Urban Form and Land Use in LDC’s

Today (Big Picture)

• This lecture, we go region by region (minus former Soviet Union) to look at urban land use and form

– Although every city is different, rural-to-urban migration, the world economic system, the presence of an informal economic sector, squatter settlements and a highly unequal division of income are commonalities most of these urban areas share

• However, impacts and results of these processes differ, because of culture, society, environment, previous land use patterns and history

Latin American City

• The Spanish towns in the new world were designed according to the “Laws of the Indes”, which in turn drew on Roman and Arab urban influences on Spain

– The basic unit was a central plaza called a zocalo (almost always with a cathedral and government palace, and market nearby) with a gridiron street pattern

• Streets were narrow, blocks contained long, narrow lots

– Houses usually had an interior courtyard, walls to the street.

• Spanish settlers near the center; indigenous were at the periphery of town, along with slaughterhouses and cemeteries

– Spanish were about conversion and raw materials (especially gold) – putting people into cities and towns made both conversion and turning them into wage laborers easier

• Portuguese had no similar guidelines, so it was more piecemeal

– Because of a large number of mining towns and ports, many towns developed linear forms because of being backed by cliffs

• The ports, in particular were divided between a lower city with the ports and market and the upper city with the fort, church and wealthy

Ford’s Latin American City Model

• In order to find some commonalities in current Latin American cities, Larry Ford developed this model./

– Downtown is CBD/market, with elite neighborhoods and a road network that feeds into it

• The CBD tends to be modernist/international in building style and brands; the markets are more unique to the clothing and food of each country.

– There is a commercial “spine” that extends from CBD along the main transport artery; excellent urban amenities like, tree lined boulevards, golf courses, parks, restaurants, office buildings; usually there was a mall at the edge of the spine

– An industrial sector wedge that follows a highway or railroad and ends in an industrial park

– Zone of maturity, which is middle income and has urban services (regular power, schools, sewers)

• Although there is some elite gentrification of the older neighborhoods in this zone

• New middle class zones hug elite neighborhoods

Latin American City Model (cont.)

– Zone of accretion – where lower income neighborhoods are moving towards maturity

• Because of periodic hyperinflation, many lower income households invest all money in their house, adding floors and rooms (sometimes to take on boarders), leaving rebar sticking out in case of future expansion

– Edge squatter settlements – few services, housing made of cheapest/scavenged materials like timber and corrugated iron

– Sectors of disamenity along industrial sectors and polluted rivers that also have squatter settlements

– There is also a peripheral ring road connecting mall and industrial park; but unlike US, because there is not enough money to update infrastructure, don’t get the same upper income edge cities

• But these models are just generalized, because there is a strong disregard for what little zoning regulation existed

Other Latin American Land Use Models

• Crowley’s Model

– He includes zones for informal sector; the existence of dispersed retail serving people without cars (grocery, furniture, clothing, housewares, restaurants); strip malls along highways; dispersed small factories throughout the city; low income throughout

• Maquiladora Zone Model (using low cost Mexican labor and no import duties to build exports for US markets)

– Core hugs the border including a small tourist districts; commercials strips radiate out from CBD; domestic industry near periphery; maquiladoras near border; housing gets worse further out in general – although there are elite/middle class suburbs following the commercial spine

Latin American Extended Metropolitan Regions

• Some of the megacities in the region (especially Sao Paulo and Mexico DF) are seeing nearby smaller cities get a lot of the new investment

– In Sao Paulo, new investment is within a polygon of smaller cities – including Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre and Sao Jose dos Campos

• These have been where Brazil gets high tech development; they are called growth poles

– In DF, Cuernavaca is probably the clearest example; although mostly still for commuters

• Why

– Agglomeration diseconomies (crime, prices, traffic) in the megacity and increasing agglomeration economies in emerging economic sectors in the growth poles

• However these only happened because Sao Paulo already had so much investment and the seeds of these industries

– Government spending in the growth poles to provide infrastructure and fiscal incentives

African Cities

• Africa (which is a continent with many countries) is a mammoth-sized, diverse place with diverse histories; so one model hardly fits all

– For example, there are 2000 languages spoken, and some 40 languages with more than 1 million speakers

– Latin America, on the other hand, had primarily two colonizers who completely remade the landscape after most of the original population had died of disease. Most people speak a pair of languages.

