The rolling blackouts in Texas were national news. Texas calls itself the energy capital of the United States, yet it couldn’t keep the lights on. Conservatives were quick to blame reliance on wind power, just as they did last summer when California faced power interruptions due to a heat wave. What really happened? It’s true…
The Big Chill — Legal Planet
Harriet Hawkins, Geography, Art, Research: Artistic Research in the GeoHumanities – Routledge, 2021
This book explores the intersection of geographical knowledge and artistic research in terms of both creative methods and practice-based research. In doing so it brings together geography’s ‘creative turn’ with the art world’s ‘research turn.’
Based on a decade and a half of ethnographic stories of working at the intersection of creative arts practices and geographical research, this book offers a much-needed critical account of these forms of knowledge production. Adopting a geohumanities approach to investigating how these forms of knowledge are produced, consumed, and circulated, it queries what imaginaries and practices of the key sites of knowledge making (including the field, the artist’s studio, the PhD thesis, and the exhibition) emerge and how these might challenge existing understandings of these locations. Inspired by the geographies of science and knowledge, art history and theory, and accounts of…
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City is a complex agglomeration of multiple functions – economic, social, cultural, etc. It has many zones characterised by domination of different functions.Its ‘central area’ is its distinct section which is identified as the centre of marketing, business and financial activities as well as dense built-up sector where lines of transportation converge from various parts and nearly from all direction. It is therefore known as the hub of a city. In other words, city centre is a specialized area and a “distinctive region with a complex web of associated and interwoven land uses”.
In Great Britain, city’s ‘downtown’ is also the city centre and a principal area for marketing and business. Besides being the core of commerce, the central city serves as retail district flanked by stores, shops, office buildings, banks, clubs, hotels, theatres, museums, and organizational headquarters.
Johnson is of the opinion that there is hardly any distinction between the city centre and CBD. Here residential and industrial uses of land have merged spontaneously with the specialized uses of CBD… “And a distinction between the central area of a city and CBD is easier to make in theory than in practice”. If non-central business uses such as places of worship and educational institutions which are also commonly located in the city centre are excluded, the delimitation of a compact CBD will be almost impossible.
Accessibility is one of the most significant attributes of CBD. It possesses the quality of being accessible from almost all residential areas lying all around in the far-flung middle and outer zones of a city.
In CBD area, competition for land has become too acute to cope with, and it is for this reason that buildings show vertical expansion rather than horizontal. The buildings are rarely used for residential purposes because of intensity and density of business uses. However, in the cities of the developing areas, the central business area is also occupied sporadically by residences, and in some cases upper storeys are used for residences.
In Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata more than 25 per cent upper storeys of the multi-storeyed buildings are used for residential purpose. But the case of the Western world is different. In London, not more than 5,000 populations was estimated in 1961.
Besides this, although manufacturing does not form an attribute of CBD, yet newspaper and book publication are found centrally located in many cities. This is perhaps because of the facility of their sale and circulation including convenience of transport and communication.
Recently, there has been a danger that the central function of the city might break down completely because they are becoming painfully inaccessible. Traffic breakdown has become a common phenomenon, especially in the metropolises of the Third World countries, “…cities have much to offer us when the quality of life within them is high and much to trouble us when it is not”.
Practical viability of CBD is not even 50 per cent possible for it to function. Even the developed countries’ CBD areas are not perfectly meeting their objectives, and are engrossed with incorrigible problems. Actually, there is little coordination between the theory and practice on the concept of CBD. Nevertheless mixed motives of the CBD have not been able to minimize its overwhelming attraction.
With the sprawling of cities and coming up of the residential sectors in different parts far and wide, the metropolises like Delhi, Kanpur, Hyderabad-Secunderabad in India are disintegrated into subsidiary retail business areas.
The significance of the primary CBD has been minimized because people do not prefer to reach the downtown under traffic-tension and uneasy movement out of their own residential sector. The outlying business district fulfills nearly all needs – social, cultural and economic – of the residents who are living about ten to twenty miles off the main city centre.
Now in cities at various places, facilities are available meeting the requirements of central business type. B.J.L. Berry has identified an hierarchical order among various business areas. The demand can be met at the various levels but of varying degree of threshold. Only the very essential goods are made available at the lowest order or at nearest point for consumers. This is the lowest level where only essential goods stores are located and are within easy reach.
At this most convenient point, frequency of consumers is very high. But with the increasing level of hierarchical order, the level or degree of threshold changes and more special nature of goods centres are found with lesser degree of consumers’ frequency (Figure 16.1).
Degree of specialized nature of consumers’ goods goes on decreasing as one move away from the CBD towards its edge. The land values too show a gradual decline. The areas are occupied towards the edge by parks, public institutions, etc. Dickinson has termed the area of edge of CBD as a ‘zone of deterioration’, whereas it was called ‘blighted zone’ by Firey.
