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The internal structure of cities — how different land uses, social groups, and economic activities are spatially arranged — has fascinated geographers, sociologists, and urban planners for over a century. Understanding urban models is not merely an academic exercise; these frameworks shape planning policy, investment decisions, and our understanding of urban inequality.
Key Definition: Urban morphology is the study of the form, structure, and layout of cities, including the pattern and arrangement of land uses, building types, transport networks, and open spaces.
Three models dominate the study of urban structure. All emerged from the Chicago School of urban sociology in the early-to-mid twentieth century.
Ernest Burgess (1925) proposed that cities grow outward from the centre in a series of concentric rings, each with distinct land uses and social characteristics:
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