CHAPTER 12: SERVICES In MDCs most workers are employed in the tertiary sector of the economy, which is the provision of goods and services. There is a close relationship between services and settlements; most services are clustered in settlements. Beyond that they are also clustered in MDCs because that is where people are more likely to be able to buy services, rather than LDCs. Within MDCs business services locate in large settlements that are also the key markets. This chapter concludes by addressing why services cluster downtown.

Key Issue 1—Where Did Services Originate?

In North America, ¾ of employees work in the service sector

Cities and Urban Land UseFunctional character of contemporary citiesChanging employment mix

There are three types of services: consumer, business, and public.

Consumer services provide services to individual consumers and include retail and personal services

other consumer services – education, health, and leisure and hospitality services

Retail – provide about 11% of all U.S. jobs and provide jobs of consumers

Business services help other businesses and include financial, professional, transportation, communication, and utility services; they diffuse and distribute services.

Public Services, which include governmental services at various levels, and provide security.

Public services have increased at the slowest rate.

Employment has increased most rapidly in personal and producer services.

Secondary sector activities have declined during the 20th century.

Employment Change in U.S.

Fig 12-2: Growth in employment in the U.S. since 1970 has been entirely in the tertiary sector, with the greatest increase in professional services.

Fig 12-2: Growth in employment in the U.S. since 1970 has been entirely in the tertiary sector, with the greatest increase in professional services.

Agriculture and Rural Land UseRural land use and settlement patternsSettlement patterns associated with major agricultural types

Dispersed rural settlements – farmers live on individual farms and are more isolated from neighbors.

Clustered rural settlements – families live close to one another and fields surround houses and farm buildings.

Large percentage of world’s population still practice agriculture and live in rural settlements

Circular rural settlements consist of a central open space surrounded by buildings.

Linear rural settlements are clustered along transportation like roads or rivers.

The medieval German Gewandorf settlements and East African Massi Villages are examples of circular settlements.

In North America most linear settlements can be traced to the original French longlot or seigneurial pattern.

Dispersed rural settlements are more associated with more recent agricultural settlements in the developed world.

It provided greater efficiency in an agricultural world that relied on fewer farmers.

In some European countries clustered patterns were converted to dispersed settlements.

The rural enclosure movement that accompanied the Industrial Revolution in Britain is a good example of this transition.

Rural Settlement Patterns

Fig. 12-4: Circular settlement patterns are common in Germany. Linear “long lot” patterns are often found along rivers in France, and were transferred to Québec.

Clustered rural settlement

Dispersed rural settlements

Clustered New England Town

Newfane, Vermont is a clustered settlement with public buildings built around a common.

Key Issue 2—Why Are Consumer Services Distributed in a Regular Pattern?

Consumer services are generally provided in a regular pattern based on size of settlements, with larger settlements offering more than smaller ones.

Central Place Theory examines the relationship between settlements of different sizes, especially their ability to provide various goods and services.

Central Place Theory

Fig. 12-7: Market areas are arranged into a regular pattern according to central place theory, with larger settlements fewer in number and further apart.

It was developed by Walter Christaller in the 1930s and was based on his studies of settle patterns in southern Germany.

Range – maximum distance people travel for services, threshold – minimum number of people needed to support a service

A service will have a market or hinterland of potential customers.

Each urban settlement will have a market area, assuming that people will get services from the nearest settlement.

These concepts are used to analyze potential market areas.

Services and settlements are hierarchical, and larger settlements will provide services that have larger thresholds, ranges, and market areas than smaller settlements.

gravity model – predicts that the best location for a service, number of people in an area, distance people must travel

Central place theory shows market in MDCs as a series of hexagons of various sizes.

This is the rank size rule, where a country’s nth-largest settlements is 1/nth the population of the largest settlement.

Geographers have observed that, in many MDCs, there is sometimes a regular hierarchy of settlements from largest to smallest.

So the second largest city would be half the size of the largest.

Many LDCs as well as some European countries follow the primate city rule rather than the rank size rule.

The hierarchy of towns and cities in the United States follows the rank size rule fairly well, which shows that goods and services are provided to consumers at many levels throughout the country.

A primate city is much larger and more important than any other city in that country.

These are a collection of individual vendors who offer goods at specific locations one or two times a week. They exist all over the globe.

In settlements at the lower end of the central place hierarchy, periodic markets may be set up.

This is true of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Copenhagen, Denmark.

Market Areas as Hexagons

Fig. 12-5: Hexagons are often used to delineate market areas because they are a compromise between circles, which have edges equidistant from the center but leave gaps, and squares, which don’t leave gaps but whose edges are not equidistant from the center.

Optimal Location (for Pizza-Delivery Service)

Fig. 12-6: The optimal location for a pizza delivery shop with seven potential customers in a linear settlement (top) and with 99 families in apartment buildings (bottom).

Market Areas for Supermarkets

Fig. 12-8a: Market area, range, and threshold for Kroger supermarkets in Dayton, Ohio.

Market Areas for Convenience Stores

Fig. 12-8b: Market area, range, and threshold for UDF convenience stores in Dayton, Ohio.

Rank-Size Distribution of Cities

Fig. 12-9: Cities in the U.S. closely follow the rank-size distribution, as indicated by the almost straight line on this log scale. In Romania, there are few settlements in two size ranges.

Key Issue 3—Why Do Business Services Locate in Large Settlements?

In ancient Greece city-states such as Athens and Sparta emerged.

This included the city and surrounding countryside or hinterland.

There have been major urban settlements in different parts of the world since ancient times, including Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome.

