The website provides access to spatial data for cities all around the world and allows you to simultaneously view multiple cities at once.
cities many critics now state that they don’t truly represent modern cities.Īn excellent website on urban planning using geospatial technology is called the Urban Observatory. It should be noted that the three models were developed shortly after World War II and based on U.S. In fact, renters tend to live closer to the CBD, whereas home owners tend to live along the outer regions of the city. Renters and house owners also tend to segregate from each other. Higher income households tend to live away from lower income households. But the models help us understand broader reason why people live where they do. Sociologists, geographers, and urban planners know that no city exactly follows one of the urban models of growth. Social scientists use the data and maps to analyze demographic patterns spatially and over time to help understands current and project future social, demographic, and economic trends. This information is not only collected but mapped for spatial analysis. Data includes household incomes, gender, ethnicity, high school completions, and more. Every 10 years, the bureau does a complete count of the country’s individuals and publishes the results. Bureau of the Census divides urban areas into census tracts, where each track contains approximately 5,000 residents. For example, industry does not tend to develop next to high-income housing.ĭetermining which urban model fits a particular city is often based on census data.The U.S. Some clustering does exist in this model because some sectors tend to stay away from other sectors. A node could exist for the downtown region, another where a university is situated, and maybe another where an international airport may be. In this model, the city is more complex and has more than one CBD. The third and final urban design is called the multiple nuclei model. Finally, ring five is called the commuter’s zone, where most people living there have to commute to work every day. The fourth ring is called the zone of better residences and is dominated by middle-class families. The third ring is called the zone of independent workers and tends to be occupied by working-class households.
In this transition zone, the land tends to be used by industry or low quality housing. The inner zone of the cities tends to be the CBD, followed by a second ring that tends to the zone of transition between the first and third rings. The first model is called the concentric zone model, which states that cities have the ability to develop in five concentric rings. Urban planners, sociologists, along with geographers have come up with three models to demonstrate and explain how cities grow. An urban planner is someone trained in multiple theories of urban development along with developing ways to minimize traffic, decrease environmental pollution, and build sustainable cities.
Urban planning is a sub-field of geography and until recently was part of geography departments in academia.