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• Get a piece of paper - half sheet is fine• Draw a map of where you live (you decide on the scale)• Put in as much detail as you can – use physical and cultural landscapes• Here are some examples – you can also just search mental map of neighborhood

for more• I would love to see your map – feel free to send a picture to me…

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What belongs in a city? What makes an area urbanized? What to you is a city?

Do a little brainstorm before you move on to the next slide -

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6 general characteristics of a city:1. Densely populated2. Has to be able to support a lot of people3. Government (at all levels – city, county, state, federal) powers, big businesses,

where you’d go to see concerts, museums, plays, sports

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4. Human landscape is more visible and land is used in a variety of ways – housing, transport, business, services, etc

5. Link to other cities with trade, transportation, communication – What cities do you think Seattle has these ties with?

6. Cities are the place where people go to change their lives, but they also display the most poverty

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Cities grow for a variety of reasons. Think about site & situation. How they are connected to the world, the types of businesses they have, if they have a high birth rate, low birth rate (think DTM). Are the cities trying to increase the types of economic activities they have? Are they trying to make life better for their citizens?

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Key point – population density at 1,000 per square mile

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In this area we have several metropolitan areas that can be pulled out that connect to where you live

Largest to smallest:Seattle-Tacoma (the green area on the map)Seattle/King CountyBellevue/Eastside

We are highly connected through:• Transport• Economic activities• Professional sports• Commuting • etc

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See map on next slide

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This is the Los Angeles Metro Area –Arrow is pointing to just the city of Los Angeles boundariesThe circle is LA countyAll the pink areas are part of the greater Los Angeles Area (often referred to as LA-Long Beach-Riverside-San Bernardino-Santa Ana)

So you have to be specific when you are looking at population etc. What boundaries are you using – because that will change the numbers for population:

Los Angeles City 4 millionLos Angeles County 10.16 millionLA-Long Beach-Santa Ana Metro 13 millionMost of the area covered in the map 18 million

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San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and their surrounding suburbs have basically grown into a gigantic urban area integrated together

Another example is the New York-New Jersey area

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Takes those metro areas and conurbation areas and they merge into a large massive city with few rural areas separating them.

This has been a uniquely North American experience, but we are seeing this start in other areas of the world that have many large cities close together

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Wasatch, Twin Cities too

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Based on an algorithm in regards to commutes

This map shows you where people commute to for work

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This rule states that if you take the largest city – and compare it to the next largest , city number two will have a population ½ the size of the first city. City number 3 would be 1/3 the size of the population of the first city, etc..

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These numbers use the actual city boundaries – not metro areas

Does it work? Sort of LA is about ½ the size of NYCChicago is about 1/3Houston is about ¼Phoenix is almost 1/5San Jose is more than 1/10th

But overall it pretty much works here.

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Population is in thousands 747=747,000

Spokane is less than ½ of Seattle Tacoma is a little less than 1/3 of seattleVancouver is just about ¼ of seattleBellevue is close to ¼Kent is a little larger than 1/5Federal Way is larger than 1/10 – but not too far off

So it pretty much works in Washington too.

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Usually when we look at the population of Megacities we use the metropolitan area

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Print a World Map a good place to go is the Arizona Geographic Alliance.Using the UNCities Report and the 2018 numbers create a color coded map of the world’s 33 mega cites. The report is uploaded on my website. Here is my example of part of the map I made:

We will be using this map for a coupleOf other things, so hold on to it.

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