Urban land use zones and the CBD

Cambridge IGCSE Geography 0460 · Theme 1 Population and Settlement Syllabus: 2025 and 2026 Official syllabus point: 1.6, first content statement

This content is examined up to and including the November 2026 series. It does not appear in the 2027 syllabus. If you are sitting Geography 0460 in 2027 or later, close this page. Urban land use zones and the Central Business District are not content on your syllabus, and the only place the CBD survives is one Paper 4 fieldwork technique, explained in section 12 below. If you are sitting in the June 2026 or November 2026 series, this is live content, it appears on Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 4, and it has carried a 7 mark levelled question in most sessions since 2020.

Everything below is written to the 2025 and 2026 syllabus wording for point 1.6 and checked against Cambridge mark schemes from 2020 to 2024.

A note on vocabulary. These papers use MEDC and LEDC. The 2027 syllabus replaces them with HIC, MIC and LIC. Because you are sitting the current papers, this file uses the words the papers and mark schemes use.

What this file covers, and what it does not

Syllabus point 1.6 has two content statements. Cambridge prints them like this:

Case Study required for 1.6: An urban area or urban areas.

This file covers the first statement only. Land use zones, the CBD, residential areas, industrial areas, the rural-urban fringe, and how and why land use changes.

The second statement is not here. Urban pollution, inequality, housing, traffic congestion and conflicts over land use change survive into the 2027 syllabus as Topic 7, and they are already written up in the Changing Towns and Cities notes. If a question asks you to explain the problems of urban areas or the strategies used to reduce traffic congestion, that is the other file, and it is a better answer than anything here.

Point 1.5 is not here either. Settlement patterns, the settlement hierarchy, sphere of influence and threshold population are point 1.5, and they have their own file. The overlap is real and worth naming, because Cambridge marks it in both places: a 1.6 question about the CBD often wants you to say the CBD has a large sphere of influence and a high threshold population. Those two terms are defined properly in the 1.5 file. Use them here, learn them there.

One thing about Cambridge's own case study rule. The syllabus states that the case study "can be from anywhere in the world but it must illustrate all the content listed under Topic 1.6", and it explicitly allows you to split it: "for Topic 1.6 you could choose Settlement X for a case study on land use and Settlement Y for a case study on urban problems." So the urban area you learn for land use does not have to be the one you learn for urban problems.

1. What a land use zone is

Urban land use is how the land is used in a town or city. That is the whole definition, and a Feb/March 2020 mark scheme accepted exactly that for one mark.

A land use zone is a part of a city where one land use is dominant and covers most of the area. Cambridge's own Paper 4 stem defines it in those words.

The syllabus names four zones by name, so those four must be secure:

Because "including" is used in the further guidance, that list is a minimum and not a maximum. Past papers have also asked candidates to name or identify:

• open space, parks, gardens, sports fields, cemeteries;
• transport, roads, railway lines, stations, ports, airports;
• public buildings, schools, hospitals, government offices, places of worship;
• commercial land use, meaning shops and offices, distinguished from services, meaning offices in some Paper 4 recording sheets;
• inner city area with mixed land use, which was the accepted answer for the Lower Don Valley in Sheffield in November 2021.

That last one matters. Real cities do not have clean zones, and Cambridge knows it. If a photograph or map shows shops on the ground floor with apartments above, the honest answer is mixed land use, not "residential".

Exam habit worth building. Every 1.6 question set opens with a resource: a map of land use, a transect across a city, or three photographs of three zones. The one mark opener is nearly always "which zone is this" or "what is the main land use". Read the key first, then answer. In November 2020 the main land use in Newcastle-upon-Tyne was housing, and in June 2022 the land use occupying the largest area in Lusaka was residential. Housing wins that question in almost every city, because housing is what cities are mostly made of.

2. The Central Business District

What the CBD is

The CBD is the commercial and business centre of a town or city, containing the highest concentration of shops, offices and services, and the highest land values.

You will be asked to write out the initials. Central Business District, in full, has been worth one mark on its own in at least two sessions.

