• Type II – weak center. Represents the spatial structure of many American cities
where many activities are located in the periphery. These cities are characterized
by average land use densities and a concentric pattern. The central business district
is relatively accessible by the automobile. The result is an under-used public transit
system, which is unprofitable in most instances and thus requires subsidies. It is also
impossible to serve all the territory with the transit system, so services are often
oriented along major corridors. In many cases, ring roads favored the emergence of a
set of small centers in the periphery, notably at the convergence of radial lines, some
of them effectively competing with the downtown area for the location of economic
activities. This system is often related to older cities, which emerged in the first half
of the twentieth century, such as Melbourne, San Francisco and Montreal, and were
then substantially impacted by motorization.