WHY URBAN GEOGRAPHY?
What is Urban Geography?
Urban Geography is the study of cities – its layout, patterns, and the factors that shape it and continue to change it. It is also the study of cities that reveal how money and power shape urban spaces.
Many of the most critical issues facing modern societies now and into the future revolve around the cities' lives. If you need to know the necessity of urban geography today, think for a second about your life's issues, that has great importance.
Among specific concerns include:
• Where you live
• Who you live among
• Your opportunities for leisure and social activities
• Your mobility
• Your income, career opportunities, and access to the wealth
• Your safety and your exposure to antisocial behavior
• Personal health and your level of stress in life
• Your access to facilities such as financial and health services
• The pollution of your local environment
Understanding the processes that produce and sustain inequalities present in our society and thinking of possible solutions creates engagement with life in cities and hence with Urban Geography.
A Changing Context For Urban Geography
Urban Geography is a discipline under the human geography that uses past ideas and approaches, and current concepts and issues in the modern era. The first and original approaches were never forgotten by studying geography and the philosophical systems that have a considerable significance to this discipline.
Instead, it became the fundamental idea for the course of studying Urban Geography. There are two approaches; the early and the modern approaches.
EARLY APPROACH
The two approaches below outlined were primarily associated with urban geography's infancy – meaning, it is the foundational study in Urban Geography.
• Site and Situation, and Urban Morphology
In the early approaches, this has been a relevant idea. For Site and Situation, the early twentieth century was concerned with the physical characteristics for developing an area's settlement and development. This approach has been outdated, especially to those rural areas that turned into urban areas. The concept of urbanization overlapped original factors in finding and studying a location since it does not cover much of its development compared to the Urban Morphology, which is developed during the twentieth century in some German universities. A descriptive approach studies urban development by examining the growth phases of urban areas. It aims to classify the degrees of urban growth using the buildings and the surrounding lots as evidence. During the 1950s to 1960s, this approach became a focus
managers, and planners' roles regarding urban design and form.
THE MODERN APPROACHES
During the post-1950s, a more mature approach came to control the study of Urban Geography.
• Positivism
The positivist approach tends to use scientific investigation in the study of urban geography - it usually adheres to evidence, hypothesis, and theories. It classifies into two categories: the Ecological and the Neo-classical methods.
Ecological methods are based upon the idea that human behavior is determined by its ecology – meaning that the influential group would usually tend to get a more comfortable and suitable space for them. For example, in a residential area, the family who paid the room first will get to choose the more ideal and comfortable place.
Neo-classical methods are about the belief that human behavior is inspired by rationality - which means that every decision in taking or obtaining a space has undergone different
considerations. For example, before buying a house, a person would first consider its accessibility to various public facilities like terminals, malls, markets, etc.; its environment, whether it is quiet or too loud; or the neighborhood.
• Behavioral and Humanistic Approach
These two approaches are focused on the interaction or relationship between human behaviors and the environment.
The behavioral approach sought to expand the idea that the environment's subjective knowledge is influencing human behavior. For example, some people chose to buy a condominium unit in the cities rather than buy land in the province because they think opportunities are in the cities.
The humanistic approach pursued the human as the center of changes in the environment – it means that people's actions, symbols, values, and cultures affect the environment. For example, the traditional Chinese homes are lined with their beliefs in feng shui reading.
• Structural Analysis
It is an approach in geography that focuses on the idea that each change in the environment and human behavior connect with society's different structures. For example, before a person starts a business, they should first consider their business location, then the people around that area (students, office workers, churchgoers, etc.), and the place's economic status.
• Postmodern Theory
This theory serves as a criticism in the Modern approach in Geography. Like in Philosophy, Postmodern Approach believes that not everything is the absolute truth and that every individual has their truth. For example, some individuals perceive that people living in the slums came from the provinces and then finding out that some came from different cities and just relocated there.
NEW CITIES, NEW URBAN GEOGRAPHIES
In studying the concept of cities, we need to know its five (5) key ideas:
• Cities are constantly changing.
