Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Seattle
Spokane
Great Falls
Helena
Bozeman
Billings
Missoula
Tri-Cities
Grand Forks
Bangor
Portland
Butte
Bismarck
Fargo
Burlington
Watertown
Albany
Portland
Boston
Wausau
Boise
Green Bay
Syracuse
Rochester
Buffalo
Erie
Minneapolis
Twin
Cities
Rapid City
Grand
Rapids
Binghampton
Sioux Falls
Redding
Milwaukee
Hartford
New York
Madison
Des Moines
Detroit
Valentine
Alliance
Sioux City
Cleveland
Chicago
Harrisburg
Reno
Fort
Wayne
Toledo
Columbus
Pittsburgh
Omaha
Lincoln
Sacramento
San
Francisco San Jose
Fresno
Santa
Barbara
Los Angeles
Philadelphia
Iowa City
Salt Lake
City
Baltimore
Dayton
Denver
Springfield
Washington
Kansas
City
Indianapolis
Cincinnati
Huntington
Charlottesville
Charleston
Kansas
City
Richmond
Norfolk
Colorado
Springs
Louisville
Las
Vegas
St. George
Hays
St. Louis
Springfield
Roanoke
Lexington
Winston-
Salem
Greensboro
Wichita
Evansville
Garden City
Johnson City
Greenville
Knoxville
Flagstaff
Asheville
Fayetteville
Santa Fe
Tulsa
Charlotte
Nashville
Raleigh
Chattanooga
Amarillo
Jonesboro
Memphis
Greenville
Wilmington
Albuquerque
Oklahoma
City
Phoenix
Tucson
Fort
Smith
Little Rock
Huntsville
Atlanta
Columbia
San Diego
Lubbock
Augusta
Charleston
Dallas/Fort Worth
Fort
Worth
Birmingham
Montgomery
Abilene
Jackson
Monroe
Savannah
Dallas
El Paso
Midland
San
Angelo
Jacksonville
Baton
Rouge
Lafayette
Mobile
THE COMMONCENSUS MAP
OF THE UNITED STATES
Tallahassee
Pensacola
Austin
Gainesville
Orlando
Houston
New
Orleans
Colored regions show spheres of
influence for the indicated cities
Influential city
Tampa
San Antonio
Sacramento
Corpus Christi
Miami
0
300
600 Kilometers
McAllen
0
100
200
300
400 Miles
Figure 9.19
Regions of Infl uence for Cities in the Contiguous United States.
This map is based on
survey data from over 45,000 voters on commoncensus.org who answered the question, “On
the Level of North America as a whole, what major city do you feel has the most cultural and
economic infl uence on your area overall?”
Adapted with permission from: www.commoncensus.org, last accessed
August 2008
.
cities is distributed across space the way it is and why cities
are different sizes, it is necessary to examine more than
one city at a time and see how those cities fi t together, into
the region, into the state, and into the globe as a whole.
Urban geographers studied the distribution of cities
in Europe and the Americas during the 1900s, using quan-
titative techniques to determine how many cities and what
size cities are needed within a certain space. In studying
the size of cities and distances between them, urban geog-
raphers explored the
trade areas
of different size cities.
Every city and town has a trade area, an adjacent region
within which its infl uence is dominant. Customers from
smaller towns and villages come to the city to shop and
to conduct other business. An online survey of approxi-
mately 50,000 people helped one armchair geographer
create a map of trade areas for the contiguous United
States (Fig. 9.19). The city's newspapers are read, and its
television stations are watched in the surrounding region
(Fig. 9.20).
Across the multitude of quantitative studies in urban
geography, three key components arose frequently: popu-
lation, trade area, and distance. The simplest way to think
through the relationship among these three variables is
to consider your State or province map. On the map, you
will see many villages with unfamiliar names, a number
of small towns sited on highways, several medium-sized
cities where transportation routes converge, and likely
one familiar, dominant city. The largest city has the larg-
est trade area, and as a result fewer places rival it as the
major trade area: the several medium-sized cities trade in
smaller areas of commerce and are scattered apart from
the major city, small towns house the grocery stores and
other necessities, and fi nally villages may still have a café
or a gas station. The trade areas and population combine
to give us a hierarchy of urban places, following a pattern
commonly called the rank-size rule.
Rank and Size in the Urban Matrix
The
rank-size rule
holds that in a model urban hierar-
chy, the population of a city or town will be inversely pro-
portional to its rank in the hierarchy. Thus, if the largest
city has 12 mi
llion people, the second largest will have
