8
8 Urbanization models and the regions
Suppose you placed a small oval rug-sized aerial photo of your favorite city in
the center ofahugeroom, and invited a group of children to paint a ‘‘mural” on
thefloor. Lots of trees and buildings and roads and playgrounds and people and
farmland and water might appear. Some children may work together to portray a
neighborhood, while others play follow-the-leader and create repeated patterns.
Most would probably paint their own idiosyncratic visions. The resulting mural
could be artistically delightful. But would it be a promising model for your city,
as it spreads outward progressively meshing with surrounding land?
The preceding three chapters have highlighted existing patterns of urban
regions worldwide. A rich array of sites and resources appears in the wide ring
of land surrounding our metropolitan areas. In this chapter on urbanization
weturn to change, especially changing spatial patterns and their consequences,
as metropolitan areas spread outward (Godron and Forman1983,Formanand
Godron1986,Forman1995,Lindenmayer and Fischer2006). This dynamic view
of an urban region is central to ecological understanding and to wise planning. A
static or constant world is impossible. Maintaining valuable human and natural
resources over time requires flexibility, even adaptability, to get through gradu-
ally changing conditions. Gradual urbanization is one of the most conspicuous
changes around cities (Turneret al.1990,MeyerandTurner1994,Germaine
et al.1998, Schneideret al.2003).
In essence,urbanizationrefers to densification and outward spread of the
built environment. People and buildings become denser within a metropoli-
tan area in several familiar ways, such as infilling on vacant lots and convert-
ing single-housing units to multiple-unit housing, low- to high-rise residential,
and residential to mixed commercial--residential areas (Vigier1997,Kuan and
Rowe2004,Chenet al.2004,Ozawa2004). Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore