APHuG Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes

Ecumene

The proportion of the earth inhabited by humans.

Suburbs

residential areas surrounding a city

Settlement

A permanent collection of buildings and inhabitants.

Urbanization

Movement of people from rural areas to cities

Suburbanization

The process of population movement from within towns and cities to the rural-urban fringe.

zoning ordinances

A law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development in a community.

Site

The physical character of a place

Situation

the location of a place relative to other places

City-state

a city that with its surrounding territory forms an independent state.

Urban hearth

An area like Mesopotamia, China, India, or the Nile Valley where large cities first existed.

Urban area

A central city and its surrounding built-up suburbs

Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)

Contains a core area containing a large population nucleus, together with adjacent communities that have a high degree of economic and social integration with that core.

Time-space compression

the rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space and time

Central business district (CBD)

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

Counter-urbanization (deurbanization)

the net loss of population from cities to smaller towns and rural areas.

Megacities

cities with more than 10 million people

Megalopolis

a very large, heavily populated city or urban complex.

Conurbation

an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of one or more cities.

World city (global city)

Centers of economic, culture, and political activity that are strongly interconnected and together control the global systems of finance and commerce.

Urban hierarchy

A ranking of settlements according to their size and economic functions.

Gravity model

A mathematical formula that describes the level of interaction between two places, based on the size of their populations and their distance from each other.

Central place theory (Christaller)

explains the spatial organization of settlements and hinterlands, their relative location, and size.

Higher-order services

a good or service usually expensive, that people only buy occasionally, these are usually located in larger towns and cities with a large market area accessible to a large number of people

Lower-order services

provided by small centers, a good or service, usually inexpensive items that people buy often a regular, often daily basis

Primate city

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

Residential zones

the areas of a city devoted to where people live rather than to commercial or industrial functions

Concentric zone model (Burgess)

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

Sector model (Hoyt)

A model that shows cities develop in a series of sectors radiating out from a CBD

Multi-nuclei model (Harris and Ullman)

a model of urban land use developed by C.D. Harris and E.L. Ullman based on separated & specialized multiple nuclei

Peripheral model

A model of North American urban areas consisting of an inner city surrounded by large suburban residential and business areas tied together by a beltway or ring road.

Zoning ordinances

A law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development in a community.

boomburbs

rapidly growing city that remains essentially suburban in character even as it reaches populations more typical of a large city

disamenity zone

The very poorest parts of cities that in extreme cases are not connected to regular city services and are controlled by gangs and drug lords.

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.

Greenbelts

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

Smart Growth Policies

Legislation and regulations to limit suburban sprawl and preserve farmland.

Rank-Size Rule

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

Metacity

A city with a population over 20 million

Edge City

cities that are located on the outskirts of larger cities and serve many of the same functions of urban areas, but in a sprawling, decentralized suburban environment

Informal Economy Zone

Economic activity that thrives with curbside, car-side, and stall based businesses that often hire people temporarily and do not follow all regulations; part of the economy that is not taxed