This week we discussed how people are distributed through out a city and the impacts of urban ecology. Urban Ecology is the attempt to study a city as though one were studying a forest ecosystem. The nutrients, water and sunlight of the forest become the people, traffic flow and funding of the city. Just as in a forest the effects of co dependence are the primary focus of study. The complex interaction of people, places and resources are observed and relationships found in order to better understand and plan for city life.
Urban Ecology is essential to understanding how a city layout evolves over time. One theory that has been posed for city layout is the Land Rent Theory. According to this theory centers of cities are hubs of activity and as such have a high land value. As the centers of activity it benefits businesses of commerce more then that of industry or residential. As such commerce flocks to the center of a city, or sub centers such as a train station, and pay high rent values for the land. Further outside of the city center are businesses of industry, they want to stay near the center of activity but also near their employee's residences. Further out then industry is residential where the city's inhabitants live.
In land rent theory it is often assumed that the more intensive the use of the land is the higher then rent will be as in a city. However as this article demonstrates: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/stable/pdfplus/1231379.pdf?acceptTC=true, that is not necessarily true. It is found that the cost of rent is a function of productivity, which is in turn a product of capacity and efficiency. Efficiency is the ratio of resources in to resources out that the land is capable of, be it natural resource collection, farming or urban development. Capacity is the ability of the land to produce useful resources. It is found that lightly used land can have large rent values and vica versa. Ultimately it is found that while the intensity of use of land is a good indicator of rent value they do not actually correlate.
The following post is made by Nancy Ramirez in group 7:
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this article. You always seem to hear people say it’s all about “location, location, location,” but I guess that’s not always the case. What good is it owning a piece of property if there is nothing to be gained in it? It might as well be valueless. For instance, it makes sense that territory in the heart of a city will have the most efficiency because of the amount of customers it will have for a business which would make it a popular commodity for other business to fight for. But at the same time, this makes me think about professor Sanchez’s argument about if it is the location bringing in people, or the amount of people in one place making the location valuable? It is hard to say which came first, but it can easily be said that both factors have an effect on each other.
Trying to understand the Land Rent Theory, I found a wetlands study of Merced, California, very interesting. I took two key points from the study. First, agricultural and wetlands use produces a modest revenue gain because the demand few services while urban areas/cities produce a break even or loss of revenue with high demands for services. Second, the study also addressed the cost benefits of a compact city versus a sprawled city. Use the link below if you want more information.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.traenviro.com/cgwd/summary.htm