Early Cities:
prerequisites for development

• an efficient agricultural system - surplus food supports non-farmers and allows specialization.
• an elaborate social organization - coordinate the collection, storage, and distribution of agricultural surplus.
• population growth pushed people into marginal areas - cities based on administration, trade, religion, or defense.

Early cities were quite small by our standards.

urban form:
the physical structure and organization of cities.

Problems limiting the growth of early cities:

• transportation network to serve internal and external needs.
• water
• sanitation and disease
• defense - location and morphology

Early city functions:

• Ecclesiastical or university centers
• Defensive strongholds
• Administrative centers

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Locational patterns and functions of American cities:
 

• Cities locate in rich hinterlands - agricultural regions
• Entrepot/Distribution centers: often located along transportation line or trade route - crossroads
• Break of bulk: goods are transferred from one type of transportation to another
• Cluster: around a specialized resource
• Localization economies: cost savings that accrue to particular industries as a result of clustering together at a specific location.

colonial cities:
cities that were deliberately established or developed as administrative or commercial centers by colonial or imperial powers.

gateway city:
city that serves as a link between one country or region and others because of its physical situation.

economic base:
set of manufacturing, processing, trading, or services activities that serve markets beyond the city.
These activities bring a net flow of income into the city.

basic functions:
economic activities that provide income from sales to customers beyond city limits.

nonbasic functions:
economic activities that serve a city's own population.

industrial city:
functions to assemble raw materials, and to fabricate, assemble, and distribute manufactured goods.

shock city:
city that is seen as the embodiment of surprising and disturbing changes in economic, social, and cultural life.

urbanism:
the way of life, attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior fostered by urban settings.

urban system:
an interdependent set of urban settlements within a specified region.

centrality:
the functional dominance of cities within an urban system.

world city:
cities in which a disproportionate part of the world's most important business is conducted.

primacy:
condition in which the population of the largest city in an urban system is disproportionately large in relation to the second and third largest cities in that system.

rank-size rule:
a statistical regularity in city size distributions of cities and regions.

megacity:
very large city characterized by both primacy and has high centrality within its national economy.

central place:
a settlement in which certain products and services are available to customers.

central place theory:
a theory that seeks to explain the relative size and spacing of towns and cities as a function of people's shopping behavior.

range:
the maximum distance that consumers will normally travel to obtain a particular product or service.

threshold:
the minimum market size required to make the sale of a particular product or service profitable.

What are the assumptions of the model? How do these assumptions simplify reality and for what purpose?