Characteristics you must be able to describe

These are pooled from every CBD mark scheme from 2020 to 2024. They divide into things you can see in a photograph and things you can only know.

Visible in a photograph or on a map

• High rise buildings, tall buildings, many storeys. In Kiev the mark scheme accepted "about 7 storeys".
• High density, buildings close together, little space between them.
• Pedestrianisation, pedestrian streets, rising bollards, plazas.
• Crowded, lots of people, high pedestrian flows.
• Commercial buildings, offices, shops, hotels, restaurants, banks.
• Advertising, billboards, signs, lights.
• Monuments and statues, city squares, civic open space.
• Traffic congestion, buses, taxis, delivery vehicles.
• Street furniture, benches, bins, lamp posts, planters.
• A grid iron street pattern in many planned cities, streets long, straight, parallel and at right angles. That was the accepted description of Harare's CBD in June 2023.

Known rather than seen

• High order and specialist shops, department stores, jewellers, electrical shops, travel agents.
• Entertainment, cinemas, theatres, nightclubs.
• A large sphere of influence, because people travel from across the city and beyond.
• A high threshold population, because specialist shops need a lot of customers to survive.
• High land cost and high demand for land.
• Good accessibility, because roads, bus routes and railways converge there.
• Busy in the day but quiet at night, because few people live there.
• Little or no industry. In a March 2021 multiple choice, the thing least likely to be found in the CBD was the industrial estate.

The reasons, which is where the marks are

This is the part candidates skip, and it is the part that separates Level 1 from Level 2. A June 2022 mark scheme spells the difference out in its own words: high order services alone is Level 1, cinema alone is Level 1, but high rise buildings as cost of land is expensive is Level 2. A November 2021 mark scheme adds the same warning the other way round: High order service (L1) such as jeweller (L1).

Every characteristic needs its because.

1. the centre is the most accessible point in the city
2. every bus route and railway converges there
3. footfall is highest
4. shops bid highest for the site
5. land values peak at the centre
6. only high value uses like offices and specialist retail can pay
7. they build upwards to spread the land cost over more floors.

That single chain answers most of the 3, 4 and 5 mark CBD questions on its own.

Why high rise, specifically

A June 2020 mark scheme on "explain why there are high-rise buildings in the CBD of many urban areas" credits exactly four ideas:

• it is only a small area;
• pressure on land, lots of competing land uses;
• high land values;
• a more economical way of using the land.

Three of those four are the same idea in different words, which tells you Cambridge will accept the point however you phrase it. It also tells you not to write all four and expect three marks.

Building height, and the fieldwork that proves it

The Gaborone Paper 4 in March 2021 tested the hypothesis Buildings in the CBD are taller than buildings elsewhere in the city, using number of storeys as the height measurement. It came out true, on all four transects, in every direction. Cambridge's own figures: the CBD sites averaged between 6.3 and 10.3 storeys, while sites 2 km and 4 km out ranged from 1 to 6 storeys, and one north transect site 4 km out averaged 1 storey against 7.5 storeys in the CBD.

The companion question asked why building height varies in different areas of a city, and the mark scheme wanted:

• demand for land varies;
• the value or price or cost of land;
• less space means building high, more space means building low;
• government or planning rules limiting height, zoning laws;
• different land uses need different heights;
• the nature of the ground and foundations may vary.

That last one is worth remembering because nobody writes it.

The CBD is not automatically the nicest part of the city

The same Gaborone paper tested The CBD has the best quality of environment in the city and the answer was false. Environmental quality scored better 2 km away from the CBD, with total scores of about 9 in the CBD against about 12 at 2 km on the north transect.

Do not assume. In a Paper 4 conclusion you must read the data and say what it shows, and Cambridge will happily print a hypothesis that turns out to be wrong. See section 12 for how to write those conclusions.

Redevelopment of and near the CBD

Syllabus point 1.6 asks for changes in land use, not just characteristics, and redevelopment is the change Cambridge asks about most.

