AP Human Geography Unit 6 Vocab

Annexation

Legally adding land area to a city in the United States.

Census tract

An area delineated by the U.S Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published; in urban areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.

Central Business District (CBD)

The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.

City

An urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an independent, self-governing unit.

Concentric Zone Model

A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially arranged in a series of rings.

Density Gradient

The change in density in an urban area from the center to the periphery.

Edge City

A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area.

Filtering

A process of change in the us of a house, from single-family owner occupancy to abandonment.

Food Desert

An area in a developed country where healthy food is difficult to obtain.

Gentrification

A process of converting an urban neighborhood from a predominantly low-income, renter-occupied area to a predominantly middle-class, owner-occupied area.

Greenbelt

A ring of land maintained as parks, agriculture, or other types of open space to limit the sprawl of an urban area.

Megalopolis

A continuous urban complex in the northeastern United States.

Multiple Nuclei Model

A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a collection of nodes of activities.

Basic Industries

Industries that sell their products or services primarily to consumers outside the settlement.

Business Services

Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses, including professional, financial, and transportation services.

Central Place

A market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the surrounding area.

Central Place Theory

A theory that explains the distribution of services based on the fact that settlements serve as centers of market areas for services larger settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller settlements and provide services for a larger number of people who are willing to travel further.

Clustered rural settlement

A rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each other, with fields surrounding the settlement.

Consumer Services

Businesses that provide services primarily to individual consumers, including retail services and education, health, and leisure services.

Dispersed rural settlement

A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages.

Economic Base

A community’s collection of basic industries.

Gravity Model

A model which holds that the potential use of a service at a particular location is directly related to the number of people in a location and inversely related to the distance people must travel to reach the service.

Market Area/Hinterland

The area surrounding a central place from which people are attracted to use the place’s goods and services.

Nonbasic Industries

Industries that sell their products primarily to consumers in the community.

Primate City

The largest settlement in a country, if it has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.

Primate City Rule

A pattern of settlements in a country such that the largest settlement has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.

Public Services

Services offered by the government to provide security and protection for citizens and businesses.

Range

The maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service.

Rank-size rule

A pattern of settlements in a county such that the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement.

Service

Any activity that fulfills a human want or need and return money to those who provide it.

Settlement

A permanent collection of buildings and inhabitants.

Threshold

The minimum number of people needed to support a service.

Urbanization

An increase in the percentage of the number of people living in urban settlements.

Sprawl

A flattening of density gradient for a metropolitan area or the progressive spread of development over the landscape.

Boomburbs

Accidental cities, suburbs with populations similar to urban areas with suburban feel.