DESCRIPTIVE THEORY

AN EXAMPLE OF KOLKATA
WHAT IS A DESCRIPTIVE THEORY ?
• To describe or explain

• Analyzes past events for insight as to how to approach the future.

• Explain what cities are rather than what they ought to be

• Strong logic behind it, and it formed a scientific backbone

• It describes what has happened and is happening.

 MAJOR CATEGORIES
• URBAN HISTORY - the city is regarded as a unique historic process. Cities
are derivative from their own, specific culture.

a) Sjoberg’s pre industrial cities

b) Amos Rapaport – house form and culture

• URBAN ECOLOGY - city is regarded as an ecology of people, each social
group occupying space according to economic position and class.

a. Sociology of culture (Weber, Simmel and Spengler)

b. Burgess -concentric model
c. Hoyt’s sector model
d. Von thunen’s location theory
• CITY ECONOMY: regards the city as an economic engine in which space, unlike in
the previous category, is both a resource and an additional cost imposed on the
economy for production or consumption
a. Christeller ’s central place theory
b. Alonso’s bid rent theory
• URBAN COMMUNICATION: regards the city as a field of forces, a communications
network of particles which attract and repel each other much as they do in physics
• URBAN POLITICS/GOVERNANCE: understanding the city as a system of linked
decisions...affluence, imminent domain, citizen participation in a democratic city;
the game theory, in which people interact together according to fixed rules and
produce agreed-upon outcomes
• URBAN CHAOS: rejects previous theories of competition and posits the city as an
arena of conflict, in which the city's form is the residue and sign of struggle, and
also something which is shaped and used to wage it. (Castells, Harvey. Lefebvre,
Gordon)
MAJOR DESCRIPTIVE THEORIES
•Three major current descriptive models of urban form derived from
these simple ideas.
•Theory of von thunen, 1826, where concentric zones of different uses of
land tend to form an urban market/centre (Mcloughlin, 1969).
•Burgess’ concentric zone hypothesis of the location of residential areas
by type (Anderson and Egeland, 1961).
•Hoyt’s sectoral theory from sociological concepts of segregation (berry,
1964).
•Harris and Ullman's (1945) notions of multiple nucleation of the city.
 CONCENTRIC ZONE THEORY
• Burgess created this while studying the morphology of Chicago
• Starts from the cities central commercial core and takes place in
concentric circles
• Five zones
a. ZONE 1 - Central business district (CBD)
b. ZONE 2 - Traditional area – residential deterioration,
light manufacturing units
c. ZONE 3 - Working men’s houses
d. ZONE 4 - Middle class residences
e. ZONE 5 - Urban fringe – high income group
 SECTOR MODEL THEORY
• Homer Hoyt and M.R Davie in 1939
• routes radiating from the city Centre to form sectoral
pattern of land
• Sectors are
a. CBD
b. Wholesaling and light manufacturing
c. Low income housing
d. Middle income housing
e. High income housing
The sector model of
a city was based on
Chicago; the higher
income residential
was built along the
desirable Lake
Michigan and north
of the CBD.
MULTIPLE NUCLEI MODEL THEORY
• C.D Harris and E.L Ullman proposed this in 1945
• Large cities develop around multiple centers
• It was the first to consider the complexity of the city and its
surrounding areas
EXAMPLE - KOLKATA
Early developments of Kolkata Transportation network and Transportation growth in 19th
City morphology And 20th century
• The minor towns before had an
individual growth and
development having concentric
model.

• The minor towns that have been

engulfed by major ones continue
to function as secondary foci
within the resulting
agglomerations.

• The gigantic sprawl giving rise to

a conurbation causing a spatial
explosion beyond control, hence
justifying itself with the structure
of a multiple nuclei model of city
development.