What Advantage Does a City Gain by Legally Incorporating an Area

There is no single definition of what a sanctuary city is. They are also highly controversial from a liberal and conservative point of view. Those who want safe havens believe that undocumented immigrants provide labour to fill the employment gaps that big cities need. Others believe the immigration system is broken, so sanctuary cities offer safe havens to law-abiding undocumented immigrants. While those who oppose sanctuary cities believe they are places that violate federal laws by intentionally employing undocumented immigrants. The law can also be applied to small areas. For example, California`s primate city is Los Angeles with a population of 16 million, more than double the size of the greater San Francisco area at 7 million. Even counties can be studied via primate city law. If a city is not incorporated, it means that it does not have a local government.

Unincorporated communities exist “by tradition”. These municipalities generally do not have elected representatives at the city level. Poor air and water quality, inadequate water availability, waste disposal problems and high energy consumption are exacerbated by increasing population density and the demands of urban environments. Strong urban planning will be crucial to overcoming these and other challenges as the world`s urban areas grow. San Francisco is the best example of a great American city based on its defense capability. Located on a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and a large bay, San Francisco was founded where it is because of the military advantage this place offers. San Francisco offers two types of defensible geographic advantages. It is both a peninsula and a sheltered port. The guns positioned on either side of the Golden Gate could fire at any enemy ship attempting to enter San Francisco Bay. Armies coming north up the peninsula were forced into a handful of narrow passes where the Spanish army could concentrate its defenses. These location advantages prompted the Spanish to build Fort El Presidio Real in San Francisco in 1776. The U.S.

Army took control of the fort in 1846 and it remained a military base until 1994. In 1949, George Zipf developed his theory of the rank rule to explain the size of cities in a country. He explained that the second city and later the smaller ones should be part of the larger city. For example, if a country`s largest city had a population of one million, Zipf explained that the second city would have half as many as the first, 500,000. The third would contain a third or 333,333, the fourth would house a quarter or 250,000, and so on, the rank of the city being the denominator of the faction. As customers and merchants living and working at a non-function level interact over time, some villages will attract more merchants (and customers) and become cities or even cities. Some communities will not be able to attract or retain merchants, and they will not grow. Competition between cities at this level prevents nearby sites from developing at the same time. As a result, centrally located villages tend to become cities at the expense of their neighbors.

A network of central cities will emerge, and few of these cities will become cities. A very central city can become a much larger city. According to Christaller, if a group of people (such as farmers) evenly distributed at one level (as was the case when Kansas opened up to settlers), a predictable hierarchy of villages, towns, and villages will emerge. The driving force behind this model is the fundamental need that everyone has to go and buy goods and services. Of course, people prefer to travel less to acquire what they need. The maximum distance people travel for a good or service is called the scope of that good or service. Goods like a hammer have a short range because people won`t travel far to buy a hammer. A tractor, because it is an expensive item, has a much longer range. The cost to get to a tractor dealership is low for the value of the tractor itself, so farmers have to travel long distances to buy the one they want.

Hospital services are even more far-reaching. Humans could travel to the moon if a cure for a deadly disease were available there. Los Angeles remained a small town until the Santa Fe/Southern Pacific Railroad opened a second transcontinental terminus in Los Angeles in 1881. Soon after, San Pedro`s local port facilities were modernized and L.A. began competing with San Francisco for business. With the invention of refrigerated trucks and the discovery of oil in the area, L.A. grew. Good weather has encouraged migrants to travel west to work in the oil and citrus industries.

The same good weather helped attract the film and aviation industries decades later. However, water resources remain a problem. The Los Angeles River was never enough to meet the needs of a large city, so over the years a number of canals and pipelines have been built to bring fresh water to the Los Angeles area from great distances. Sometimes two rivers merge at a confluence into a single, more massive river, providing another unique opportunity to gain an edge over competitors. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is located at the most famous confluence of the United States. The steel industry had flourished in Pittsburgh for more than 100 years, largely due to the industrial advantages created by its location. Any community in Texas with a population of less than 5,000 must be a city under general law under Section 11, Section 5 of the State Constitution. Without going into too much detail, a de facto community is a community that has only the powers that the state confers on it. Common law municipalities are classified according to the number of inhabitants (usually A, B or C). These municipalities have different options for their type of government. For decades, the U.S.

Census Bureau recognized an area as “urban” if it had incorporated as a city. Incorporation indicates that a group of residents has successfully filed a city charter with their state`s local government, which gives them the right to govern themselves in a specific area of the state. Until recently, the U.S. Census Bureau classified nearly all incorporated territories with a population of 2,500 or more as “urban.” Two underlying causal forces contribute to the rise of cities. Location factors are the elements that promote the growth of a city located at this location. Location factors include things like availability of water, food, good soil, quality harbor, and features that make a site easily protected from attack. Situational factors are external elements that promote the growth of a city, such as distance from other cities or a central location. For example, the extraordinary distance that the invading armies had to travel to reach Moscow, Russia helped the city survive many wars. Most major cities have a good location and situation factors. We have to be “city dwellers”, whether we like it or not. Many people say they don`t like the city with its noise, pollution, crowds and crime, but life outside the city also has its challenges.

Living outside a city is uncomfortable because rural areas do not have access to the many amenities found in cities. Grouping activities in a small space is called agglomeration and reduces the friction of distance for thousands of daily activities. Cities are convenient places to live, work and play. Convenience also has economic consequences. Reduced transportation costs and the ability to share infrastructure costs create so-called agglomeration economies, which are the main raison d`être of cities. The convenience and economic benefits of city living have resulted in nearly 8 in 10 Americans living in urban areas. In California, the most urban state in the United States, nearly 95% of residents live in a city. This chapter examines the evolution of cities, why cities are where they are, and how the geography of cities influences the way city dwellers live. In fact, the first incarnation of cities in thousands of years offered residents some degree of protection from violence from outside groups. Living in a rural area, in agriculture or animal husbandry, made any family living in such isolation vulnerable to attack. Small villages could provide limited protection, but larger cities, especially those with ditches, high walls, professional soldiers, and advanced weapons, were safer. However, this simple definition was problematic.

Some areas, which had a fairly large population but were not incorporated, did not conform to the old definition or the urban definition. For example, Honolulu, Hawaii and Arlington, Virginia are not incorporated, so they have been technically referred to as “census designated places” rather than cities. Conversely, some incorporated territories may have very few people. This can happen when a city loses population or when a city`s boundaries extend far beyond the populated core of the city. Jacksonville, Florida, is the classic example of this problem. Jacksonville has annexed so much territory that its boundaries extend far into the adjacent countryside, making it the largest city in the United States by area (874.3 square miles!). As a result, the Census Bureau has created a complex set of criteria capable of assessing a variety of conditions that define each place as urban or rural. Among the criteria now used by the census is a minimum population density of 1,000 people per square mile, whether the site is incorporated or not. In addition, an area is included that includes non-residential buildings, but still urban land uses. Therefore, areas with factories, shops or a large airport that contains only a few apartments still count as part of a city. The census uses a measure of surface impermeability to make such a decision.

This means that even a parking lot can be a factor in classifying a place as urban. Finally, the census classifies places that are relatively close to an urban area if it has a population density of at least 500 people per square mile.