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The very rapid growth of the service sector in the United States since 1970 has transformed the physical and social landscapes of American metropolitan areas.

Uploaded by Appleman on May 23, 2016

The very rapid growth of the service sector in the United States since 1970 has transformed the physical and social landscapes of American metropolitan areas.


Metropolitan America is constantly changing. The cities, the people that live in the cities, and the processes that form them are in a constant state of flux. Many of the changes in recent decades have occurred as a result of the constantly growing service sector.

The development of the service sector may have taken jobs away from the primary and secondary sectors, but it has also created new jobs and industries that just did not exist before the rise of the service sector. Pioneers have seen niches in the market and opened them up, like the pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, opening up new parts of the Frontier. One example is the development of computers and computer-based services. Between 1974 and 1985, employment in computer and data processing grew by 247%, whilst management and public relations grew by 189% (Hartshorn 1992, pg 403).

Much of the jobs created by the growth of the service sector require space that is unavailable in the Central Business Districts. As many industries became dependent on computers, office complexes with large floor areas needed to be built to accommodate them (Knox 1992, pg 29). Large retail units and shopping malls have been developing since the 1930s, which encouraged shoppers to shop in several stores with cheaper prices, greater ranges and entertainment facilities all under one roof (Hartshorn 1992, pg 372). As the space was not available in the city center for these developments, they had to be built outside the city, within the suburbs. Parking lots were needed so that the then city center population, where the workforce and shoppers lived, could drive to work or to shopping centers. This created a landscape of concrete islands in seas of parking lots (Ghent Urban Studies Team 1999, pg 41). Following their move out of the old CBDs, residential areas were constructed surrounding them, for ease of access and to reduce commuting time. As a result, new urban forms have developed in metropolitan America – such as Edge Cities and Donut Cities.

Edge Cities (Garreau 1992) and Donut Cities have developed in pretty much the same way, and in fact some scholars fail to see the difference between the two. It could be argued that Donut Cities are in fact Edge Cities...

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Uploaded by:   Appleman

Date:   05/23/2016

Category:   Geography

Length:   4 pages (990 words)

Views:   1362

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