Urban structure is the arrangement of

land use Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as settlements and semi-natural habitats such as arable fields, pastures, and managed woods. Land use by humans has a long h ...

urban area An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities, t ...

s, in other words, how the land use of a city is set out.

Urban planner An urban planner (also known as town planner) is a professional who practices in the field of town planning, urban planning or city planning. An urban planner may focus on a specific area of practice and have a title such as city planner, town ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

s, and

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

s have developed several models that explain where different types of people and businesses tend to exist within the urban setting. Urban structure can also refer to urban spatial structure, which concerns the arrangement of

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

and private space in cities and the degree of

connectivity Connectivity may refer to: Computing and technology * Connectivity (media), the ability of the social media to accumulate economic capital from the users connections and activities * Internet connectivity, the means by which individual terminal ...

and accessibility.

Zonal model

This model was the first to explain distribution of social groups within urban areas. Based on one single city,

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, it was created by sociologist

Ernest Burgess Ernest Watson Burgess (May 16, 1886 – December 27, 1966) was a Canadian-American urban sociologist born in Tilbury, Ontario. He was educated at Kingfisher College in Oklahoma and continued graduate studies in sociology at the University of Ch ...

in 1924. According to this model, a

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

grows outward from a central point in a series of

concentric In geometry, two or more objects are said to be concentric, coaxal, or coaxial when they share the same center or axis. Circles, regular polygons and regular polyhedra, and spheres may be concentric to one another (sharing the same center point ...

rings. The innermost ring represents the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

. It is surrounded by a second ring, the zone of transition, which contains industry and poorer-quality housing. The third ring contains housing for the working-class and is called the zone of independent workers' homes. The fourth ring has newer and larger houses usually occupied by the

middle-class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Comm ...

. This ring is called the zone of better residences. The outermost ring is called the commuter's zone. This zone represents people who choose to live in residential

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

s and take a daily commute into the CBD to work.

Sectoral model

A second theory of urban structure was proposed in 1939 by an economist named

Homer Hoyt Homer Hoyt (June 14, 1895 – November 29, 1984) was an American economist known for his pioneering work in land use planning, zoning, and real estate economics. He conducted notable research on land economics and developed an influential appro ...

. His model, the sector model, proposed that a city develops in sectors instead of rings. Certain areas of a city are more attractive for various activities, whether by chance or geographic and environmental reasons. As the city grows and these activities flourish and expand outward, they do so in a wedge and become a sector of the city. If a district is set up for high income housing, for example, any new development in that district will expand from the outer edge. To some degree this theory is just a refinement on the concentric model rather than a radical restatement. Both Hoyt and Burgess claimed

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

supported their model. Burgess claimed that Chicago's central business district was surrounded by a series of rings, broken only by

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

. Hoyt argued that the best housing developed north from the central business district along Lake Michigan, while industry located along major rail lines and roads to the south, southwest, and northwest.

Calgary, Alberta Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Canadian Prairies, Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,30 ...

almost perfectly fits Hoyt's sector model.

Multiple nuclei model

Geographers

Chauncy Harris Chauncy Dennison Harris (1914 - December 26, 2003) was a pioneer of modern geography. His seminal works in the field of American urban geography ("The Nature of Cities" and "A Functional Classification of Cities in the United States") along with h ...

and

Edward Ullman Edward Louis Ullman (1912 – 1976), son of classical scholar Berthold Ullman, was trained as a geographer at University of Chicago where he was influenced by the urban and economic emphasis in social science. He was an urban geographer, transp ...

developed the multiple nuclei model in 1945.Harris C D and Ullman E L (1945), "The nature of cities" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 242: 7-17 According to this model, a city contains more than one center around which activities revolve. Some activities are attracted to particular nodes while others try to avoid them. For example, a university node may attract well-educated residents, pizzerias, and bookstores, whereas an airport may attract hotels and warehouses. Other businesses may also form clusters, sometimes known locally as Iron Triangles for automobile repair or

red light district A red-light district or pleasure district is a part of an urban area where a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, and adult theaters, are found. In most cases, red-light districts are partic ...

s for prostitution, or arts districts. Incompatible activities will avoid clustering in the same area, explaining why heavy industry and high-income housing rarely exist in the same neighbourhood.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Urban Structure Urban geography Urban planning Urban design