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Unit 4 - APHuGe Vocab

Terms in this set (69)

Annexation
Adding a region to the territory of an existing political unit.
CBD (central business district)
The downtown heart of a central city, this is marked by high land values, a concentration of businesses and commerce, and the clustering of the tallest buildings.
Central-Place Theory
Theory proposed by Walter Christaller that explains how and where central places in the urban hierarchy should be functionally and spatially distributed with respect to one another.
Counterurbanization
Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries.
First Urban Revolution
The innovation of the city, which occurred independently in five separate hearths.
Gentrification
The rehabilitation of deteriorated, often abandoned, housing of low-income inner-city residents.
High-Technology Corridors
Areas along or near major transportation arteries that are devoted to the research, development, and sale of high-technology products. These areas develop because of the networking and synergistic advantages of concentrating high-technology enterprises in close proximity to one another. "Silicon Valley" is a prime example of this in the United States.
Infrastructure
The basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise
McGee Model
A model showing similar land-use patterns among the medium-sized cities of Southeast Asia.
Metropolitan Area
A major population center made up of a large city and the smaller suburbs and towns that surround it
New Urbanism
Outlined by a group of architects, urban planners, and developers from over 20 countries, an urban design that calls for development, urban revitalization, and suburban reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of housing and jobs.
Postindustrial City
A city in which global finances and the electronic flow of information dominate the economy
Redlining
A discriminatory real estate practice in North America in which members of minority groups are prevented from obtaining money to purchase homes or property in predominantly white neighborhoods. The practice derived its name from the red lines depicted on cadastral maps used by real estate agents and developers. Today, this is officially illegal.
Settlement Form
The spatial arrangements of buildings, roads, towns and other features that people construct while inhabiting an area; it can be described as nucleated, dispersed, or elongated.
Nucleated Settlement Form
A settlement clustered around a central point, such as a village green or church.
Dispersed Settlement Form
A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages.
Elongated Settlement Form
A settlement that is clustered linearly along a street, river, etc.
Squatter Settlement
An area within a city in a less developed country in which people illegally establish residences on land they do not own or rent and erect homemade structures.
Symbolic Landscape
Smaller landscapes that symbolize a bigger area or category. iconic landscapes; landscapes that express the values, beliefs, and meanings of a particular culture.
Urban Heat Island
Buildup of heat in the atmosphere above an urban area. The large concentration of cars, buildings, factories, and other heat-producing activities causes this heat.
Urban Sprawl
Unrestricted growth in many American urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning.
Zoning
Legal restrictions on land use that determine what types of building and economical activities are allowed to take place in certain areas. In the United States, areas are most commonly divided into separate zones of residential, retail, or industrial use.
Bid-Rent Theory
A geographical economic theory that refers to how the price and demand for real estate change as the distance from the central business district increases.
Census Tract (i.e. Metropolitan Statistical Area)
A geographic region defined for the purpose of taking a census; usually these coincide with the limits of cities, towns or other administrative areas.
Commercialization
The transformation of an area of a city into an area attractive to residents and tourists alike in terms of economic activity.
Decentralization
The social process in which population and industry moves from urban centers to outlying districts.
Gated Communities
Restricted neighborhoods or subdivisions, often literally fenced in, where entry is limited to residents and their guests. Although predominantly high-income based, in North America these are increasingly a middle-class phenomenon.
Ghetto
A part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.
Hinterland
Literally, "country behind," a term that applies to a surrounding area served by an urban center. That urban center is the focus of goods and services produced for this term and is its dominant urban influence as well. In the case of a port city, this also includes the inland area whose trade flows through that port.
Inner City
The area near the center of a city, esp. when associated with social and economic problems.
Megacities
Very large cities, each with a population of over ten million people.
Multiple Nuclei Model
Developed by Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman, this model recognizes that the CBD is losing its dominant position as the single nucleus of the urban area.
Office Park
An area where a number of office buildings are built together on landscaped grounds.
Primate City
A country's largest city - ranking atop the urban hierarchy - most expressive of the national culture and usually the capital city as well.
Sector Model
Published by Homer Hoyt as an answer to the imitations of the Burgess model, arguing that the city grows outward from the center, so a low-rent area could extend all the way from the CBD to the city's out edge.