Why parts of the CBD itself are redeveloped, from a November 2021 mark scheme:

• many shops and services have closed, and new shops or offices are needed;
• to attract more customers, visitors and tourists;
• new metro or bus stations are being built;
• accessibility needs to be increased;
• many businesses have moved out to malls and out of town sites, leaving gaps;
• buildings are old and need updating or renovation;
• to reduce crime by removing dark hidden spaces;
• to control traffic and reduce vehicle access;
• investment from businesses.

Why redevelopment happens close to the CBD, meaning the inner city ring just outside it, from a March 2020 mark scheme:

• many areas near the CBD are old and in need of repair;
• heavy industry has shut down or moved elsewhere, leaving disused factories;
• slum clearance is taking place, and the housing lacks amenities;
• road building schemes, inner ring roads, urban motorways, the need to manage traffic flow and create car parking;
• the land is wanted for industrial estates or retail parks.

1. heavy industry closes
2. large brownfield sites sit derelict close to the centre
3. the land is accessible and already serviced
4. developers can buy it cheaply relative to the CBD
5. it is redeveloped for flats, retail parks or a ring road
6. the inner city land use changes without the city growing outwards.

3. Residential areas

Residential land use covers more of a city than anything else, and Cambridge tests it as a contrast: two residential areas, and three or four differences between them.

The inner residential zone against the outer residential zone

Every mark scheme on this, from Newcastle to Belgium to Bangkok, credits the same list. The inner or older area is:

The rule that costs marks. A November 2020 mark scheme states plainly: NB Must be comparative. A June 2022 one repeats it: Answers must be comparative. "Byker is old" is not a difference. "Byker is older than Gosforth" is. Write the word than into every sentence.

In an LEDC city, the contrast is different

A June 2022 mark scheme on Lusaka compared area X, unplanned, against area Y, planned. The credited differences were:

• X is unplanned, Y is planned residential;
• X may be temporary or a squatter settlement, Y will be permanent;
• X is more densely packed;
• X may be older;
• X has smaller properties;
• Y is more likely to have gardens;
• X is self-built, Y is not;
• X lacks electricity, water and sanitation, Y has these;
• X is cheap, Y is expensive.

That is the boundary with point 1.7 and with the Changing Towns and Cities notes. The characteristics and problems of squatter settlements belong there. What belongs here is the simple fact that in an LEDC city the poorest housing is often near the centre and also on the outskirts, while in an MEDC city the poorest housing is characteristically inner city and the best is at the edge. That inversion is the whole point of the LEDC land use model in section 7.

Where residential zones sit

A June 2024 mark scheme on Bangkok asked candidates to describe the location of the high-density residential zones and credited:

• close to, around or near the centre, the CBD or the commercial area;
• between the medium density zone and the centre;
• inner suburbs, inner city;
• close to the river, running along it;
• more to the east of the river than the west.

Two of those five marks are pure map reading. Give a direction, a distance and a named feature and you will pick them up whatever the city.

Vertical land use, and why a ground floor map lies

A June 2024 photograph of Hat Yai, Thailand credited buildings that were 3 or 4 storeys with a mix of heights, sloping roofs, concrete and wood, commercial use with shops on the ground floor and apartments or homes on the upper floors, terraced and close together, colourful, with balconies and air conditioning units.

A March 2021 Paper 4 made the same point as a marked question. Students produced a land use map of the Gaborone CBD, then realised its weakness was that it only showed land use on the ground floor, so they surveyed the other storeys. Building A turned out to be leisure and tourism, a hotel with a gift shop and a gym. Building B was workplace, financial and insurance offices and a car showroom.

Learn that as a limitation you can quote. If a Paper 4 question asks for a disadvantage of a land use survey, "land use on the upper floors may be different from the ground floor" is a printed mark scheme answer, in those words, in more than one session.

4. Industrial areas

Industry appears in two places in a city, and the reason it appears in each place is different.

