1. The Urban World, 9th Ed.
J. John Palen

2. Chapter 4: Ecology and Political Economy Perspectives
Introduction
Development of Urban Ecology
Burgess's Growth Hypothesis
Sector and Multiple-Nuclei Models
Urban Growth Outside North America
The Postmodern City: The Los Angeles School
Political Economy Assumptions
Examples of the Political Economy Approach
Challenges
Summary

3. Introduction
Sociologist Louis Wirth’s attempt to view a city’s spatial physical structure, its forms of social organization, its peoples and lifestyles, and its problems empirically through three interrelated perspective
This chapters looks at the spatial and social structure of the city and how it affects and is affected by the city as a system of social organization

4. Development of Urban Ecology
Invasion and Succession
Viable communities are always in the process of changing
Invasion of one land use or population by another
Succession: when one group or function finally takes the place of another
Natural Areas: segregated urban areas that are supposedly the result of ecological processes rather than of planning or conscious creation by a government unity

5. Criticisms of Ecology Role of Culture
The heavy emphasis on competition in traditional human ecology, plus the nonsocial nature of some of the variables, disturbs contemporary political economy critics
Role of Culture
Ecology’s macro-level focus may fail to explain the cultural and motivational factors in urban land-use patterns

6. Burgess’s Growth Hypothesis
From the Chicago School
First presented in 1924
Suggested that industrial cities grew radically through a series of concentric zones
This is not a model of how things are as much as a model of how things change

7. Figure 4.1
Burgess's Zonal Hypothesis

8. Concentric Zones Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3 Zone 4 Final Zone
Central business district
Zone 2
Zone in transition
Zone 3
Working people’s homes
Zone 4
Zone of the better residences
Final Zone
Commuter zone

9. Limitations Criticized for having arbitrary divisions
Must keep in mind that Burgess proposed a “model” or “ideal type” of what American cities would look like if other factors did not intervene

10. Sector and Multiple-Nuclei Models
Based of his study of 142 cities, Homer Hoyt proposed a “sector theory”
Used pie-shaped wedges or sectors
Focuses attention of the role of transportation arteries
Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman argued that land-use patterns developed around what were originally independent nuclei
Today, the multi-nuclei hypothesis provides a better description of the entire metropolitan area than it does of the central city

11. Urban Growth Outside North America
In cities with a nonindustrial heritage, there appears to be an inverse zonal hypothesis
For example, in Paris, housing projects are located in the suburbs
Burgess’s theory does not appear to be applicable to older European cities
Heavy industry confined to suburbs because of densely populated central land

12. The Postmodern City: The Los Angeles School
In direct opposition to the Chicago School
Argues that LA, with its fragmented spatial and social patterns is the model for the future—the new pattern
Critics state that this statement slips from science into an academic boosterism that is at odds with empirical research and critical theory

13. Political Economy Models
Political economy advocates argue that you have to look beyond the city to national (and possibly world) patterns to understand massive changes such as city declines, suburbanization, or deindustrialization
Focuses on the role played by human agency, and especially the actions of the corporate economic elites and political institutions that do their bidding

14. Figure 4.2 Urbanization in the World System
Model of how macrostructures set the parameters for urban development. The image of smaller “windows” of possible variability, instead of deterministic causal arrows, is chosen because this figure is intended to provide a general theoretical orientation for research (i.e., to point to the key elements), rather than pretend to provide a verifiable model for testing.

15. Political Economy Assumptions
5 underlying assumptions taken from the work of Joe Feagan and modified by David Smith and Michael Timberlake
Cities are situated in a hierarchical global system, and global linkages among cities help define the structure of the world system
The world system is one of competitive capitalism
Capital is easily moved; locations of cities are fixed
Politics and government matter
People and circumstances differ according to time and place, and these differences matter

16. Examples of the Political Economy Approach
The Baltimore Study
David Harvey stated that financial capital rather than industrial capital determines the future of the city
Urban Growth Machines
John Logan and Harvey Molotch looked at the necessity to create a “good business climate”
Local governments are largely in the pockets of major economic interests, paying little attention to local residents concerns

17. World Systems Theory and Globalization
World systems theory suggests that what happens to individual cities is not a result so much of what happens in their own region as to where these cities fit into the world hierarchy of cities
Hierarchy is based upon the economic power the city commands
Challenges
The challenge of the political economy model is to adapt what began as a neo-Marxist model to a world that has largely abandoned Marxism