Site
The internal physical attributes of a place, including its absolute location, its spatial character, and physical setting.
Situation
The external locational attributes of a place; its relative location or regional position with reference to other nonlocal places.
Street Pattern
A description of the shapes made by streets in a city.
Grid Street Pattern
A type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid.
Dendritic Street Pattern
A street pattern characterized by fewer streets organized into a hierarchy based on the amount of traffic each is intended to carry--they form the "loop" or "lollipop" typical of urban sprawl neighborhoods.
Access Street Pattern
Street pattern providing access to a subdivision, housing project, or highway
Control Street Pattern
Street that controls access (toll roads, ramps of an interstate, etc).
Threshold
The minimum number of people needed to support the service.
Range
The distance people are willing to go for a commodity.
Urban Hierarchy
A ranking of settlements (hamlet, village, town, city, metropolis) according to their size and economic function.
Urbanization
A term with several connotations. The proportion of a country's population living in urban places is its level of this. The process of this involves the movement of people to, and the the clustering of people in, towns and cities - a major force in every geographic realm today. Another kind of this occurs when an expanding city absorbs the rural countryside and transforms it into suburbs; in the case of cities in the developing world, this also generates peripheral shantytowns.
Zone of Abandonment
An area where there are no human inhabitants.
Blockbusting
Rapid change in the racial composition of residential blocks in American cities that occurs when real estate agents and other stir up fears of neighborhood decline after encouraging people of color to move to previously white neighborhoods. In the resulting outmigration, real estate agents profit through the turnover of properties.
Centrality
The strength of an urban city in its capacity to attract producers and consumers to its facilities; a city's "reach" into the surrounding region.
Concentric Zone Model
A structural model of the American central city that suggests the existence of five concentric land-use rings arranged around a common center.
Edge City
A term introduced by American journalist Joel Garreau in order to describe the shifting focus of urbanization in the United States away from the Central Business District toward new loci of economic activity at the urban fringe. These cities are characterized by extensive amounts of office and retail space, few residential areas, and modern buildings (less than thirty years old).
Boomburgs Edge City
The most common of the edge cities; found around shopping malls and highway interchanges
Greenfields Edge City
Master-planned edge cities; on the suburban fringe; contains gated communities
Uptowns Edge City
Historic activity centers built over an older city or town
Gateway City
Airport or seaport that serves as the entry point to a country by being the primary arrival and departure point.
Griffin-Ford Model
A model of the Latin American culture with the forces of globalization that are reshaping the urban scene.
In-Filling
The use of vacant land and property within a built-up area for further construction or development, especially as part of a neighborhood preservation or limited growth program.
Invasion and Succession
Process by which new immigrants to a city move to and dominate or take over areas or neighborhoods occupied by older immigrant groups.
Megalopolis
Term used to designate large coalescing supercities that are forming in diverse parts of the world; formerly used specifically with an uppercase "M" to refer to the Boston-Washington multimetropolitan corridor on the northeastern seaboard of the United States, but now used generically with a lower-case "m" as a synonym for conurbation.
Conurbation
An extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities.
Multiplier Effect
The direct, indirect, and induced consequences of change in an activity. In industrial agglomerations, the cumulative processes by which a given change (such as a new plant opening) sets in motion a sequence of further industrial employment.
Peak Land Value Intersection (PLVI)
The region within a settlement with the greatest land value and commerce. As such, it is usually located in the central business district of a town or city, and has the greatest density of transport links such as roads and rail.
Rank-Size Rule
In a model urban hierarchy, the idea that the population of a city or town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy.
Segregation
The action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart; separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences.
Slum (Shantytown)
Unplanned development on the margins of cities, dominated by crude dwellings and shelters made mostly of scrap wood, iron, and even pieces of cardboard.
Suburbanization
Movement of upper and middle-class people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts to escape pollution as well as deteriorating social conditions (perceived and actual). In North America, the process began in the early nineteenth century.
Underemployment
Workers are overqualified for their jobs or work fewer hours than they would prefer.
Urban Morphology
The study of the physical form and structure of urban places.
World City
Dominant city in terms of its role in the global political economy. Not the world's biggest city in terms of population or industrial output, but rather centers of strategic control of the world economy.
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