Urban and Regional Development

Origins of Urban and Regional Development

Like most academic concepts, the origins of urban and regional development can be traced to broader intellectual pursuits combined with changes in wider economic, cultural, and political, conditions. In geography, students of urban and regional development emerged from the subdisciplines of urban and economic geography. Early geographical models of urban development were often econometric. Walter Christaller's central place theory, for example, focused on the placing and spacing of urban settlements by examining the geographical draw of hierarchies of economic goods that, in turn, produced hierarchies of settlements spaced equidistant from each other by virtue of the mix of goods and services found in them. Brian Berry used central place theory to understand distributions of urban settlements and economic activities in the Midwest of the United States.

Early contributions from sociology include Ernest Burgess's studies of Chicago, in which he viewed the city as a laboratory for the study of urban form and urban social problems. Cities were seen as organic, expanding and changing in social and physical form in a process similar to the succession of plant life. The structure of urban form and growth appeared to be in concentric zones, with the central business district (CBD) at the center and surrounded by a transition from the CBD to more residential areas, which in turn were structured into concentric zones by levels of affluence. The mobility of citizens, measured in journey-to-work commutes, use of telephones, and land values at strategic locations (and change in the number and spatiality of strategic locations), is couched in terms of a city's “metabolism” and reflects the “vitality” and “health” of a city's economic and social life. Additionally, “disorganization” of urban life in the form of vice, poverty, concentrations of minority populations, and disinvestment in the built environment is attributed to the “excess” of actual population growth over natural increase (i.e., immigration). Disorganization along with the demand for labor are seen as natural to urban life and appear to act as “stimulants” for the mobility of citizens, creating pressures for urban expansion and succession of land uses.

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