Urban Patterns: Key Issue 4
Why Do Suburbs Face Distinctive Challenges?
Rubenstein, pp. 424-434
● URBAN EXPANSION
1. Regarding ANNEXATION:
(a) What is annexation?
(b) What is required before an area can be annexed by a city?
(c) In the past, why did peripheral areas desire annexation?
(d) What has changed?
Defining Urban Settlements
2. What are three characteristics of a “city” as it is defined legally?
a.
b.
c.
3. Define the term urbanized area as it is used to define a “city”.
4. What does MSA stand for?
5. What are the characteristics of an MSA?
6. Identify an advantage and a disadvantage of using an MSA to define “city”? Infer
a. advantage:
b. disadvantage:
7. Regarding micropolitan areas…
a. what is their size?
b. what were these cities classified as previously?
c. how many, and where, are they in the US?
● LOCAL GOVERNMENT FRAGMENTATION
8. What is the basic problem caused by the multiplicity of governments in US urban areas?
9. Briefly note how each of the following forms of local government attempts to solve this problem?
Give an example of each.
A. council of government
B. consolidations
C. federations
● OVERLAPPING METROPOLITAN AREAS
10. What is the meaning of the term megalopolis? (and what was the original example?)
11. Use an atlas map showing American cities to sketch/shade in the three major American megalopoli
(as described in the text, pp. 426-427) on the map below. NOTE: Label the major cities in each.
12. Identify two European megalopoli (regional name and major cities)
A.
B.
13. Identify an Asian megalopolis (country and major cities)
Use a World Atlas to look at each of these regions at a fairly small scale to see the clustered
individual cities which actually form them.
● THE PERIPHERAL MODEL
14. List the elements of an urban area according to the peripheral model.
15. Complete the table below.
PERIPHERAL AREAS
Problems that they LACK
Problems that they HAVE
16. Describe the formation of an EDGE CITY in the flowchart below.
17. Describe the density gradient of an urban area.
18. How has the density gradient changed in recent years? (TWO ways)
(a)
(b)
19a. Define sprawl:
19b. What are the negative effects of urban sprawl?
20. What is meant by the statement that: the “periphery of US cities looks like Swiss cheese”?
21. What has prevented the peripheries of European cities from looking like “Swiss cheese”?
22. What is smart growth?
23. Describe how “smart growth” laws have been designed in Maryland, Oregon, and Tennessee.
Maryland
Oregon
Tennessee
● SUBURBAN SEGREGATION
24. In what two ways are suburban areas “segregated”?
a.
b.
25a. What is a zoning ordinance?
25b. How have zoning ordinances encouraged “segregation”?
● SUBURBANIZATION OF BUSINESSES
26. Since when did most retail activities begin to move from CBDs to suburban locations?
27. Why?
28. Where do malls tend to locate?
29. Why have factories and warehouses moved to suburbs?
30. What are the advantages of having offices in suburban locations?
● TRANSPORTATION AND SUBURBANIZATION
31. Read “Transportation and Suburbanization” and “Motor Vehicles” to fill in the flowchart describing
how developments in transportation affected the residential pattern of American cities.
PEDESTRIAN PHASE
STREETCAR PHASE
AUTOMOBILE PHASE
32. Identify 2 ways in which the US Government has encouraged the use of motor vehicles by its citizens?
(a)
(b)
33a. What percentage of a city is devoted to motor vehicles?
33b. Identify 2 ways in which motor vehicles use land in urban areas.
(i)
(ii)
34. What is rush hour and how much of a city’s traffic does it account for?
35. List four ways in which public transportation is better than the automobile.
a.
b.
c.
d.
36. Briefly describe what has happened (or is currently happening) to each of the following modes of
public transportation in US cities.

Buses

Rapid transit (subway and fixed light rail)

Trolleys