Old industry near the centre and along the river or canal

From a November 2020 mark scheme on Newcastle-upon-Tyne and a November 2021 one on the Lower Don Valley in Sheffield:

• next to the river, for importing raw materials and exporting products, and for transporting bulky, heavy material by water;
• water supply for cooling or as a raw material;
• waste disposal into the river;
• flat land, usually the valley floor or floodplain;
• close to a main road or motorway, for transport to market and for supplies;
• close to housing for the labour supply;
• railway and canal access. In Sheffield the accepted forms of transport that attracted manufacturing were canal or river, road or motorway, and railway.

That cluster is the classic inner city industrial zone: it is there because of nineteenth and twentieth century transport, and the houses grew around it for the workers to walk to work.

New industry on the rural-urban fringe

• low cost land on the fringe;
• plenty of space for single storey plants, warehouses and lorry parks;
• good road links, especially ring roads and motorway junctions, with little congestion;
• labour from the town nearby;
• the market in the town.

A June 2022 mark scheme on Lusaka added two that only work in a city that grew fast: meeting of roads, roads in all directions, and a central location due to growth of the settlement around the industry. In other words the factory was on the edge once, and the city caught up with it.

1. a factory is built on cheap flat land at the edge of a small city
2. workers' housing is built beside it so people can walk to work
3. the city keeps growing outwards past both
4. forty years later the factory sits in the inner city with houses all round it
5. it now causes noise and traffic where it once caused neither.

That chain is the single most useful thing to know about industrial land use, because it explains inner city industry, inner city terraced housing and inner city redevelopment all at once.

5. The rural-urban fringe

The rural-urban fringe is the zone at the edge of a built up area where urban and rural land uses meet and compete.

The 2027 notes spell it "rural to urban fringe". The 2025 and 2026 syllabus and every current mark scheme spell it rural-urban fringe. Use the syllabus spelling in an exam and it will be right either way.

Why development goes there

Pooled from mark schemes in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024:

• cheaper land values, so more land can be bought for the money;
• space, room for a bigger store, a bigger factory, and room for car parking;
• easier road access, ring roads and motorway junctions, avoiding CBD congestion;
• accessibility to customers in the suburbs and from other urban areas and surrounding settlements;
• labour availability from the suburbs;
• a more pleasant environment, better scenery, low noise and low air pollution;
• room to expand later, which a central site does not offer.

Advantages of living there

A June 2024 mark scheme on Bangkok credits:

• lots of space for houses, gardens and allotments to grow food;
• low cost land;
• good air quality, not much air pollution;
• quiet, peaceful, less noise pollution;
• close to green spaces;
• less crime, and the mark scheme wants the crime specified, for example muggings or knife crime;
• an easy daily commute with less traffic congestion.

The land uses you will be asked to identify

Retail parks and shopping malls, business parks and offices, industrial estates and warehouses, housing estates, hospitals, schools, airports, sports grounds, golf courses, reservoirs, sewage works, landfill sites, park and ride car parks, and farmland that has not yet been built on.

The conflict question, which is worth five marks

Cambridge asks this in two forms, and both need both sides. A November 2020 mark scheme reserves one mark for each side; a November 2022 one on new airports in the fringe of Paris reserves marks the same way.

The trap. A November 2021 mark scheme on a shopping mall built on a disused factory site states: Do not credit direct opposites. "Some people like the jobs, others do not like the jobs" is one mark, not two. Make the two sides about different things.

Where this stops. The effects of urban sprawl on the natural environment, and how sprawl is managed, are examined at 1.6 now and survive into 2027 as syllabus point 7.2.3. They are written up in the Changing Towns and Cities notes, and that write up is more complete than anything here. This section covers why the fringe attracts development. That file covers what the sprawl then does.

6. Open space, transport and public buildings

Easy marks live here because most candidates do not revise them.

Why open space matters within urban areas, from a November 2020 mark scheme on Town Moor in Newcastle:

• leisure, relaxation and recreation;
• somewhere to walk, walk the dog, picnic;
• somewhere to play sport, sports fields;
• woodland, flora and fauna, protecting nature;
• gardens and parks;
• allotments for growing food;
• helping to clean the air and reduce air pollution;
• visual impact within a built up area.

