- Define and explain Sustainable Cities in your own words
- Use key terms such as counter-urbanisation accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Sustainable Cities: evaluate strategies for greener, fairer cities, from green belts to public transport.
Evaluate strategies for greener, fairer cities, from green belts to public transport.
Key ideas
Sustainability has three pillars
A sustainable city balances environment (clean air, green space, low carbon), economy (jobs, affordable housing) and society (equity, safety, participation). Strategies include investing in public transport, protecting green belts to limit sprawl, mixed-use development to cut commuting, and upgrading informal settlements rather than demolishing them.
Cities grow through migration and natural increase
Rural–urban migration brings job-seekers to the city, while high birth rates and falling death rates add natural increase — in many poorer countries both operate together, producing explosive growth. Pull factors such as industrial jobs and better services combine with rural push factors like the mechanisation of farming, which needs fewer workers.
Key term — counter-urbanisation: The movement of people from cities to smaller settlements and rural areas, often enabled by remote working and commuting.
Using the Burgess concentric zone model, describe how land use and housing quality change with distance from the city centre.
Start at the centre: the CBD has the highest land values, with shops, offices and entertainment — almost no housing. Move to the transition zone: old industry and low-quality terraced housing, the cheapest residential area. Continue to the inner suburbs: better-quality, larger houses for skilled workers. Reach the outer suburbs: modern, spacious housing for wealthier commuters. Note the commuter zone beyond: villages whose residents travel into the city. Add evaluation: real cities rarely form perfect rings — transport routes, hills and history distort the pattern.
Answer: Land values and housing quality generally rise with distance from the CBD, from the low-quality transition zone through improving suburbs to the commuter zone — though real cities distort the ideal rings.
- Treating urbanisation and urban growth as the same thing Urban growth is the absolute increase in urban population; urbanisation is the rising proportion living in urban areas. They often happen together but measure different things.
- Applying the Burgess model uncritically The model was based on 1920s Chicago and ignores cars, out-of-town retail and modern regeneration. Use it as a framework to test against reality, not as a description of every city.
Practice
The increasing proportion of a population living in towns and cities.
Any two: employment opportunities, higher wages, better schools, better healthcare, entertainment.
Hoyt describes sectors — wedges of land use radiating along transport routes — rather than Burgess's concentric rings.
Any one: traffic congestion and air pollution, inadequate waste disposal, loss of green space, water pollution.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "counter-urbanisation"?
Why is upgrading a shanty town often better than demolishing it?
In the Burgess model, which zone has the lowest-quality housing?
- Sustainable Cities: evaluate strategies for greener, fairer cities, from green belts to public transport.
- Sustainability has three pillars: A sustainable city balances environment (clean air, green space, low carbon), economy (jobs, affordable housing) and society (equity, safety, participation).
- sustainable development: Development that meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
- Watch out for: treating urbanisation and urban growth as the same thing