• Still, book points to six types of cities

– Indigenous city: Administrative centers for various empires, but also craft and trade functions

• Examples: Ibadan (Yoruba, SW Nigeria) was walled; Addis Ababa was named capital of independent Ethiopia by Menelik (although its form had heavy European influence)

– Islamic City: Founded by Arab Muslims or African Muslims; important religious sites and trade centers; had the typical main square with the mosque, school, baths and a suq (market) radiating out from the square

• Kano (Northern Nigeria); Dar-es-Salaam, Merca (Somalia)

African Cities (cont.)

– Colonial (Administrative) City – Founded in late 19^th/early 20^th century for colonial administration and trade; were ports with rail lines into the interior and extreme residential segregation

• Dakar and Freetown (Senegal)

– European City – Designed to be settled by large numbers of Euros and serve as urban service centers and commercial centers for Euros in the surrounding rural areas

• Used European planning norms; Europeans were considered the permanent residents and Africans only temporary

• Nairobi, Harare (formerly Salisbury, Zimbabwe), Lusaka (Zambia), most major cities of South Africa

– Dual City – When a second colonial city grew up near an existing city, but both develop separately

• Kano has two districts; Khartoum was built across the Nile from Omdurman

– Hybrid City – Some were old settlements taken over by Euros, that took new courses after independence

• Accra, Ghana is an example, which interestingly had the rich congregate around the periphery instead of the core (opposite most other African cities where the rich don’t commute)

African Cities

• Whatever the origin, now most African cities have two enclave areas: poor marginalized population and a small elite, an unusually large percentage (by world standards) of whom are expatriates

– Why? The formal sector is the smallest of any world region (although Southern Africa compares more favorably), so there is a big disconnect between the poor and rich; with the result being a small middle class, most of whom are tied to government administration

– Also, along with North Africa/SW Asian cities, African cities have comparatively little formal sector industry (although a fair amount of informal craft, shop and small industry)

• Local clothing, food processing, cement are common items

• Lots of countries have one primate city, that gets an overwhelming percentage of the rural to urban migrants. Very hard for infrastructure to keep up.

South African Cities

• Even before apartheid, South African “European” cities like Durban were segregated (although there were a few mix race neighborhoods of people with similar income)

– Included:

• White CBD

• Secondary Indian or Chinese CBD

• White owned industrial districts with multiracial employees as sectors along transport lines from core

• White residential core, itself segregated by class (though all had at least basic amenities)

• Indian/Chinese/Mixed Ancestry (Coloured) near the CBD in older districts

• African barracks in the industrial zone

• African, Indian, Chinese and Coloured townships or private developments, of very mixed quality (from middle class to squatter)

• Quarters for African domestic servants, scattered throughout city

• Mixed zones with black diffusion to white areas

• Apartheid made this informal practice of segregation a strict rule; the 1950 Groups Act made segregation of the four groups mandatory (Whites, Asians, Coloureds and Blacks)

– These neighborhoods were physically separated by Green Belts, roadways, railways, industrial strips or even vacant land

– Radial transportation from center outwards allowed each type of housing to expand outward

South African Cities (cont.)

• 10 homelands (Bantustans) which covered only 14% of the country (and the most barren 14%) were “given” to the 70% of the population that was African

– The Pass Laws allowed African males to come to the city for one year to work, but then forced them to return to their homeland to await their new pass

• The segregation of society was total (included not just cities but the countryside and even individual buildings)

• The African townships nearest the cities grew most rapidly (Soweto near JoBurg) and were not invested in at all by the white government

• Even after Apartheid ended, the segregation remains largely in place, with whites in elite neighborhoods and poor Africans in squatter settlements

– However, South Africa has the most diverse and strongest economy in all of Africa, where increasingly a black government-associated middle class and black private sector elite are emerging; integration of the well off is beginning to occur.