Public buildings and their location. A June 2023 question asked candidates to describe and suggest reasons for the location of a hospital on a map of the Harare CBD. The mark scheme wanted a description and reasons, with a maximum of 3 for either, so you must do both. The description marks came from position, "edge of the CBD", "northern part", a distance and direction from a named feature, or a named street junction. The reason marks were quick access for ambulances and visitors, emergency vehicles avoiding congestion in the centre, public transport access, and parking nearby.

That structure, where it is then why it is there, works for a school, a station, an airport or a mall. A June 2022 question on Lusaka International Airport wanted only the location, and accepted "north east of Lusaka", "5 to 8 km from the edge of the city" and "15 to 22 km from the centre".

7. Models of urban land use

Cambridge puts models in front of you as a resource to compare, not as something to reproduce from memory. You are never asked to draw Burgess or Hoyt from nothing. You are asked to read two diagrams and state similarities and differences. The syllabus's own coursework list names the Burgess concentric ring model by name, so the vocabulary is fair game.

The two MEDC models

A March 2020 mark scheme comparing these two accepted, for similarities, that both have a CBD or business district in the centre, both have some high class residential at the edge, both have some industry at the centre and both have the same land uses. For differences: A has concentric zones but B is in wedges; A has high class housing at the edge while B has a zone stretching from centre to edge; A has factories all round the city but B has them in a wedge; the CBD is surrounded by factories in A but by different land uses in B.

The MEDC model against the LEDC model

A June 2023 mark scheme compared an MEDC and an LEDC model directly. Its accepted points:

• CBD in the centre in both;
• both have rings;
• the MEDC model is rings, the LEDC model has rings and wedges;
• industry is central in the MEDC model, but in a wedge or toward the outskirts in the LEDC model;
• high class residential is on the outskirts in the MEDC model, but in a wedge or surrounding the CBD in the LEDC model;
• the LEDC model has informal housing, which the MEDC model does not;
• lower class housing is toward the centre in the MEDC model and toward the outskirts in the LEDC model.

That inversion is the single most examinable idea about models. In an MEDC city the rich moved out and the poor stayed in. In many LEDC cities the rich stayed central, near the offices and the services, and the poorest arrivals built on whatever land was left at the edge.

1. in an LEDC city rural migrants arrive faster than housing can be built
2. the central land is already owned, serviced and expensive
3. the only land they can occupy is unclaimed land at the edge or on steep or flood prone ground
4. informal housing forms rings and pockets on the outskirts
5. the wealthy remain near the CBD where the services are
6. the MEDC pattern runs backwards.

Two cautions. First, a model is a simplification, and Cambridge marks the model in front of you, not the one in your head. Read the key. Second, do not assume every LEDC city matches the LEDC model. Lusaka in 2022 had residential as its largest land use, an unplanned area labelled X and a planned area labelled Y, and industry near the railway. Answer the resource.

8. Why land use changes with distance from the centre

This is the reasoning question, asked in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 4 alike, sometimes for four marks. Two mark schemes, from June 2020 and June 2024, give almost identical lists:

• the city has grown outwards and developed over time, so the oldest buildings are central and the newest are at the edge;
• access to transport, road, rail, air and river, with more transport links converging at the centre;
• competition for land, and bid rent, which is the price a user is prepared to pay for a site;
• cost of land, cheaper away from the city centre, with the CBD the most expensive;
• availability of land, more space available further out;
• planning policy, which zones land and limits what can be built where;
• flat land or a floodplain determining where building is possible;
• residential built away from industry and its air pollution;
• closeness to raw materials for industry.

The June 2024 mark scheme adds a note that tells you how to write it: Credit 1 mark for each idea + 1 mark for development which refers to a specific land use. So do not list six factors. Give three factors and attach a land use to each.

1. land is most expensive at the most accessible point
2. only uses that make a lot of money per square metre can afford it
3. shops and offices outbid everyone
4. they take the centre
5. factories and housing need more space per unit of output, so they can only afford sites further out
6. land use sorts itself into rings by how much each use can pay.

That is the bid rent explanation, and it is worth two marks written as one sentence with a named land use in it.

