| Term | Definition |
|---|
| urban morphology | the overall layout of the city |
| city | a conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics |
| urban | a word that describes buildup of the central city and the suburban realm |
| agricultural village | a farming-based settlement; relatively small in population |
| agricultural surplus and social stratification | the 2 main points that help enable the formation of cities |
| leadership class | the urban elite of a population in a city |
| first urban population | the innovations of cities; it has 5 hearths (Mesopotamia, Nile River Valley, Indus River Valley, Huang He/ Wei River Valley, and Mesoamerica) |
| acropolis | the high point in the city; the Greeks use this term |
| agora | an area that were open to debates, lectures, judging, planned military campaign, and socialized |
| site | the internal physical attributes of a place |
| forum | the focal point of the Roman Republic; served as both the agora and acropolis of Rome |
| situation | attributes to its relative location/attributes compared to other places |
| trade area | region adjacent to every town and city within its influence is dominant |
| rank size rule | a term that says that in an urban hierarchy, the population of an area will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy |
| central place theory | a term that describes how and why cities are spatially different or similar the way they are |
| sunbelt phenomenon | the movement of millions of Americans from N. to NE US to S and SW US. |
| functional zonation | the division of the city into certain regions (zones) for certain purposes (functions) |
| central business district | the concentration of business and commerce in the city's downtown |
| central city | describes the urban area that isn't suburban (oldest settlement within the urban landscape) |
| suburb | an outlying, functionally uniform part of an urban area, and is most of the time adjacent to the central city |
| suburbanization | process by which lands that were previously outside of urban environment become urbanized, as people and businesses from the city move to these spaces |
| edge cities | a city that is established near freeways and attract their own kinds of businesses |
| disamenity sector | the very poorest parts of cities that in extreme cases aren't connected to regular city services and are controlled by gangs and drug lords |
| shantytowns | unplanned developments of crude dwellings and shelters made mostly of scrap wood, iron, and pieces of cardboard |
| zoning laws | legal restrictions on land use that determine what types of buidings and economic activities are allowed to take place in certain areas |
| redlining | discriminatory real estate practice in NA in which members of minority groups are prevented from obtaining money to purchase homes and businessess in predominantly white neighborhoods |
| blockbusting | a situation where the realtor would solicit other white residents to sell their homes at low prices to minority members and then persuade other white folk in that neighborhood to sell their homes at a cheap price too. |
| commercialization | the transformation of an area into a more attractive place for residential, business, and economic use |
| gentrification | this process occurs when individuals buy up and rehabilitate the houses, raising the housing value in the neighborhood and changing the neighborhood itself |
| tear down | houses that new owners bought with the intention of tearing them down to build larger homes |
| McMansion | home referred to as a super-size house that is similar in appearance to other large houses of this variety |
| urban sprawl | unrestricted growth of housing, commercial developments, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning |
| new urbanism | outlined by design from over 20 countries, it calls for development, urban revitalization, and suburban reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of people and jobs |
| gated communities | fenced-in neighborhoods with controlled access gates for people and automobiles |
| informal economy | the economy that isn't taxed and isn't counted toward a country's GNP |
| world cities | these types of settlements function at a global scale, beyond the reach of the state borders, functioning as a service center towards the rest of the world |
| primate city | a settlement that is larger than the rest and isn't included in the rank-size rule |
| spaces of consumption | areas of a city, the main purpose of which is to encourage people to consume goods and services; driven primarily by the global media economy |
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