Urban Planning and Geography

Urban Geography

The description and analysis of urban areas has been a subject of study for geographers since the earliest settlements. The distribution and location of urban centers and the factors that influence their spatial patterns provide for the understanding of urban development and, in some cases, their demise. Figure 3 illustrates the multidimensional approach that geography has taken in the study of urban areas. There are four dimensions to the geographical analysis of urban areas: (1) the spatial, (2) thematic, (3) analytic, and (4) chronological. The overall thrust of this research has been through a spatial dimension or lens focusing on a thematic factor or some combination of factors, such as the environmental, social, economic, or political characteristics. The spatial lens changes with scale, so that by zooming in a theme can be investigated at the local level or microscale—a neighborhood or a smaller portion of the city—and by zooming out the global interrelationships (macroscale) between cities or metropolitan areas can be examined. The spatial dimension establishes the context in which the theme can be described and analyzed. Urban areas consist of only a tiny portion of Earth's land surface (.5%); however, they are home to currently more than 50% of the population. Urban geography has to be able to analyze this landscape at various scales because of the interrelationships and connections within an urban area and between urban areas across the globe.

Figure 1 World total and urban population, 1990–2030

Source: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2008.

The thematic dimension of urban research provides the elements of an urban area that are linked together to establish its character. The city is a system either within its own area or as a part of the interconnection between cities, and it is imperative to know the elements of the city or cities to understand how the system works together. The general environmental, social, economic, and political dimensions are the broad characteristics of any city. However, there are many subthemes that are more specific; for example, the social dimension can be subdivided into families, race, ethnicity, or medical history. The number of subthemes can be limitless depending on the specificity of the researchers and their characteristic interest. This notion is made more complex by the investigation of multiple subthemes spanning several major elements. The spatial distribution of environmental quality and its impacts on health and living conditions for the underprivileged of a specific ethnic background are an illustration of this point. Thus, many different subthemes of several elements can be examined at different spatial scales.

...