The City Final Exam

Megalopolis

A large, continuous urban region formed by the merging of multiple metropolitan areas. It highlights how urbanization operates at a regional scale beyond individual cities. Example: BosWash (Boston–Washington, D.C.)

Global City

A concept describing cities that have become standardized and interchangeable due to globalization. These cities prioritize efficiency, spectacle, and capital flows over local identity or history.

Ordinary City

concept developed by Ash Amin and Stephen Graham, challenges the focus on "world cities" (like NYC, London) by arguing all cities are vital, complex, and heterogeneous, made up of diverse everyday lives, mundane practices, and varied social connections, rather than just global command centers

Informal Settlement

Residential areas developed outside formal planning and legal frameworks. They emerge due to rapid urbanization, housing shortages, and exclusion from formal markets.

Ex. Favelas in Rio De Janeiro

Shanzai City

concept used to describe an urban area or neighborhood characterized by "copycat" architecture and planning, where global or Western urban designs and famous architectural landmarks are imitated or appropriated for local purposes. 

Generic City

Concept describing cities that have become standardized and interchangeable due to globalization. These cities prioritize efficiency, spectacle, and capital flows over local identity or history.

Agglomeration Economies

Economic benefits that arise when firms and workers cluster together geographically. These include knowledge spillovers, shared infrastructure, and increased productivity, but they also raise land values and exclusion.

Uneven Development

Capitalism produces geographic inequality by concentrating investment in some places while neglecting others. Cities reflect this through stark spatial divisions between wealth and poverty.

Green City/Eco-City

A city designed to prioritize environmental sustainability, resource efficiency, and reduced ecological impact. These projects often involve top-down planning and raise equity concerns.

Sustainable Development

Development that seeks to balance economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity. In urban contexts, it is a political negotiation rather than a purely technical goal.

Environmental Racism

The disproportionate exposure of communities of color to environmental hazards due to systemic planning, zoning, and policy decisions. It emphasizes structural racism rather than intentional discrimination.

Green/Ecological Gentrification

A process where environmental improvements increase property values and attract wealthier residents, displacing existing low-income communities. It exposes tensions between sustainability and social equity.

Slum Upgrading

A policy approach that improves infrastructure and services in informal settlements without demolishing them. It recognizes slums as permanent parts of cities rather than temporary failures.

Urban Migration

The movement of people from rural areas or smaller towns to cities in search of opportunity. It drives urban growth but can outpace housing and infrastructure provision.

Informal Housing/Urbanism

Informal housing and urbanism describe self-built, often unplanned settlements that develop outside formal regulations, characterized by lack of basic services (water, sanitation, roads), and infrastructure

• they house over a billion people globally and are crucial for affordable, proximate housing, often growing organically with unique social dynamics

Neoliberal Urbanism

market-driven approach to city development prioritizing profit, growth, deregulation, and privatization, shifting governance to attract private investment over public welfare

• Public-Private Partnerships, tax breaks

• Hudson Yards

Fear City

Nickname given to New York City in the 1970s, especially around 1975, when the city was facing a severe financial crisis, rising crime, and major budget cuts to police and city services

Austerity Urbanism

Describes how cities manage severe public spending cuts after crises (like 2008), involving downsizing services, privatization, and downloading costs to local levels, leading to intensified inequality and informal, temporary uses of space, shifting burdens onto vulnerable populations

Displacement

The forced or indirect removal of residents due to rising rents, redevelopment, or policy changes. Displacement is a key mechanism through which inequality is reproduced in cities.

Urban Form

The physical layout and structure of a city, including buildings, streets, and land use patterns. Urban form expresses political power, social values, and economic priorities.

How do urban spaces reflect both innovation and inequality?

Cities foster innovation through density, agglomeration economies, and global networks. At the same time, these processes concentrate wealth and produce inequality through displacement, informalization, and uneven development.

Key concepts: agglomeration economies, global city, uneven development, informal settlements.

Readings & thinkers to use:

• Edward Glaeser – Cities as engines of innovation via density and idea exchange, but largely downplays inequality.

• Saskia Sassen – Global cities concentrate advanced services and wealth while generating low-wage, informal labor.

• David Harvey – Uneven development and accumulation by dispossession explain why innovation benefits some and excludes others.

• Ananya Roy – Informality is a systemic feature of urbanization, not a failure, revealing inequality beneath innovation.

How does urban form express political power?

Urban form is not neutral; it reflects political decisions about who belongs and who benefits. Zoning, infrastructure, and redevelopment projects encode power relations and often reinforce exclusion.

Key concepts: urban form, zoning, environmental racism, neoliberal urbanism.

Readings & thinkers to use:

• Jane Jacobs – Critiques top-down planning and shows how street-level urban form supports social life.

• Robert Moses (via critics) – Highways and urban renewal as expressions of state power that displaced communities.

• Laura Pulido – Environmental racism as a structural outcome of planning and white privilege, not individual intent.

• David Harvey – Urban form as a product of capitalist crisis and spatial fixes.

In what ways do cities reproduce spatial inequality?

Cities reproduce inequality through housing markets, planning decisions, and uneven investment. These processes concentrate advantages in some areas while marginalizing others.

Key concepts: displacement, uneven development, austerity urbanism, informal housing.

Readings & thinkers to use:

• Neil Smith – Gentrification driven by capital reinvestment and rent gaps, not individual preference.

• Sharon Zukin – Cultural consumption and “authenticity” reshape neighborhoods and exclude long-term residents.

• David Harvey – Austerity urbanism and neoliberal governance deepen spatial inequality.

• Marcuse – The divided city with distinct quarters for elites, professionals, and the marginalized.

How do housing policies shape displacement and opportunity?

Housing policies determine access to land, affordability, and stability. Under neoliberal governance, redevelopment often prioritizes land value over residents, leading to displacement despite promises of opportunity.

Key concepts: gentrification, displacement, slum upgrading, informal settlements.

Readings & thinkers to use:

• Edward Goetz – Public housing demolition and mixed-income redevelopment as neoliberal retrenchment.

• Ananya Roy – Informal housing and upgrading as alternatives to displacement-focused policy.

• Samuel Stein – Land markets, zoning, and speculation drive displacement under the guise of development.

• Jane Jacobs – Argues for preserving existing communities rather than wholesale clearance.

How does global urbanization challenge Western models of the city?

Global urbanization reveals that Western planning models are not universal. Informality, rapid growth, and alternative governance structures are central to many cities’ development paths.

Key concepts: ordinary city, informal urbanism, global city critique, shanzai city.

Readings & thinkers to use:

• Ananya Roy – Calls for recognizing informality as a dominant mode of urbanization rather than an exception.

• Jennifer Robinson – “Ordinary cities” critique of global city hierarchies and Western bias.

• Saskia Sassen (critique) – Global city theory overlooks everyday urban life and smaller cities.

• Campbell – Sustainable development as a political negotiation, not a universal technical solution.