than the simple juxtaposition of supplies in regions of
arbitrary size. It involves a time-space location which really allows the life-path to make the required
detours. It further involves the construction of barriers, physical, legal, economic and political, which
serve to give to everyone his full share of the fundamental requirement (food etc.).
Disadvantages of constraints are issues, i.e. poverty problem.
Priester 2013 - The Diversity of Megacities Worldwide:
Challenges for the Future of Mobility
Upgrading of transport infrastructure (improvement of public transport systems) can hardly keep up
with demographic and economic growth of cities. Differences in the history, background, culture,
economic strength and governance of megacities around the world lead to a great variation in
patterns of mobility. Cities differ from each other in many ways: by spatial structure, the existing
transport supply, the population’s individual mobility behaviour, and also by their economic, political
and cultural framing conditions, which is why each city has different challenges and opportunities for
improved urban transport and mobility. These challenges include the demand for transport leading
to capacity problems for infrastructure; competition in land-use; post-fossil fuel mobility; climate-
change impacts; intermodal transport issues; and the evolution of people’s mobility patterns and
level of demand.
Key indicators of the mega city cluster (similarity) analysis are:
- General city characteristics
- Transport supply indicators
- Mobility indicators
- Investment in private and public transport
- Various transport impact indicators
For example Melbourne and Sydney form an early cluster based on these indicators because they are
very similar based on their mobility. When further clustering, this results in 7 clusters:
3