North Africa/SW Asia

• Here, European colonialism had the smallest impact on the urban system (although they still changed internal urban form)

– Cities were already well established for centuries AND they are a limited number of environmentally proper sites for dense human settlement, all of which were occupied

• Morocco probably had the most change to its urban system, followed by Algeria (both had a larger number of European settlers)

• Most cities in this region as well as many in Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia (and Moorish Spain), are heavily influenced by Islam

– Though the Quran does not give specific zoning codes; it does emphasize that living in community should emphasize family privacy, communal well-being and on interiors (vs. exteriors); not to mention the hot climate in which these cities developed

• Thus for privacy cul-de-sacs (to cut traffic), doors on small streets not across from each other, angled entrances, narrow windows above eye level, outdoor space within courtyards

• For climate, narrow angled streets provide shade, as do lattice work on windows and courtyards

North Africa/SW Asia (cont.)

• Heart of the city is the Friday Mosque (Jami), fronted by a central plaza

– Has not just worship, but welfare and educational (ie madrassa) functions; also a big plaza in front

• Next to is the public baths and the court

• The old city (medina) is surrounded by a wall with gates, somewhere within it is the Kasbah (which is citadel fortress that also contained the palace)

• Running from the central plaza out to the wall was a covered market, called a suq or bazaar

– The closest to the center, the cleaner/more prestigious the business (calligraphy/books, perfume, jewelry, prayer mats); dirtier more common items (butchers, grain sellers, pots/pans sellers), nearer the wall

• Each item has its own alley/cluster of shops within the bazaar

North Africa/SW Asia (cont.)

• Residential areas in old city were by quarter (ahya’) which had gates of their own

– Could be based on occupation, on ethnicity/religion, on village/tribal/regional origin

– These cities were amongst the most diverse cities in the world, where most groups were allowed to follow their own religious/family customs

• In the colonial era (late 19^th century to early 20^th) , new districts were built in European style, sans the mosque and bazaar with government buildings, hotels, department stores and wide streets

• In the post-colonial era, colonial city gets surrounded by high-rise commercial and apartment residential; with international hotels, universities

– And beyond this the inevitable squatter settlement (although many of the walled cities still receive large numbers of rural to urban migrants)

• As the major cities get larger, they are eating up small agricultural villages as they expand

– Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also tried building entirely new cities to try relieve crowding in the older cities

North Africa/SW Asia (cont.)

• Zeigler also framed a similar set of issues around “transects” or slices of the city as it changes from core to periphery

– Social transects: old city has been abandoned by the wealthy for the post-colonial and even suburban districts; and even tourists stay in hotels outside of it

– Housing transect: old city was two story courtyard homes; multistory apartment blocks now dominate

– Commercial transect: old city has fully functional suqs and family owned small industry and craft production; wealthy parts of post-colonial district has all the international brands

– Transport: the old city is for donkeys and taxis; the post-colonial city is for automobiles with roads, gas stations and parking spaces (all areas have horrible traffic)

North Africa/SW Asia (cont.)

• The Gulf cities are very different from the other cities in the region, because they are newer settlements that were not significant until the 1960’s and 1970’s

– They have a small core with a fort and port, some old elite houses

– Radiating out are various areas of apartment blocks (usually for the middle class or working class expatriates from South Asia, SE Asia, the rest of the middle East, and Europe) commercial towers, eventually becoming villa suburbs (for locals, Europeans, and elite South Asians) with shopping malls and golf courses

• These cities have lots of greenery, which comes from (hugely expensive) desalinized water

– Almost all the nomads have been settled, either in town or at villages near the city