9. Changes in land use over time

The syllabus asks for changes in land use as well as characteristics, and mark schemes reward four processes by name.

Decentralisation is the one to be able to explain, because it links the CBD and the fringe in one answer. A June 2020 mark scheme on why shops and services are locating in shopping malls in the rural-urban fringe credits cheaper land, room for a bigger store, room for parking, easier road access by ring road avoiding CBD congestion, customers attracted from other towns and rural areas, and a more pleasant environment.

And a November 2021 mark scheme lists the consequence back in the centre: many businesses move out to malls or out of town, which is one of the reasons the CBD then needs redeveloping.

1. a retailer needs a bigger store with free parking
2. central sites are small, expensive and congested
3. the fringe offers cheap land, space and a ring road junction
4. the store relocates
5. CBD shops lose trade
6. CBD units fall vacant
7. the council redevelops or pedestrianises the centre to bring shoppers back.

A worked example of a single site changing, from November 2021: a shopping mall in Sheffield's Lower Don Valley was built on the site of a disused factory. In favour: people gain access to shops, jobs are created, the area is improved aesthetically, disused buildings are removed and are safer gone. Against: some would have preferred the factory reopened because they worked there, others wanted a different use such as open space, housing or recreation, and the mall brings traffic, air pollution, noise, litter, visual pollution, antisocial behaviour and competition for local businesses.

A second, from June 2020, where land used for a squatter settlement in an LEDC was redeveloped. Benefits: employment in construction, a more attractive area with less visual pollution, new homes with infrastructure, electricity and water, less water and air pollution, lower crime. Problems: the squatters have nowhere to live, they cannot afford the new housing, they move in elsewhere or live on the streets, and civil unrest or violence may follow. Two marks were reserved for each side.

10. The case study required for 1.6

Cambridge requires an urban area or urban areas. The 7 mark levelled question is where it is spent, and the levels are the same every session:

Under Level 2 every one of these mark schemes prints the same line: Max 5 if no named or inappropriate example. A correct, well written, placeless answer is capped at 5 out of 7 by rule.

Scale matters as much as naming. Cambridge enforces the scale of a named example, and a November 2024 mark scheme on a different topic states the rule plainly: "Country name is unacceptable e.g. Brazil, but an appropriate named rural area could be Amazonia." Name a city, and inside it name districts and streets. "China" is not a named urban area. "Shanghai" is. "Nanjing Road in Shanghai" is place specific detail.

What counts as place specific reference, from the mark schemes themselves:

• locational details;
• specific details and names of the services;
• named areas or streets within the CBD;
• statistics.

Two urban areas Cambridge itself has documented

Rather than publish figures this file cannot verify, here are two places where Cambridge's own resource material and mark schemes supply the detail, so every number below can be checked against a real past paper.

Gaborone, Botswana, from the March 2021 Paper 4

• The CBD is called the Mall, and it contains the President Hotel at 6 storeys and Tswana house at 2 storeys.
• Along four transects out from the Mall, average building height in the CBD was between 6.3 and 10.3 storeys, against 1 to 6 storeys at sites 2 km and 4 km out. On the north transect, 7.5 storeys in the CBD against 1 storey at 4 km.
• CBD land uses mapped at ground floor included banks, hotels, shops, restaurants. Above ground floor, one building held a hotel, a gift shop and a gym; another held financial and insurance offices, education offices and a car showroom.
• The CBD did not have the best environmental quality. Scores were about 9 in the CBD against about 12 at 2 km out.

Harare, Zimbabwe, from the June 2023 Paper 1

• Named open spaces in the CBD: Harare Gardens and Unity Square.
• A pedestrianised street: First Street.
• Named CBD streets: Mazowe, Baines, Second, Josiah Chinamano.
• Street layout: grid iron, streets long, straight, parallel, at right angles, roughly 100 metres apart, closing to about 50 metres apart in the south west where they run diagonally.
• The hospital sits at the northern edge of the CBD, near a street junction, roughly 400 metres from the Geology Museum.
• Two photographs of different parts of the same CBD differed sharply: one busier, pedestrianised, with taller and more modern buildings, greenery and street furniture; the other with traffic, no trees and older buildings. One CBD is not uniform.

Building your own

If your school teaches a different city, that is fine and often better. You need, for the urban area you name:

• the name of the city and the country, and roughly where it is;
• the name of the CBD district or its main street;
• two or three named services in the CBD, ideally high order;
• one named residential district of older, denser, cheaper housing, and one of newer, lower density housing;
• one named industrial area, and why it is where it is;
• one named development on the fringe, a retail park, business park, airport or housing estate;
• one change, a redevelopment, a mall, a new ring road, with a date if you have one.

Seven facts. Written into a 7 mark answer they are the difference between 5 and 7.

11. Fieldwork links for Paper 4

Urban land use is one of the most heavily used Paper 4 topics in the current syllabus. The 2025 and 2026 syllabus lists these coursework titles, and it labels them 1.6 itself:

• How does the pattern of land use vary with distance from the centre of a settlement?
• To what extent does an urban area match the Burgess concentric ring model of urban land use?
• How and why do housing types differ in the residential environments of a settlement?
• How and why does the height of buildings vary with distance from the CBD?
• Do most people employed in the CBD work in shops and service industries?
• Do pedestrian and traffic patterns vary within the CBD of a local town or city?
• Are temperatures near to and in the CBD always higher than temperatures on the rural-urban fringe of a settlement?

The land use transect, the method Cambridge uses most

Run a transect outwards from the city centre along a main road, choose sites at increasing distances, and at each site record the land use at fixed intervals, for example every 10 metres over a measured 100 metres, on both sides of the road. Sort the results into land use categories, tally them, convert to percentages and plot divided bar graphs, one bar per distance band.

Categories Cambridge has used: commercial (shops), services (offices), residential, industrial, entertainment, public building, open space, transport.

Advantages of a systematic sample, printed in two mark schemes:

• even coverage along the transect;
• an easy method to use;
• no bias, because the student is not choosing which land use to record;
• it will show major changes in land use along the transect.

Disadvantages:

• a lot of recording;
• it might miss a typical land use, or catch an anomaly;
• land use on the upper floors may differ from the ground floor;
• one side of the road may differ from the other;
• only 100 m was recorded, and only along a main road, so land uses away from the road are missed.

Building height

Identify a transect, go to sites in different areas, select buildings systematically, for example every fifth or tenth building, count the number of storeys, or use a clinometer and a measured distance with trigonometry, calculate the average per site, and record on a tally sheet.

Delimiting the CBD

This is the technique to learn properly, because it is the one that survives into 2027. A November 2023 mark scheme gives the full method:

Choose criteria, at least two so they can be compared:

• height of buildings or number of storeys;
• pedestrian numbers;
• rateable value of buildings;
• land use types and businesses;
• traffic restrictions;
• type of shop or service;
• presence or absence of residential buildings.

Then:

• decide the threshold value that defines the CBD, for example 3 storeys;
• go out along transects from the centre;
• plot the results on a map, for example a pedestrian isoline, a rateable value isoline, or the traffic free area;
• shade in the CBD land uses, shops, offices and public buildings;
• mark the edge of the CBD on the map where the criteria are no longer met.

Pedestrian counts

Plan: decide where to count and how many counting points, along transects; decide how long each count lasts and start them all at the same time; count on more than one day, weekdays and weekends, and at several times of day; work in pairs; use a recording sheet. Carry out: time the count with a watch, tally in fives or use a clicker, and give each student a job, for example one counting each direction.

12. What survives into 2027, and where

This section exists so you know exactly how much of this file is dead weight if you move cohorts.

Gone from content. Land use zones, the CBD as a set of characteristics, the concentric ring and sector models, residential zone contrasts, the reasons land use changes with distance. None of it is examinable content from 2027. The 2027 syllabus's own change note says "The settlement, water, and weather topics have been removed", and there is no content statement anywhere in the 2027 subject content that mentions land use zones or the CBD.