The edge of, CBD in many million-cities are infested by unauthorized occupation of land where mixed land uses have developed. Urban centres in this stage grow on the expense of the surrounding countryside, destroying the surrounding landscape on which it ultimately depends. It is also known as area of neglect and somewhere as zone of discard.
Generally CBD resembles with ‘Quardrate Cross’ in shape(Figure 16.2). It is not necessary that CBD occupies the geographic centre of a city. It may be away from it where specialization of land uses develops to make the point of space a business-area of central order catering all sorts of people for all sorts of goods from all parts of a city. The shape of CBD depends upon nature of a city, its population, areal extent and above all, land uses. It has also its relations with the social and cultural institutions.
The shape and size of the CBD do not evenly spread on all directions. Near its edge, zone of neglect or discard may distort its regular shape. Similarly, zone of assimilation also affects the shape by residences over its edge occupied by business community. On a map, the shape is seen two-dimensional as a quadrate cross, but in reality it is three-dimensional, and best visualized as a pyramid – like figure with an irregularly shaped base, and a height varying in proportion to total central business floor area.
Two groups of land uses are on average visible:
(a) Service-financial-office uses, and
(b) Retail business uses. Wholesale business activity and residential units as well as factories do not form part of it. Besides these some of the institutions like administrative municipal council, other public institutions, parks, churches, place of worship, etc., also do not form its part.
The following list of the various uses may indicate various CB and non-CB uses:
It is a difficult job to delimit CBD accurately because land uses in the central part of a city also vary from cities to cities. There is lot of difference in the central areas of the developed and developing countries. Whatever methods are used by the western authors hardly suit universal urban environment. There is not yet any standard method of its delimitation. However, some of the methods have been given here which may reflect on the nature of fieldwork involved in its delimitation.
(1) W. William – Olsson Technique: This method takes into account a ‘shop rent index’ which is the total of shop rents of a building divided by the length of its frontage. But because of the difficulties involving in the collection of such data, it is impracticable. In India nobody discloses the correct value of rents.
(2) Sund and Isachsen used total turnover or trade instead of total shop rents. But, again, this is rather more unreliable to obtain and in the developing countries this type of data obtained from the Municipal Council (Department of Marketing) are totally fake. Therefore, it is very difficult to prepare a map out of the aforesaid data and the picture which is thus obtained is mostly diffused.
(3) Proud foot used to locate intra-city business areas by block-frontage-volume of sales for each side of a block of all stores whose addresses indicate that they front on that side. But Proud foot method too involves weaknesses being unconcerned about the activities of offices and banks.
(4) Other possible efforts include the data of building heights, population distribution, traffic and pedestrian flows, valuation data and land uses. Some minimum building height may be taken as a cut-off point to mark higher heights on a lot basis as the boundary of the CBD area. If the resulting boundary obtained is irregular, the same may be smoothened out by basing the map on blocks rather on lots. Population of dwelling units, pedestrian flows, traffic volume may, similarly help in delimiting the area in question.
An appropriate criterion may be selected after close empirical studies of the central city. Of course, it varies from city to city, to their size, to economies, to culture and to various activities which are centripetal to the area.
The simplest method is plotting of the land-use for delimitation of the CBD. Wherever there is a break in CB-use and non-CB use on a map, a point can be plotted for each street. But this must be carefully decided that, “how much of a break must there be in order to locate a point?” This problem is being solved by an application of Central Business Index Method (see Figure 16.3).
The delimitation may be done as:
(a) A block must have a Central Business Height Index (CBHI) of 1 or more, and
(b) A Central Business Intensity Index (CBII) of 50 per cent or more,
Where CBHI stands for C space + ground floor area and CBII for C Space/ Total Space × 100
A profile for each story of the block is prepared. Its horizontal scale is equal to a base map of a city. This method is not suitable for small cities where only a few blocks could meet the CBHI and CBII measures. In India, the method may only be applicable in case of main four metropolises. CB area in other cities can be identified by plotting CB uses on maps.
Nearly all CBD areas are overwhelmingly becoming crowdy during peak hours and near the Peak Land Value Intersection (PLVI) point traffic movement becomes a serious problem. This must be channelized by planning arterial roads and indicating places for disallowing traffic movement. Parking spaces should be provided on all sides at least one-to-two furlongs off the PLVI. In the absence of parking facility there is always insecurity and danger for pedestrians.
Kolkata has the largest volume of pedestrian traffic and the problem in the CBD area is being enhanced by encroachments by vendors. Calcutta Urban Development Project (CUDP) constructed underground parking plazas in the CBD. Usurpation of road-frontage and unauthorized occupation of footpaths should be strictly prohibited. The edge of CBD is notoriously occupied by slums and blight areas. In Delhi, old CBD including Sadar Bazar and Chandni Chowk is inflected by slums and blights.