– On the city edges are labor camps, many overcrowded with temporary structures, for construction and logistics labor, mostly from South Asia

– More and more, these cities are trying to move out of oil dependence into areas like trade, banking, and tourism

– More on Dubai later (I promise)

South Asian Cities

• Dutt notes two types: colonial-based and bazaar-based

– Colonial city

• Port facility is the center, for both trade and military (also processed raw materials to ready them for export)

• Walled fort/military outpost

• Western style CBD, with government, commercial, entertainment and retail buildings

• “Native town” beyond the fort, was unplanned and inadequately serviced, for those who worked for admin and fort

• European town, on opposite side of city from native town, with low density bungalows, apartment houses, planned boulevards, urban services/amenities

• Maidan – which was a big open space – between European town and port, used for military parades and cricket

• Children of mixed Anglo-Indian parentage lived between the two communities

• New Elite areas on lowland or vacant land near colonial city

South Asian Cities (cont.)

• Bazaar based – These were the cities in the South Asian urban system before colonialism

– Retail concentration at the major crossroads, called the chowk, where wealthy and merchants lived

– Bazaar is dominated by necessities of food, clothing, and shelter (especially food and clothing). Lots of sidewalk merchants

• Overtime, the bazaar divided into areas of specialization, like tailors, jewelers, bakers, and fruit/vegetable sellers (which people visited everyday when they did not have refrigeration)

– A ring of wealthy residences around the inner core

– Beyond that, the ring of poor, without service provision

– Beyond the poor, the colonizers (and now the middle class and some elites) were in the civil lines (where the police, courts, hospital, etc. were)

– Scattered throughout this periphery are various ethnic/caste neighborhoods, including those for untouchables (dalits), usually in the worst locations

• Much of the outer ring is squatters

– In recent decades, islands of high class development emerged in this periphery, with good service provision

South Asian Cities (cont.)

• Before (Jaipur), during (Jamshedpur) and after (Chandigarh) colonization, there have also been planned towns

• Since independence, all these cities have hybridized with international elements, and the megacities of India (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata) are beginning to form extended metropolitan regions as their heart areas experience agglomeration diseconomies

– The biggest change to India’s urban system since independence is the emergence of South Indian technopole of Bangalore along with Hyderabad and Chennai

• Taking advantage of the good Indian university system and the prevalence of English as a second language, call centers, back office centers, routine computer coding, financial and legal consulting, and medical analysis has located here in the phenomenon of offshoring

– At first, it was branches of foreign companies, but now there are many strong Indian firms, like Infosys

– However, most of the other cities in India, and all those in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka remain much more peripherally connected to the global economy

• There are elite pockets in all of them, and middle class people connected to the government and domestic economy, but just a fraction of the external links the Indian megacities and technopoles have

Southeast Asian Cities

• Two historical types: Sacred City and Trading City

– Sacred cities were places of spiritual authority for inland agricultural areas (eg Angkor Wat)

• They were located and laid out by cosmologists; but their success was tied to the conquests of their rulers.

– Trading cities were on rivers or coast, part of a trade network extended to both South and East Asia, with walled interiors where trade was done and elite lived

• Europeans upended the pre-colonial order through the establishment of their port/gateway cities (usually on the site of a much smaller settlement) like Batavia (now Jakarta), Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and Singapore

– Manila had the largest of the pre-colonial settlements of the major Southeast Asian cities

Southeast Asian Cities (cont.)

• Southeast Asia is a true crossroads region, with strong local cultures, but South Asian and East Asian influence

– Thus its cities (even its colonial cities) are extraordinarily complex

• Zones

– Port Zone – The heart of the colonial era city

– NO CBD with all functions combined, but instead a group of interconnected zones divided by function and ethnicity

• A government zone

• Western commercial zone with foreign banks, department stores and office towers

• “Alien” (usually Chinese or Indian) commercial zones, with two story shops that also serve as home for the merchants, who sell clothing, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, etc

Southeast Asian Cities (cont.)

• Zones (cont.)

– Colonial elite residential near the government zone

– Mid-density kampungs (urban villages – some for different ethnicities or regional backgrounds) are slowly transforming to middle class as they receive more services

– Squatter settlements in zones of disamenity

– Peripheral market gardening zone with a special new industrial zone somewhere within it

• Market gardening zones historically occurred around most cities world wide; it is an area of farms that specialize in fruits and vegetables which perish quickly (especially without refrigeration)

– These tend to bring higher prices per unit of land area than grain, which is produced in a belt further out from the city

» Also called truck farming

Indonesian Cities

• Again, many zones

– Port-colonial city zone: even as better facilities constructed elsewhere, smaller-shipment port activities remain here; the old Dutch districts have largely been turned over for historic preservation

– Chinese commercial zone: straddles the old colonial district and newer mixed commercial zone; has both two story specialist shops and newer shopping plazas

• These districts connect Indonesia to Chinese manufactures

– Mixed commercial zone: ethnically mixed with many international brands, as well as traditional markets

– International commercial zone: this where the high-rises, upscale malls and hotels are, largely funded by Japanese investors

– Government Zone

Indonesian Cities

• Zones (cont.)

– Elite residential, near government zone and along the highways in the form of the gated community

• This is becoming increasingly common all over the world, but especially in Middle East and South Asia

– Middle income suburbs: converting kampungs near the commercial zone and planned suburbs near ring roads, industrial parks and universities

– Industrial zones: in suburban parks, attract FDI and edge city development

– Kampungs – Oldest ones closest to port are overly dense, mid city ones are becoming middle class thanks to kampung improvement schemes, rural ones are self contained; squatter kampungs in pollution or industrial zones

Southeast Asian Megacities

• Like elsewhere, crowding in the central city is leading to emerging megacity regions like Jabotabek (Jakarta + surrounding cities), with large suburban/rural fringes within commuting distance of the various downtowns

– Mixed among these are desakotas (something between a village and a town), the following features

• Large small farmer population

– This becomes the labor reserve pool that will make the urban region as it grows

• Increasing non-farm activity, including suburban residential, cottage industries and industrial estates (which employ large numbers of female laborers)

– Also a growing informal sector

• Lots of movement around the area by motorbike, bus and truck

– These desakota zones of conversion are transitioning from rural to urban at a much faster rate than what happened in the US.

East Asian Cities

• In the initial Post WWII era, differences emerged between cities in the communist countries (China, North Korea, Mongolia) and capitalist system in (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)

– Capitalist cities were defined by private land ownership, more social stratification and earlier mass adoption of the automobile

– Communist cities were defined by the elimination of retail at the core (replaced by political, cultural, admin functions), standardized housing, and the idea of the self contained neighborhood concept (to go along with the general policy of local and national self-sufficiency

East Asian Cities

• Traditional cosmologically designed East Asian cities would have a square shape, with a series of walls and moats

– Three gates in each wall, resulting in three major streets that ran north south and 3 more running east west through the old city

– The imperial palace and government offices were at the very center; commercial and religious land uses were secondary; with residential stratification based on status or occupation

• Before the mid-1800’s in East Asia, being involved in trade or commerce was not seen as prestige profession; in fact, in Japan, traders were basically considered outcasts until the late 19^th century

• After revolutions, more broad streets added to the core, everything renamed after revolutionary heroes/events

– The new street grid created walled, self-contained neighborhood units, which were subdivided into residential, office, service and other functions. Most buildings were box-like

– A mass square for political gatherings was made at the city center, along with party HQ, revolutionary museums, and entertainment complexes

– Large factories and universities emerged at the periphery

• As the cities expanded into the periphery, get new factory workers housing estates in an outer ring, followed by the market gardening ring, then the grain ring

– Beijing, for example, displays these concentric zones

East Asian Cities

• European colonialism had comparatively small impacts here (although biggest in the ports of Shanghai and Tianjin, and obviously Hong Kong and Macao, which were under British and Portuguese rule)

