Latin American City Model in AP Human Geography

The zones of the Griffin-Ford model, center to edge

Ernest Griffin and Larry Ford published the model in 1980, based on cities in Latin America. A strong answer names the zones in order and says who lives in each one:

• Central business district (CBD): the old colonial core around the main plaza, still full of offices, government buildings, and shopping.
• Spine and elite residential sector: a corridor extending out from the CBD, lined with high-end stores, offices, parks, and the homes of the wealthy.
• Zone of maturity: older, solidly built housing with full city services, mostly middle class.
• Zone of in situ accretion: modest homes that residents improve bit by bit as they can afford it, so the area looks half finished.
• Zone of peripheral squatter settlements: informal housing on the city's edge, often lacking reliable water, electricity, and sewage.
• Disamenity sectors: strips of the poorest housing on land nobody else wants, like steep slopes, floodplains, or areas near polluted industry.

The spine and the disamenity sectors cut across the rings. That's why the model looks like a blend of Burgess's rings and Hoyt's sectors.

Explaining why the elite live near the plaza

Naming zones gets you partway. The explanation is what earns points in an "explain" task. The center-rich pattern has historical roots. Colonial planning put the plaza, church, and government offices at the heart of many Latin American cities. In Spanish America, the Laws of the Indies set out this layout. Status came from living close to that center of power.

The edge-poor pattern comes from fast urban growth. In the 1900s, large numbers of rural migrants moved to cities faster than governments could build housing or extend services. Newcomers built homes on vacant or marginal land at the urban edge, often without formal land tenure, creating squatter settlements. Over time, some of those areas got services and improved, which is how the zone of in situ accretion forms.

Latin American vs. Burgess: where the wealthy live

Both models draw rings around a CBD, so they get mixed up. The difference is the direction of the wealth gradient. In the Burgess model, based on 1920s Chicago, housing quality rises as you move outward. The poorest residents live in the zone of transition next to the CBD, and the wealthy live in the outer commuter zone.

The Latin American model flips that. The elite live near the center and along the spine, and the poorest live on the outskirts. To explain the difference, connect each pattern to its cause. In U.S. cities, cars and streetcars let wealthier families leave the crowded industrial core for the suburbs. In Latin American cities, colonial prestige kept the elite downtown, and rapid migration pushed newcomers to the edge.

In a multiple-choice question describing a city, check where the wealthy live first. Rich near the center or along one corridor with informal housing on the edge points to Latin America. Poor near the center with rich suburbs points to Burgess. High-income areas radiating in one wedge with no squatter ring point to Hoyt.

Using the model with a map or photo in Questions 2 and 3

Hillside informal housing on a city's edge is the zone of peripheral squatter settlements, and spotting it in a stimulus is where this model gets used. It comes from Topic 6.5, The Internal Structure of Cities, in Unit 6, Cities and Urban Land-Use. That topic asks you to explain how cities are arranged internally using several models, including ones from Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Its larger argument is that a city's shape comes from its history and economy, so no single model fits everywhere.

In Question 2 (One-stimulus question) or Question 3 (Two-stimuli question), the stimulus might be a diagram of the model, a map of a city like Lima or Bogotá, or a photo of hillside informal housing. Follow the specific tasks in the prompt: you might be asked to identify a zone, explain a process (colonial planning, rural-to-urban migration, informal construction), or make a connection to another unit. When a connection is asked for, migration and economic development are the natural links. Squatter settlements are a result of rural-to-urban migration, and the lack of services is an indicator of uneven development.

Scale matters too. You can describe squatter settlements at the neighborhood scale, explain them with national migration trends, and connect those to a country's position in the global economy.

Where the Griffin-Ford model stops fitting

Models simplify, and AP questions sometimes ask for a limitation. Many Latin American cities now have suburban gated communities and malls far from the old center, so wealthy residents are spreading outward. Some squatter settlements have become permanent, serviced neighborhoods, which blurs the zone boundaries. The model reflects patterns common in many Latin American cities, including the influence of colonial-era central plazas, but it may fit less well where a city's origins or later development produced a different layout.

When a question asks for a limitation, pair the general claim with a specific change. For example, the rise of suburban gated communities weakens the model's prediction that the elite stay near the center.