Commonly in India, an average size of city does not have a distinct CBD resembling the cities of USA and Western Europe. One may identify a compact CBD in the metropolises of Kolkata (Chowringhee), Mumbai (Kalba Devi-Tank Rd.), Bangalore (M.G. Road), Delhi (Old Chandni Chowk), New Delhi (Connaught Place), etc.
Identification of CBD area in India is not possible through the Murphy-Vance Index Method. There may not be a single compact area. But in our cities, being multiple nuclei in structure, there may be small central areas developed on and around different nuclei. Their delimitation may be possible by plotting on map central-business uses of land.
Unplanned cities of India possess CB areas of distorted shape and may not be like ‘quadrate cross’. Another distinction which makes CB areas of India different in nature from their western counterpart is their residential use. Most of the central areas in India are occupied by semi-residential buildings and possess high density of population which is an uncommon feature in the Western Central areas.
CB areas of Indian cities are considerably flanked by haphazard retail marketing stores, narrow and tortuous roads, traffic congestion, in sanitary conditions, absence of footpaths and parking space, and above all, slums and squatters. These possess an unhealthy look and movement within the central business areas of our country is rather unpleasant and rather a difficult job.
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The Central Business District, is the focal point of a city. It is the financial and cultural center of the city and it is the nodal point for transportation networks.
The CBD developed as the market square in ancient cities. On market days, farmers, merchants, and consumers would gather in the center of the city to exchange, buy, and sell goods. This ancient market was the forerunner to the CBD.
As cities grew and developed, CBDs became a fixed location where retail and commerce took place. The CBD is typically at or near the oldest part of the city and is often near a major transportation route that provided the site for the city’s location, such as a river, railroad, or highway.
Over time, the CBD developed into a center of finance and control for government as well as for office space. In the early 1900s, European and American cities had CBDs that featured primarily retail and commercial cores. In the mid-20th century, the CBD expanded to include office space and commercial businesses, while retail took a back seat. The growth of the skyscraper occurred in CBDs, making them denser.
By the beginning of the 21st century, the CBD had become a diverse region of the metropolitan area and included residential, retail, commercial, universities, entertainment, government, financial institutions, medical centers, and culture. The experts of the city are often located at workplaces or institutions in the CBD. This includes lawyers, doctors, academics, government officials and bureaucrats, entertainers, directors, and financiers.
In recent decades, the combination of gentrification and the development of shopping malls have given the CBD a new life. In addition to housing, CBDs have mega-malls, theaters, museums, and stadiums. San Diego’s Horton Plaza is an example of a downtown area as an entertainment and shopping district. Pedestrian malls are also common today in CBDs in an effort to make the CBD a 24-hour destination for not only those who work in the CBD but also to bring in people to live and to play in the CBD. Without entertainment and cultural opportunities, the CBD is often far more populated during the day than at night, as relatively few workers live in the CBD and most commute.
The CBD is found at the point of Peak Land Value Intersection in the city. The Peak Land Value Intersection is the intersection with the most valuable real estate in the city. This intersection is the core of the CBD.
The CBD is often the nucleus of a metropolitan area’s transportation system. Public transit, as well as highways, converge on the CBD, making it very accessible to those who live throughout the metropolitan area. On the other hand, the convergence of road networks in the CBD often creates overwhelming traffic jams as commuters from the suburbs attempt to converge on the CBD in the morning and return home at the end of the workday.
In recent decades, edge cities have begun to develop as suburban CBDs in major metropolitan areas. In some instances, these edge cities have become a larger magnet to the metropolitan area than the original CBD.
There are three distinct groups of edge cities. The most common type of edge cities are the “boomers.” A boomer is an edge city that developed gradually around a highway or shopping mall. Northern Virginia and Tysons Corner are both boomers. The second type of edge cities are the “greenfields.” They are those edge cities that rise as a result of an upcoming suburban town. Their development always and majorly lies on their suburban fringe. Reston Town is a classic example of a Greenfield. Uptowns are the edge cities that grow from old cities based on their history. Another name used to refer to uptowns is satellite cities. Rosslyn–Ballston Corridor is an example of an uptown.
There are no boundaries to the CBD. The CBD is essentially about perception. It is usually the “postcard image” one has of a particular city. There have been various attempts at delineating the boundaries of the CBD but, for the most part, one can visually or instinctively know when the CBD starts and ends, as it is the core and contains a plethora of tall buildings, high density, a lack of parking, transportation nodes, a large number of pedestrians on the street, and generally just a lot of activity during the daytime. The bottom line is that the CBD is what people think of when they think of a city’s downtown area.
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Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls 