To read the narrative and see further sections under each listed heading in the Industrialization unit, please see "More," below.

Transportation and Infrastructure
As the Borchert model indicates, the location of cities was highly influenced by transportation technologies. Similar processes affected the nature of cities themselves, and so, as transportation technologies changed, the nature of cities' infrastructure and landscape also changed.

Political Organization of Urban Areas
Today's metropolitan areas are divided into a plethora of political constituencies ranging from school districts to modern shared management areas, specialized service districts, full municipal governments, and in some cases, a kind of metropolitan planning or government organization.

Urban Planning and Design
Cities are frequently located in sites that have unstable environmental conditions, such as floodplains or active seismic zones.

Uneven Development, Ghettoization, and Gentrification
Observers of industrial cities and cities of the mercantile era of the Middle East point out that all these landscapes are shaped by forces of segregation and separation.

Patterns of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class
Far and away the most powerful force in locating groups is their ability to pay for space. This produces the general sorting by economic class that characterizes cities all around the world.

Impacts of Suburbanization and Edge Cities
The most recent discussions of suburbanization have pointed out that the development of the suburban office and retail shopping clusters off major freeways, particularly the ring roads and ring ways, has produced landscapes that are very much like the old downtowns of the streetcar era.