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icon of the pencil indicates self-teaching activities.
See a map of Dallas
This is a self-directed, web-based study of Urban Texas. Read the notes carefully. Review Chapter 10 in Jordan as well. The notes highlight a few key ideas for you to remember about cities in Texas. And do not forget to think in terms of patterns, processes, and relationships.
The
icon of the pencil indicates self-teaching activities.
1. Texas is an urban state.
83.4% of the population lives in metropolitan statistical areas. Many cities in Texas have expanded into each other to form conurbations or megalopolis. Go to this web site and examine the maps and data. You should note which urban area in Texas is growing the most rapidly. Harris County ranks third in total population among U.S. counties in the 1990s. Its estimated one-year growth from July 1 1996 to July 1 1997 ranked sixth (after Phoenix's, LA's, Las Vegas's, Anaheim's, and San Diego's counties). http://www.census.gov/population/www/estimates/countypop.html
Be sure to look at the maps available at #6 and 7 at that site. What patterns can you see for Texas?
Think
of examples of megalopolis in Texas. Compare Texas to other states to
get a sense of how urbanized we are.
- Mississippi-- 30%
- Oklahoma--59%
- Ohio--81%
- Illinois-- 83.8%
- California--96.8%
It is hard for us to think of Texas as being so urban. This passage explains why:
"The history of Texas has largely been written in rural terms. The opening of the frontier, the image of the cowboy, the tales of land conquered and tamed into productivity for farming and ranching, and the boom of oil all dominate our images of the state's past and evolution. Yet contemporary Texas is very much an urban state, boasting two of the nation's ten largest cities, an expanding set of metropolitan corridors, and an economy increasingly linked to the services and technological innovation that are urban products."
2. Urban areas of Texas are very different in terms of their population size.
Cities are not isolated entities. They are connected to the areas they serve, called their hinterlands, and they are connected to each other in systems of cities. Cities and their hinterlands form functional regions. The city performs different kinds of service and functions for its inhabitants.
The most effective way to recognize how systems of cities are organized is to consider the urban hierarchy, a ranking of cities based on their size and complexity of function. The hierarchy is like a pyramid. There are few large and complex cities and many smaller simpler ones at the bottom. This relationship is explained by the rank-size rule.
Add the spatial dimension and it becomes clear that there is a spatial system of large cities, small cities, and towns. Goods and services, people, and communications flow up and down the hierarchy.
Look
at the population of the 25 largest cities in Texas (ARGOT 4). Rank
the cities by population. How many are very large, over 2.5 million?
How many fall within the range 1 to 2.5 million? Between .5 and 1
million? Between 300,000 and .5 million? 200,000 and 300,000? 100,000
to 200,000? 50,000 to 100,000?
3. Texas cities vary in terms of their urban structure.
Cities have an internal regularity or structure based on land use. The way land is used depends largely on the value of the land. The most valuable (and expensive) land is usually in the center of the city and in the most accessible locations, e.g., the intersections of major transportation routes.
Be
sure you can explain the relationship between land value, land use,
and the internal structure of cities.
Jordan describes different models of urban structure. Texas' cities until the 1960s followed a sector model. Today, Texas cities have many centers, or CBDs--a multiple nuclei model. Automobiles have led to massive changes in our cities-- sprawl, growing suburbanization, the creation of malls. Economic activities have also diffused to the edges of cities, e.g., The Woodlands in Houston, Plano in Dallas.
4. Texas cities vary in terms of their ethnic make-up.
Within cities, social status, family status, and ethnicity affect patterns of spatial segregation. City residents segregate themselves into groups based on these characteristics. This leads to the creation of:
Anglos live in largest numbers in suburbs. The movement of ethnic groups from neighborhood to neighborhood is described as filtering. As housing stock declines, poorer ethnic minorities move in and wealthier Anglos shift to the suburbs. This process is occurring in suburbs as well as minorities move into "older" suburbs and Anglos move farther away from the center of the city.
