A model of urban spatial structure and growth represented as a series of concentric zones. On the basis of studies of Chicago, E.W. Burgess identified five zones: (i) the Central Business District (CBD), (ii) the zone in transition, (iii) the zone of working men’s homes (second generation immigrant settlement, (iv) the zone of better residences (middle-class residence district) and (v) the commuter’s zone (higher class residential district).
Growth is stimulated by immigration, the new residents move to the second zone and initiation of processes of ‘Invasion’ and ‘Succession’ as all groups move out towards the urban periphery to avoid the invading negative externalities.
Generalized models of urban growth and land use patterns have been proposed to summarize the observable results of the organizing forces and controls of urban structure. Their starting point is the distinctive CBD that every older central city has.
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The core of this area is characterized by intensive land development: tall buildings, many stores and offices, and crowded streets.
Just outside the core is the ‘frame’ or fringe of the CBD; this is an area of wholesaling activities, transportation terminals, warehouses, new-car dealers, furniture stores, recreation centres and even light industries. Just beyond the CBD is the beginning of residential land uses.
The land use models depicted diverge in their summaries of patterns outside the CBD. The concentric zone model was developed to explain the observed sociological patterning of American cities. The model recognizes, as given below, five concentric circles of mostly residential diversity at increasing distance in all directions from the core:
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(a) The high density CBD (core) with wholesaling, warehousing, light industry and transport depots at its margins (frame).
(b) A zone in transition marked by the deterioration of old residential structures abandoned, as the city expanded, by the former more wealthy occupants and now containing high density, low income slums, rooming houses and perhaps ethnic ghettos.
(c) A zone of ‘independent workingmen’s homes’ occupied by industrial workers.
(d) A zone of better residences, single-family homes or high-rent apartments occupied by those wealthy enough to exercise choice in housing location and to afford the longer, more costly journey to CBD employment.
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(e) A commuters’ zone of low density, isolated residential suburbs, just beginning to emerge when this model was proposed in the 1920s.
The model is dynamic; it imagines the continuous expansion of inner rings at the expense of the next outer developed circles.
It suggests that changes in land use and population patterns occur as functions and people of one district begin to move into an adjacent zone, gradually taking over already occupied areas and properties, and eventually totally displacing former residents or activities.
This sequence of invasion and succession yields a restructured land use pattern and a new social geography of population segregation by income level.
About the urban morphology, Homer Hoyt and M.R. Davis presented the Sectoral Modal in 1939. Similarly, C.D. Harris and E.L. Ullman developed the Multi-Nuclei Model (1945) about the urban land use (See Models in Geography, 2007, Jaipur, Rawat Publications).