• This change is essential and transforms the structure of the cities
• Contemporary cities have an extreme diversity in their nature
• Many models for urbanity is created to identify the characteristics of different types of cities in general
• The study of urban geography has evolved and changed through times.
Different Types Of Cities
Many urban geographers and historians have stated that the cities we recognize are the product of a long process.
The settlements of 15,000 BC gradually evolved into the complex city of the early 21st century. This view may seem very interesting; however, it ignores some critical dimensions of contemporary urbanization. There are no identical cities. They may have similarities in some aspects, but cities have very different landscapes, economies, cultures, and societies. It signifies the fact that a diverse set of processes shapes cities. The collection of techniques that may affect city development depends on unique factors to individual cities – such as city size and the nature of its economy, and/or related to broader factors - such as the relationships between cities' networks. The flexibility of city types and urbanization processes cannot be reduced to a simple, direct evolutionary procedure. It is advisable to adopt an idea that recognizes this diversity and thinks of cities as having different contributions to the world's economics.
The following classification of different types of cities recognizes this:
• Third World cities
Third World was initially used during the Cold War to distinguish nations neither aligned with the West (NATO) nor the East (Communist bloc).
Today, this idea often describes the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.
• Cities in Socialist countries
The Socialist City is an ideal place. These cities' designs desire to shape a new future in older, existing cities, such as Berlin and Leipzig, and new ones, such as Halle-Neustadt and
Stalinstadt, later named as Eisenhüttenstadt.
• Global (World) cities
The Global Cities are the world’s most important center and influence on globalization. This type of city has a set of values and ideas, which will significantly affect the world. A Global City has the power, wealth, and influence in the other countries, and clouds the largest capital markets. In 2019, there are only 25 cities considered as Global City: one of them is New York City and London city.
• Older (former) Industrial cities
Older Industrial Cities consists of independent structures like factories and small facilities located on a city's outskirts.
• New Industrial districts
• New Industrial Districts came from Alfred Marshall’s concept or idea, wherein he described it as a place where workers and the firms where they work live and work. Unlike in Older Industrial cities
where workers live in different areas and that the city or district is meant for the factories and other structures solely, New Industrial Districts have both the living and working spaces co-exist for the people working. It will make people more productive since their workplace is near the firm where they are performing their tasks.
Evolution Of Industrial Cities
The cities formed has been influenced by the urbanization processes linked to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century are relevant to discussing contemporary urban geography for several reasons. First, such Industrial cities constitute a large part of the
urban systems of the UK, the USA, and Europe. Industrialization influenced many cities' internal geographies and the political, economic, and physical that link it. These heritages have formed critical dimensions of subsequent urbanization. These cities are called modern or industrial in some debates.
As well as the importance of the cities to the study of older industrial nations in urban geography, industrial city has also had a disproportionate influence on the theory of the modern urban approach. The distinctive form of the industrial city became well known in the latter half of the 19th century. The conditions that prevailed in the inner residential areas made it ripe for study by some satirists, journalists, novelists, and social reporters - for example, Charles Dickens’ Hard Times (1854) and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1845); or social reports like Friedrich Engels’ exploration of Manchester published in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844).
Reactions to the industrial cities also shaped some 19th and 20th-century traditions in political ideology, town planning, and literature (Short, 1984). The intellectual and physical legacy of the industrial cities, therefore, is hard to ignore.
The most immediately striking aspects of the industrial city were the extent to which they revolutionized the United Kingdom and the USA's urban systems, and the speed at which this took place. For example, during the 1800s in Britain, London is the only city that has reached 100,000. However, by 1891, this had risen to twenty-four cities (Ley, 1983). In the USA, this process occurred some fifty to sixty years later. Its effects were nonetheless significant. The urban systems focused on previous political, religious, or mercantile centers to manufacturing centers in the UK and the USA. Sources of cheap energy, first water, and later coal, acted as strong magnets for this growth, coupled with the accessibility offered by rivers and other waterways such as lakes.
The size and speed of these cities' growth are new and the other factors that shaped it. The city's growth has a connection to the factories' development within the developing form of capitalism in the industrial system. The industry's ability to outbid other land use near the cities' centers was fundamental to the industrial city's generalized form portrayed in contemporary accounts and urban models. Industrial cities' cores remained predominantly commercial, land use that could outbid all others for this expensive
accessible land. However, surrounding this core was typically a ring of industry, which required a large labor force housed nearby, leading to the development of a circle of working-class housing surrounding it. The regulation of this residential development was non-existent until the late nineteenth century in many industrial cities. Systems of urban government were archaic, based in the parish system, and more suited to rural areas or small urban areas.
Consequently, they were overwhelmed by the scale of urbanization during the nineteenth century. The housing quality in this zone was inferior, and the provision of services and utilities such as running water, lighting, and sanitation was frequently lacking. These zones became notorious for outbreaks of lawlessness and disease, initiating a series of moral panics among the wealthier middle classes. These reactions to new working-class housing zones were fundamental to the middle classes' desire to move away from the center of cities into the expanding suburbs, a desire facilitated by progressive transport innovation.
DIVERSITY AND SPATIAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE CITY(unit2) MOVEMENT & SETTLEMENT IN THE CITIES
Why do People move?
The geographical response of rural-urban migration to unequal growth is human. Besides forced relocation of refugees, most of them move for economic reasons. Migration implies in several models.
Migration was an answer to classical economic models in the 1960s to distinguish between employment and pay rates. Migration, as a mechanism that combines labor supply with demand and contributes to the country's economic growth. A second, neo-classical economic outlook described migration as a way for people to select a sound economy based on current or potential advantages.
In more recent interpretations, the emphasis on the systemic forces underlying spatial variations of economic opportunities was a political, economical approach. This historical-structural perspective stresses the importance of developmental level in deciding the scale and type of migration and
emphasizes that migration's various factors related to development vary from one country to another over time. This study is specifically related to the inclusion in the world economy of Third World countries.
The urban prejudice inherent in the Third World's colonial capitalist growth brought a substantial difference into communities mostly egalitarian, with most citizens having access to some nation. The conventional socio-economic system weakened by the need for labor in the capitalist production mode.
These have also been accomplished by limiting farmers' access to land resources and pushing them to work as salaried laborers in the capitalistic sector (either by forced labor regimes or indirectly by taxation).
Furthermore, the rural communities witnessed and accepted their relative misery as their integration progressed. Although some have tried to change their rural areas (adaptation), those in cities (migrations) have seen better prospects. Following independence, national efforts to achieve rapid economic growth have had a powerful effect on migration levels and trends, primarily by intensifying natural resources extraction, commercialization of farming, and industrialization.
The historical-structural aspect of the 'development paradigm of migration' highlights that migration is not a single phenomenon. It is also a human response to changing local conditions in a global economic system. It highlights the need to appreciate both the systemic factors (e.g., global economic trend, government policies, and technological innovations) and individual household circumstances (e.g., socio- economic status, age, and sex) for understanding third-world migration.
The Decision to Move
The Decision-making process for residential housing results from tension induced by the conflict between the household's needs, desires, and ambitions in its actual living environment. As we all know, stress can come within (like change in family size) or from outside (like the expiration of home lease).
They may also be residential (such as a need for an additional bedroom) or locational (e.g., longer trips to work because of a job modification). When this occurs, relationship between the degree of progress (what decision-makers already have) and expectations are affected by the stressor.
The Search for a New Home
Whether the decision to move or switch house is voluntary or forced, all relocating households must:
Specify an 'aspiration set' of criteria for evaluating new dwellings and living environments.
Undertake a search for homes that satisfy these criteria; and
Select a specific dwelling unit.
New housing is evaluated based on the site characteristics (dwelling attributes) and situational characteristics (neighborhood physical and social environment). The lower limits of the household's goal dictate the house's characteristics currently being occupied, while the household may reasonably aspire to the upper limits. These expectations, in most cases, are dictated by income limitation. Still, other
considerations, including a willingness to evade certain areas that do not adhere to a specific lifestyle, may be included as indicated in the value expectancy model.