Patterns
of ethnicity vary from city to city. Compare the spatial patterns
displayed by these two sets of data.
Percent
Af-American City Beaumont-Port
Arthur Laredo Longview
Marshall McAllen Edinburgh
Mission Texarkana Brownsville
Harlingen Tyler El Paso Killeen
Temple Corpus
Christi Houston San Antonio Galveston Texas
City Victoria Dallas Odessa Waco San Angelo Bryan College
Station Lubbock Fort Worth
Arlington Houston Wichita Falls Midland Austin Austin Brazoria Brazoria Odessa Dallas Midland Galveston Texas
City El Paso Abilene Sherman
Denison Amarillo San Antonio B/CS Victoria Killeen
Temple Abilene Waco Amarillo Fort Worth
Arlington San Angelo Wichita Falls Corpus
Christi Tyler Lubbock Beaumont Port
Arthur Brownsville
Harlingen Longview
Marshall McAllen Edinburgh
Mission Sherman
Denison Laredo Texarkana
5. Texas cities vary in morphology (shape) and growth patterns.
Economic development and population growth has followed the expansion of transportation routes, especially automobiles. Look at the map on page 229 Jordan.
Texas cities sprawl. Land is cheap and available. The expansion of
roads has led to leap frog development--when urban growth "jumps"
over rural land, later to fill in behind. As a consequence, downtowns
have decayed in many Texas cities with the development of suburban
shopping areas. There is a filtering of malls, from old to new, from
closer to the center to farthest away.
There
is a direct link between urban growth and economic
development. Urban growth takes place along transportation
routes, especially major interstate highways such as I-45
and 1-10. Two or more cities expanding into one giant city
form a megalopolis. What examples can you think
of?
Note
the location of the old downtown in Bryan. The first "mall" built was
Townshire; the second mall was Manor East Mall, the third was
Culpepper Plaza in College Station. The fourth was Post Oak Mall.
Each new mall has replaced the previous mall. What direction is the
growth of B/CS? Can you predict where the next big mall might be
constructed?
Edge cities are a new urban phenomena--urban development at the fringe of cities, e.g.,
6. Cities in Texas vary in terms of their economic function.
Bigger cities are more diverse. The key idea is function--what cities actually do within the larger society and economy that established them. No city stands alone; each is linked to other towns and cities in an interconnected city system; each provides services and products for its hinterland (trade area).
The activities carried on in a city make up the economic base.
Some cities have very specialized functions which permit them to be placed into categories, e.g., manufacturing, retailing, transportation, government, university, border, mining, tourism, etc. The functional structure of a city affects its size and growth as well as its location and relationships with other cities in the urban system. It also affects a city's character, social structure, etc.
Try
thinking of the function or functions of key cities and towns in
Texas. Compare Brownsville, Beaumont, Bryan, and Brazoria (Lake
Jackson) for example, or Austin, Amarillo, Abilene, and
Arlington.
7. The cities of Texas grew at different rates at different times.
Analyze
this graph to answer these questions: In the 19th century were most
Texans rural or urban? When did rural population begin to decline?
What decades appear to be the critical turning point when urban
population exceeded rural?
In the late 1880s in-migration from the South, Europe and the expansion of the railroad increased urban development. Trade and off-farm sales increased. The economy began to shift from subsistance to a market orientation. The greatest impetus to urban growth was Spindletop. World War II accelerated urban growth and from 1940 to 1970 urban population grew rapidly.
In 1860 the largest cities, in order, were Galveston, San Antonio, Houston, and Austin.
In 1900 the largest cities were San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Galveston, Fort Worth, and Austin.
Today, Dallas/Fort Worth is the largest city followed by Houston/Galveston.
What does this information say about the relationship between economic development, transportation, and urban growth?
This site allows you to listen in to police calls in Dallas. You may have to download a free software, but it is interesting to get a sense of the urban milieu.
Here is a story on Fort Worth.
Copyright, 1997, Sarah W. Bednarz
Revised December 21, 1999