Metropolitan area

About: Metropolitan area is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26029 publications have been published within this topic receiving 385648 citations. The topic is also known as: metro & metro area.

Environment, wealth and health: towards an analysis of intra-urban differentials within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana

Abstract: presents findings from a study of household environmental problems that included a 1,000 household survey and tests for air and water pollution. After presenting a conceptual model summarizing key interactions between environment, wealth and health in Accra, the authors analyze intra-urban differentials in household environmental conditions by level of wealth and residential zone with particular emphasis on diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases among children and respiratory problem symptoms among principal homemakers.

Neighborhoods and urban development

Abstract: American cities are shifting collections of individual neghborhoods. Thousands of residents move every year within and among neighborhoods; their flows across a city can radically and quickly alter the character of its neighborhoods. What is behind all this fermentthe decline of one area, the revitalization of another? Can the process be made more rational? Can city neighborhoods be stabilized--and older cities thus preserved?This book argues that such flows of residents are not random. Rather, they are closely linked to overall migration into or out of each metropolitan area and to the way U.S. cities develop. Downs contends that both urban development and the social problems it spawns are built upon social arrangements designed to benefit the middle-class majority. Racial segregation divides housing in each metropolitan area into two or more markets. Socioeconomic segregation subdivides neighborhoods within each market into a class hierarchy. The poor live mainly in the oldest neighborhoods, close to the urban center. The affluent live in the newest neighborhoods, mostly at the urban periphery. This separation stems not from pure market forces but from exclusionary laws that make the construction of low-cost housing illegal in most neighborhoods. The resulting pattern determines where housing is built and what housing is left to decay.Downs uses data from U.S. cities to illustrate neighborhood change and to reach conclusions about ways to cope with it. he explores the causes and nature of racial segregation and integration, and he evaluates neighborhood revitalization programs, which in reviving part of a city often displace many poor residents. He presents a timely analysis of the effect of higher energy costs upon urban sprawl, argues the wisdom of reviving older cities rather than helping their residents move elsewhere, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of public and private policies at the federal, state, metropolitan-area, city, and neighborhood levels."

The successful few: healthy downtowns of small metropolitan regions

Abstract: In the face of increasing suburbanization during the past half century, most downtowns have experienced decline, particularly those of small metropolitan regions. A survey of planners (both practitioners and academics) and other urban professionals has sought to identify small metropolitan regions considered to have successful downtowns and the factors associated with this success. Only a small number of such North American metropolitan regions were perceived as possessing a very successful or successful downtown. Factors that characterize such success are described. We conclude that revitalization policies should concentrate on niche markets that show little interest in homogenized suburban activities. More specifically, planners should focus on the retention and enhancement of the distinct physical characteristics that clearly distinguish downtowns from suburban environments. More and more U.S. cities and towns are coming to realize the benefits of greater street connectivity: reduced traffic o...