– Chinese port cities were first opened up to the British after the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing; by 1911, some 90 coastal and river ports (as well cities in Manchuria) had been opened to Europeans by the Open Door policy

• Under the concession system, cities changed structure

– A concession zone with docks and military bases along coast/river; eventually got warehousing, factories, offices and elite Western residential

• After the revolution, this area goes for party offices and housing party bosses; workers go into highrises at the periphery

– Chinese residential zone which was the old city designed on old cosmologic principles

– Buffer zone between the two which became the location for the Chinese elite who had businesses, worked for government, or for the foreign corporations

East Asian Cities

• Once market reform begins in China in the late-1970’s, its urban form begins to quickly converge with the capitalist countries of East Asia, with the following features

– Ring roads to channel increased auto/truck traffic around cities

– Satellite towns near larger cities

– Renovation/complete remake of central city commercial and residential districts

– Preservation districts for a memory of per-colonial past

• Chinese cities have done comparatively little of this, and have all but eliminated most colonial era housing in favor of high-rises

– Urban open space system to provide recreation

– Major concentrations of high-rise office, condo and hotels

• Some of world’s largest buildings are in East/Southeast Asia, including Petronas Towers (KL), Taipei 101, World Financial Center (Shanghai), all of which will be dwarfed by Burj Khalifa

East Asia Examples: Shanghai/Pudong

• Shanghai is China’s largest, with 17 million in the metro area

– Even before independence, it was one of the world’s leading manufacturing centers and busiest port in Asia.

• Each European power had its own district that was not subject to Chinese law; the centerpiece was the neo-classical Bund riverfront development with banks and trading houses

– Most of the wealth generated went back to Europe

– The communists taxed industrial activities in Shanghai to the tune of 75% in order to fund the rest of the government initiatives

• Almost nothings was reinvested, the city became rundown

– But in 1980, the new leadership wanted to unleash economic development, so they created the Shanghai Economic Zone and the Pudong New Area (the latter from a patch of low density farm land to the East of the city.

• This was to be the Dragon Head of development for the whole Chang Jiang Valley (the Dragon Body)

Shanghai/Pudong (cont.)

– These development zones offered tax breaks and infrastructure to attract investment; new bridges and ring roads were built along with subway, sewers and a second international airport.

• Shanghai now house export industrialization, commercial HQ’s, finance, scientific and university research, and new residential communities

– Shanghai is a city of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but is also a World City

• Other problems include the large role played by FDI and the lack of technology transfer, rising wages for factory workers which is pushing investment elsewhere, long commute times, and two financial districts competing for foreign banks by offering sweet packages of goodies to outdo each other

East Asia Example: Hong Kong

• Pearl River Delta (which Hong Kong sits at the edge of) is one of fastest growing urban areas of world

– Also includes Macao and Guangzhou

• Hong Kong has world class financial industry, manufacturing and trading firms, plus the world’s busiest port

– Hong Kong was under the British until 1997, from 1980-onward, Chinese government began pouring investment in Guangzhou preparing

• Hong Kong still holds elections, under the “one country, two systems” policy.

– China located two of its key export processing zones (aka Special Economic Zones) – Shenzhen and Zhuhai – in the Pearl River Delta

• Now Hong Kong does “Front shop” work like design, marketing, purchasing, inventory control, and Chinese sub-contractors in the EPZ’s do manufacturing with their low wage work forces

– Whole delta now a Open Economic Area, which allowed farmers to either migrate to factories, or diversify their crops from rice to include market gardening, livestock and fish farming.

• Also got low tech rural manufacturing

– Land within the triangle between Macao, Hong Kong and Guangzhou remains relatively inexpensive for now even though the government has spent lots on communications, road, rail, and water infrastructure

• Means even more growth will happen, with more resorts, tech parks, and industrial parks emerging in formerly small towns