Concentric Zone City Model

For the purposes on this research essay there will be 3 different concentric zone city models that will be used for discussion. The basic outline of the concentric zone model is the idea that a city is split up into specific zones where specific people live depending on their race, social status or economic status. How factors like industrial areas and residential areas are arranged are basically what a concentric zone model is (City-Building, 2014). Other models such as the Abercrombie plan for greater London (Massey, Allen, Pile, 1999) and a plan of Ebenezer Howard’s social city (Massey, Allen, Pile, 1999), more emphasis is put on residential dwellings being placed far from places of work. This was in the hopes of creating cities that were sustainable and could be areas where inhabitants could live and thrive for years (Massey, Allen, Pile, 1999). Firstly it might be useful to define what a city is.

Wirth a city is “a relatively large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.” (Kostof, 1991 pg37). According to Lewis Mumford an urban historian defined the city in 1937as a “point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community.” (Kostof, 1991 pg 37). The reason Mumford sought to define a city then was because he believed North American cities were spreading and growing in an unplanned way (Massey, Allen, Pile, 1999). Mumford also believed that the bigger a city grew the more it started to become a place of dissipation where social interactions with people you know became less and less (Massey, Allen, Pile, 1999). Therefore city expansion and development should be something that is planned. Pg 17. These definitions show that defining a city is relative to a persons experience and opinion because there is no one definition that can clearly, without a doubt define what a city