Cities in the Roman world, especially Rome, were important centers of administration, trade, culture, and a host of other services.

From the time of the fall of Rome until the Industrial Revolution the largest cities in the world were in Asia.

Urbanization declined with the fall of Rome and didn’t reemerge until the 11th century.

Ancient Ur

Fig. 12-10: Ur, in modern day Iraq, was one of the earliest urban settlements. The ziggurat, or stepped temple, was surrounded by a dense network of residences.

Athens, Greece

Fig. 12-11: The hilltop site of the Acropolis, dating to about 500 BC, still dominates the skyline of modern Athens.

Athens, Greece

The hilltop site of the Acropolis, dating to about 500 BC, still dominates the skyline of modern Athens.

Brugge, Belgium

Fig. 12-12: Brugge (or Bruges) was a major port and wool manufacturing center from the 12th century. It is marked by squares surrounded by public buildings.

Carcassonne, France

Medieval European cities such as Carcassonne, in southwestern France, were often surrounded by walls for protection.

Paris

Fig. 12-13: Paris was originally surrounded by walls which were expanded to include new neighborhoods as the city grew.

Modern world cities offer business services, especially financial services.

World cities are also centers of national and international power.

New York is the headquarters of the United Nations, and Brussels is one of the headquarter cities of the European Union.

They also have retail services with huge market areas, such as leisure and cultural services of national importance.

Four levels of cities have been identified by geographers.

London, New York, and Tokyo are at the top of the hierarchy of world cities.

They are unique in that they all have important international stock exchanges.

These are world cities, regional command and control centers, specialized producer-service centers, and dependent centers.

There are also second and third tier world cities.

There are regional centers like Atlanta, and Boston, and subregional centers such as Charlotte and Des Moines.

Command and control centers contain the headquarters of large corporations, and concentrations of a variety of business services.

Specialized producer-service centers have management and research and development activities associated with specific industries.

As the term suggest, dependent centers depend on decisions made in world cities for their economic well-being.

They provide relatively unskilled jobs.

Detroit is a specialized producer-service center specializing in motor vehicles.

San Diego is an industrial and military dependent center.

Nonbasic industries are usually consumed within that community.

These industries employ a large percentage of a community’s workforce.

Basic industries are exported mainly to consumers outside a settlement and constitutes that community’s economic base.

Basic industries are vital to the economic health to a settlement.

The concept of basic industries originally referred to the secondary sector of the economy, such as manufacturing but in a postindustrial society such as the United States, they are now more likely to be in the service sector of the economy.

Hierarchy of World Cities

Fig. 12-14: London, New York, and Tokyo are the dominant world cities in the global economy. Other major and secondary world cities play lesser roles.

Business Service Cities in the U.S.

Fig. 12-15: Below the world cities in the hierarchy of U.S. cities are command & control centers, specialized producer-service centers, and dependent centers.

Economic Base of U.S. Cities

Fig. 12-16: Cities that have a high proportion of their labor force engaged in the specified economic activity shown.

Cities with High Talent Levels

Fig. 12-17a: Cities with high levels of talent (measured by percent of scientists, professionals, and college-educated).

Cities with High Diversity

Fig. 12-17b: Cities with high levels of diversity (measured by cultural facilities, % gay population, and a coolness index).

Key Issue 4—Why Do Services Cluster Downtown?The central business district (CBD) is the center of a city where services have traditionally clustered.

These include services with a high threshold, long range, and those that serve people who work in the center.

Three types of retail services have concentrated in the center they require accessibility.

Retail services with a high range are specialized shops that are patronized infrequently.

Both of these types of services have moved in large numbers to suburban locations in recent years.

A large department store is a service with a high threshold.

Services that cater to people working in the CBD have remained in this location and have actually expanded, especially where CBDs have been revitalized.

Manufacturing has declined in the MDCs in these areas.

Business services such as advertising and banking have also remained clustered in the CBD.

Industries that have not closed have moved to their operations to the suburbs where they can take advantage of cheaper land.

Pull factors have lured them to the suburbs; the crime and poverty of central cities have acted as a push factor.

Land cost in the CBD are very high because of competition for accessibility.

Residents have also moved away form the CBDs.

The land use is more intensive and character of buildings is more vertical than other urban areas, both above and below ground.

Infrastructure, including transportation and utilities, run underground.

Skyscrapers give the central city its distinctive image.

Washington D.C., is the only large U.S. CBD that does not have skyscrapers because no building is allowed to be higher than the Capital dome.

North American suburbs are no longer just areas of residential growth.

European CBDs are visibly very different because they have tried to preserve their historic cores by limiting high-rise buildings.

Businesses have moved to the suburbs.

Factories and offices have also moved to the suburbia because of lower rents.

Retailing has become concentrated in the suburban malls.

CBD of Charlotte, NC

Fig. 12-18: Charlotte’s CBD is dominated by retail and office buildings. Public and semipublic buildings are also in the downtown area.

Charlotte, North Carolina

Faneuil Hall, Boston

Faneuil Hall Marketplace was originally built in 1742 and was renovated in the 1970s into a popular retail center.

Dublin, Ireland

Retail services in Grafton Street, Dublin. European cities have retained consumer services in the CBD.

London, England

St. Paul’s Cathedral, designed in 1673, dominates the skyline of central London

Retail Centers in Atlanta

Fig. 12-19: Most shopping malls in Atlanta and other cities are in the suburbs. The ideal location is near an interchange on an interstate highway beltway circling the city.

Shopping Center, Syracuse, N.Y.

Suburban shopping mall in Syracuse, N.Y. Retail services in most American cities have moved to suburban malls.