- Define and explain Urban Land-Use Models 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 Urban Land-Use Models: apply the Burgess and Hoyt models to explain how cities are organised.
Apply the Burgess and Hoyt models to explain how cities are organised.
Key ideas
Models simplify, but they still teach
Burgess's concentric zone model describes rings around the CBD — transition zone, inner suburbs, outer suburbs — based on 1920s Chicago. Hoyt's sector model adds wedges of land use following transport routes. Neither fits every city: they predate cars, edge-of-town shopping and deindustrialisation, yet they remain useful starting points for analysing land use and land values, which fall with distance from the centre.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Practice
Hoyt describes sectors — wedges of land use radiating along transport routes — rather than Burgess's concentric rings.
The increasing proportion of a population living in towns and cities.
The zone in transition (inner city), with old industry and run-down terraces.
Any two: employment opportunities, higher wages, better schools, better healthcare, entertainment.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "counter-urbanisation"?
Why is upgrading a shanty town often better than demolishing it?
Give one environmental problem caused by rapid urban growth.
- Urban Land-Use Models: apply the Burgess and Hoyt models to explain how cities are organised.
- Models simplify, but they still teach: Burgess's concentric zone model describes rings around the CBD — transition zone, inner suburbs, outer suburbs — based on 1920s Chicago.
- urban sprawl: The uncontrolled outward spread of a city into the surrounding countryside.
- Watch out for: applying the Burgess model uncritically