Based on their aspiration, people start a search procedure to find a proper new residence. There is a spatial bias in this quest. It is conceptualizing the city as comprising four types of space:
Raise the costs of gathering information (e.g., Because of lack of transportation or time limitations for women with children); and
Limit the choice of housing units and locations available (e.g., due to financial conditions or discrimination in the housing market).
A new home's possible choice is based on increased satisfaction generated (place utility) by a transfer.
However, it is essential to regard that several households in every city where a residence is restricted, to the degree that behavioral models have limited relevance. These subgroups include the disabled, the elderly, the unemployed, transients, and groups with special needs, including single parents and former institutions' offenders and homeless people with a street living. Concentrating on the restrictions placed on residential transfers highlights the fundamental importance of the housing sector framework to condition residential mobility.
POLITICAL FACTOR
According to the Organization for International Migration, approximately 192 million people live outside of their birthplace. A large number of these people are migrant workers and make up 3% of the world's population. In searching for better economic conditions, human beings have always migrated from one place to another. But apart from economic factors, there are political factors that force people to migrate from their home country to another country.
1. State Persecution
State persecution includes harassing, discriminating, and torturing persons who disagree with their government, who have religious beliefs or cultural backgrounds of minorities. Since their country's conditions are unhealthy, their choice is to move to safer nations.
2. Lack of Political Liberties
The lack of political freedoms and privileges and endemic corruption
serve as a driving force for migration seeking liberty and equality. Even though people who migrated has no problem in their places of birth, concerns that limit people's freedoms cause them to leave. If the
political situation is aggressive, then the economic situation is likely to be weak. For political and economic reasons, this triggers migration.
Many migrants migrate to more democratic countries where they can seek better jobs, education, and independence.
3. Cultural-Political
Political instability created by cultural diversity allows individuals with a specific cultural identity to move within the country or away from their homeland. As a result of conflicts or racial clashes, the ethical communities initially left apart may be forced into the same territorial borders. The influx of one ethnic group may replace another group. Governments may also force cultural organizations to migrate from one place to another (within or outside the country) to achieve political benefit by providing less cultural diversity.
ECONOMIC FACTOR
The majority of research shows that economic factors primarily drive migration. Low agricultural wages, agricultural unemployment, and underemployment are considered fundamental elements in developing countries that push migrants into industrialized areas with more excellent career opportunities. Thus, almost all reports conclude that most migrants have migrated in search of more substantial economic opportunities 'Push Factors' and 'Pull Factors'- may be further classified as the fundamental economic factors that motivate migration.
The Push Factors force a person to leave that location and go to another area for various reasons.
Stagnant productivity, unemployment and underdevelopment, economic challenges, inadequate resources for progress, the depletion of natural capital, and natural disasters are the main drivers. The introduction of capital-intensive production methods into agriculture and some operations' mechanization decrease labor requirements in rural areas. Migration is also a significant factor in the shortage of alternate sources of income available in rural areas.
The Pull Factors are factors that attract the migrants to a location. Opportunities for better jobs, higher salaries, facilities, better working conditions, and desirable amenities are pull factors in a city.
CULTURAL AND SOCIAL FACTOR
Cultural reasons for migration may include the pursuit of education or religious freedom. People can also migrate from their society to places that have already been settled by others. Social migration is moving towards a higher quality of life, closer to family or friends. City culture is a part of living in a city wherein people love and consider to be necessary. Culture emerges from the history of a community as a product of the shared experiences of its people. There might be more than one culture in a city. For instance, cosmopolitan cities may be seen as a patchwork of traditional culture subcultures and super cultures.
Food - The culture of food production, variety, planning, display, service, and appreciation occurs in a city. A unique style of cuisine attracts many residents in the city. For example, many of the Pampanga residents are moving to Angeles City and San Fernando City because of the variety of delicious foods. Just like in other country Filipinos people love to eat.
Education - As far as education is concerned, many parents send their children, or even the whole family, to countries with prestigious schools such as Harvard and Oxford in America.
Quality of life - Quality of life is the wellbeing of people, communities, and cultures. It is a comprehensive indicator that can be used to evaluate efforts to improve cities and countries. Just like living conditions, safety precautions, and the most important thing is happiness that you need to experience when you're in the city.
STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF MIGRATION
Migration in the Third World affects a variety of factors associated with the development process.
They can be divided into influences of rural push and urban pull.
RURAL PUSH FACTORS
Population-growth rates high rate of population growth in rural areas are among the most prevalent factors for migration. In the 1950s and 1960s, migration was regarded as the movement of surplus labor, informing the economic paradigm of migration. However, the leading cause of emigration is not
populational growth alone. Instead, the demographic pressure's impact must be seen in tandem with other mechanisms that do not sufficiently meet a rising rural population's needs. Access to land is one of the most urgent conditions.
• Pressure on land
Migration is often a direct reaction to a situation where the quantity of land available to sustain a family is no longer adequate. Over many decades, development and subdivision in rural Mexico led to families rising inadequate land to meet their needs. The situation is aggravated by centralized ownership of the land, as Shaw (1976) showed in Latin America. The average rural migration rate was highest in countries such as Mexico and Peru, where over half of the land was used as latifundia (states over 500 ha, 1 200 acres) and more than half (less than 5 ha, 12acres) of all farms.
• Land quality
Migration also affects the quality or appropriateness of land for agriculture. In many instances, the colonization of Amazonia's rich land resources struggled to mitigate the land deficit due to its inappropriateness in many crops. Similarly, population growth and agricultural land scarcity in many areas of Asia drive people into
marginal ecological areas or increase their land-use intensity, leading to decreased soil fertility.
• Agricultural inefficiency
The effects of rural population growth are compounded in the general rural and agricultural sectors, particularly by the slow economic and technological changes. The persistence of inefficient agriculture and the lack of farm capital limit farmers' capacity to provide the cash needed for market economy participation. Regional expansion of the rural economy's non-agricultural sector often decreases local jobs. Under these conditions, labor migration offers low rural households with difficulty meeting the essential livelihood requirement on the ground, an invaluable source of cash income.
• Agricultural intensification
The intensification of agriculture and modern farming practices has led to absorbing rural population growth (in Java and the Indian Punjab, for example). It also had the opposite impact by replacing farm workers with mechanically and technologically intensive farms. Thousands of paddy farmers have been
displaced in Malaysia. The government has tried to increase rice production productivity with investment in large irrigation systems and scattered paddy farms. Without alternative rural jobs, landless workers have migrated to the cities to look for employment. In Latin America, agrarian reform programs freed farmers from 'feudal' labor structures with previously limited migration.
URBAN PULL FACTORS
• Wage and employment differentials
Higher wages and more diverse job opportunities are the principal cause of rural-urban migration in the region. There is ample evidence that migration trends shift as a result of shifts between destinations' income differentials.
10 Comparison concerning urban and rural standards of living is complicated by:
• The disparities in living costs must be considered, which is generally much lower due to cheaper food, electricity, transport, and accommodation.
• The higher levels of collective consumption in the city, better education and healthcare, more clean water, and more electric energy are accessible; and
• The need for separation, given the lack of importance of untrained rural migrants for average urban wage rates.
Nevertheless, the likelihood of economic development for migrants in the region is usually more substantial. While many urban residents live in precarious circumstances, many consider themselves economically better off than before moving to the city. Even some of Jakarta's poorest street vendors, whose families couldn't feed, registered better in the town because of two-thirds of their profits.
Similarly, the cities have twice as many working days as some of the most destitute rural migrants to Delhi, leading to two and a half times those in the village.
• Future prospects
A few observers have challenged the connection between urban jobs and migration because of large- scale rural-urban migration and increasing urban poverty and unemployment. Todaro (1969) proposed that migrants who take a longer-term view of their living standards' future improvement may clarify this apparent paradox. Even if only for their children, people were considered able to tolerate short-term difficulties expecting that economic benefit and social security would increase in the longer term.
• Bright lights
The city's social attraction has been suggested to describe rural-urban migration as a noneconomic factor. Most migrants, however, don't have the money to use the interests of the region. Although the 'bright lights' could influence a migrant's choice among several possible destinations, the definition does not clarify the migration's first choice. Furthermore, the busy climate of the city provides many migrants with fewer attractions than their home town.