Survives as a skill, in one place. The 2027 syllabus lists, under fieldwork techniques that candidates should be able to conduct or describe:

• land use surveys
• transects
• delimiting the sphere of influence/CBD

It also lists sphere of influence maps among the map types, and its enquiry skills section offers as a sample hypothesis: "The CBD has better waste collection compared with the suburbs."

So from 2027 the CBD is something you might survey, not something you might be asked to describe. Section 11 above, and only section 11, is worth reading if you are in the 2027 cohort.

Survives fully, elsewhere. Urbanisation, rapid urban growth, squatter settlements, urban problems, urban sprawl and the rural to urban fringe are all in the 2027 Topic 7, and are covered in the Changing Towns and Cities notes.

13. Common exam mistakes

• Describing without explaining on the 7 mark CBD question. Cambridge's own note: high order services is Level 1, cinema is Level 1, but high rise buildings because the cost of land is expensive is Level 2. Every characteristic needs its because.
• Giving no named example. The mark scheme caps you at 5 out of 7 by rule.
• Naming a country. A country is not a named urban area. Cambridge treats it as no example at all.
• Naming a city but no detail inside it. Level 3 needs named streets, named services, named districts or figures.
• Writing a non comparative comparison. "Must be comparative" is printed in the mark schemes. Use the word than.
• Giving direct opposites as two sides of a conflict. "Some like the jobs, others dislike the jobs" is one mark.
• Assuming the CBD is the best or the busiest. Gaborone's CBD scored worse on environmental quality than the suburbs, and Hong Kong's traffic did not peak at the CBD. Read the data.
• Answering with the whole city when the question names a zone. If it says rural-urban fringe, every point must be about the fringe.
• Ignoring upper floors in a land use survey answer, when "the upper floor may differ from the ground floor" is a printed mark.
• Drifting into urban problems. Traffic congestion, pollution, inequality and housing are the second half of 1.6 and belong in the Changing Towns and Cities notes. On a land use question they earn nothing.
• Writing "partially true" in a Paper 4 conclusion. Mark schemes state it scores zero unless the printed answer is partly true. Read which of the three the paper wants, then commit, then support with paired data naming both sites and both figures.

14. Quick revision

• Urban land use is how the land is used in a town or city. A land use zone is a part of a city where one land use is dominant.
• Four named zones: CBD, residential, industrial, rural-urban fringe. Also expect open space, transport, public buildings and mixed use.
• CBD seen: high rise, high density, pedestrianised, crowded, offices and shops, hotels, advertising, monuments, congestion, grid streets.
• CBD known: high order and specialist shops, entertainment, large sphere of influence, high threshold population, high land cost, best accessibility, busy by day and empty at night, almost no industry.
• The CBD chain: most accessible point → highest footfall → highest bids for land → highest land values → build upwards.
• Least likely in the CBD: an industrial estate.
• Inner housing is older, denser, terraced or high rise, cheaper, without gardens. Outer housing is newer, lower density, detached, more expensive, with gardens and drives. Say than.
• In many LEDC cities the pattern inverts: high class residential near the CBD, informal housing toward the outskirts.
• Old industry is central, by the river or railway, on flat land, near the housing that grew for its workers. New industry is on the fringe, for cheap land, space, parking and ring road access.
• Rural-urban fringe attracts development for cheap land, space, parking, road access, suburban customers, labour and a pleasant environment.
• Fringe conflicts need both sides, and the two sides must be about different things.
• Concentric rings put high class housing in the outer ring. Sectors put land uses in wedges from centre to edge. Both put the CBD in the centre.
• Why land use changes outwards: the city grew over time, accessibility, competition for land and bid rent, land cost, land availability, planning policy. Attach a named land use to each factor.
• Changes: redevelopment, decentralisation, urban sprawl, single site change of use.
• 7 mark question: named example is worth two marks. Place specific detail is worth the top mark. Max 5 without a named example.
• Paper 4: transect out from the centre, systematic land use recording, categories, tally, divided bar graphs. Delimit the CBD with at least two criteria and a threshold, plotted on a map.
• The one thing that survives to 2027: delimiting the sphere of influence and the CBD, as a fieldwork technique.

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