Urban Geography and Cities of Tomorrow

By Molly Moran

From the first several chapters of Michael Pacione's Urban Geography: A Global Perspective and Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow one can surmise that all things are interconnected from local business to the global environment. And nowhere is it truer then within the complex working of a urbanized city. Using descriptive words like urban and urbanization are deeply rooted into local, regional, political, and global issues that need to be reviewed individually as well reviewed as a whole. The issues, depending on how they are addressed, can be causes and consequences of urban change and problems.

To begin with, a global web of triggers affect cities. There are seven general global triggers: economy, technology, demography, politics, society, culture, and environment. These triggers vary from region to region, culture to culture, city to city, even neighborhood to neighborhood, but can still be used as a template to start studying global dynamics in any environment. Economy is usually the prime driving force of urban change. The evolution of economy have significantly altered urban standard and cities goals. The ever expanding globalization of service, product, and companies has left little of the world untouched by its influence. Technology, a global trigger, has assisted the economy in its spread around the world. Advances in transportation, information, and machinery have pushed for maximum production of all things and space. another global trigger is demography; which is the movement of people directly affecting the size, configuration and social composition of an urban city. Politics share a close relationship with the economy. Political polices usually affect economic profit and therefore urban change. This relationship also works the other way too; economic ventures could sway or change political polices. The next global trigger is society which can be summed up as Pacione states, "a popular attitude towards ethic or lifestyle minorities can determine migration flows between countries and cities, as well as underlying patterns of residential segregation within cities." Culture, one of the last global triggers, plays a role in society, but it also affects cultural industries and the regeneration of historical urban districts. The last global trigger is the environment. The environment is affected by the other six triggers. For example, a factory build take up space in the environment. To produce a produce the factory acquires material, material that is a part of the environment in some way, transforms it and deposits the wasted material back into the environment. This changes the natural environment causing urban change which further changes the environment. This cycle is one of the critical or 'hot' topics of today's global concerns.

All of these triggers have a reaching affect on cities around the world. One affects several if not all and continue to tag and change one another like a unsupervised game of tag in a small room. Obviously, this evolving criteria can easily get out of hand, but how does it manifest it an urban city? In Peter Hall's Cities of Tomorrow he begins by identifying 1880s through 1900s London's slums as a critical area in need of drastic change. How the overcrowded plight of the slums came into light was with the help of literature. The Bitter cry of Outcast London by Andrew Mearns was a detailed observation of London's slums comparable to The Jungle in that it described the vice and suffering of the slum residents that it made people appalled and sick. And thus action was incited not to alleviate the problem by to alleviate the conscious of the better off. Again, similar to The Jungle change was made not to better the working class conditions, but the be more hygienic with food processing. In London's case the housing conditions were the main focus of early planning and solutions.

As I understand it the methodology for solving London's slums when like this: "All slum residents are either criminals, mental, unable to find work, or make so little they can leave. If they can't afford to leave we'll make cheep transportation and relocated them out of the city. They'll have more room, better air and light and they can still get to the city to work." This did and didn't work will it did allow some to evacuate the overcrowded slum may still could not afford to buy a cheap cottage, necessities, and the cost of rail fare, so a majority stayed in the city. another problem was the it was assumed that slum residents would all jump at the idea. It was a lifestyle issue; the better off designed with their standards in mind and didn't get any representation from the lower class; this lead to riots and disorder. And another problem was the work and wage or lack of both. Work was sparse and factory wages were small. Leading a 'good and honest' life was hard when high risk high reward of gang life was all around the London slums.

Slums were a worldwide problem for large cities planning committees did try, but often failed. Large blocks of small tenements afford little light, ventilation, and uplift. But within cities there were a few charities that sought to alleviate the quality of life for slum residents. The Hall house in Chicago afford shelter for women and children, classes, day care, even a form a tolerance programs for the elderly. The Hall house's goal was acclimate individuals to a new demography, politics, society, culture, and environment.

The conclusion, the global triggers Pacione described can be used to observed both current cities and past cities. The global affect of these criteria change and evolve continuously and impact human life and lifestyle. The causes of urban change is directly related to the actions of industry, culture, and finance. The consequences of urban change is the change, change for the good or change for the bad depends. For future planning one need to understand the affects the triggers had on the city in the past and be educated when altering those criteria to positively change the city's future.

Bibliography
Hall, Peter. (1990) Cities of tomorrow :an intellectual history of urban planning and design in the twentieth century Cambridge, MA : Basil Blackwell,
Pacione, Michael. (2009) Urban geography :a global perspective London ; Routledge