Make a list of different activities performed in urban areas.
Answers
Economic activities can be anything that makes money. Across the whole economy, we usually separate it into primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary:
Primary: retrieving raw materials from the environment including, fishing, forestry, mining and farming.
Secondary: manufacturing and processing these materials into products that can be used. This includes the transport and storage of materials.
Tertiary: the provision of services to customers. This includes shops, entertainment and intellectual services such as legal and financial.
Quaternary: innovation, research and development of new products and services.
In the urban economy, there is usually no primary industry. Therefore, for this page, economic activity is split into retail, commercial and industrial.
Retail: the sale of individual products to individual customers. This most commonly takes place in the city centre, or ‘Central Business District’, but can occur anywhere in the city and increasingly online
Commercial: the provision of services to the general public and businesses, usually taking place in offices. It includes legal services, banking, logistics and technology support (e.g. website design). Note: this is a narrow definition of commercial activity for the purposes of this page only. Most sources include retail as a part of commercial activity.
Industrial: the manufacturing, processing, transport and storage of goods.
Physical factors
Physical factors include (among others):
Terrain: whether the land is hilly or flat
Water supplies
Proximity to coastlines and rivers
Physical hazards e.g. flooding, landslides
In general, the requirements for each type of economic activity are as follows:
Industry: most industrial processes require a large area of land. They also require the land to be relatively flat, so that production lines can operate easily.
Retail: Retail usually requires relatively little land in the CBD, but the land needs to be stable and non-hazardous. Increasingly, out-of-town shopping centres require large areas of land for both the shops and the car parks. They also require the land to be flat so that building is cheaper.
Commercial: As retail.
Land values
Bid rent refers to the price of land. The more the land is desirable, the more competition there is. More competition means businesses have to bid more money to beat the others.
Retail makes more money per square meter of land than the other land uses; therefore they can pay more rent, and can afford to beat the competition for the land in the CBD, which is attractive because it is the easiest to access for customers from across the urban area.
Economic activities can be anything that makes money. Across the whole economy, we usually separate it into primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary:
Primary: retrieving raw materials from the environment including, fishing, forestry, mining and farming.
Secondary: manufacturing and processing these materials into products that can be used. This includes the transport and storage of materials.
Tertiary: the provision of services to customers. This includes shops, entertainment and intellectual services such as legal and financial.
Quaternary: innovation, research and development of new products and services.
In the urban economy, there is usually no primary industry. Therefore, for this page, economic activity is split into retail, commercial and industrial.
Retail: the sale of individual products to individual customers. This most commonly takes place in the city centre, or ‘Central Business District’, but can occur anywhere in the city and increasingly online
Commercial: the provision of services to the general public and businesses, usually taking place in offices. It includes legal services, banking, logistics and technology support (e.g. website design). Note: this is a narrow definition of commercial activity for the purposes of this page only. Most sources include retail as a part of commercial activity.
Industrial: the manufacturing, processing, transport and storage of goods.
Physical factors
Physical factors include (among others):
Terrain: whether the land is hilly or flat
Water supplies
Proximity to coastlines and rivers
Physical hazards e.g. flooding, landslides
In general, the requirements for each type of economic activity are as follows:
Industry: most industrial processes require a large area of land. They also require the land to be relatively flat, so that production lines can operate easily.
Retail: Retail usually requires relatively little land in the CBD, but the land needs to be stable and non-hazardous. Increasingly, out-of-town shopping centres require large areas of land for both the shops and the car parks. They also require the land to be flat so that building is cheaper.
Commercial: As retail.
Land values
Bid rent refers to the price of land. The more the land is desirable, the more competition there is. More competition means businesses have to bid more money to beat the others.
Retail makes more money per square meter of land than the other land uses; therefore they can pay more rent, and can afford to beat the competition for the land in the CBD, which is attractive because it is the easiest to access for customers from across the urban area.