Urban Geography 6A

Blockbusting

Blockbusting

Real estate agents and developers encouraged affluent white property owners to sell their homes and businesses at a loss by stoking fears that their neighborhoods were being overtaken by racial or ethnic minorities.

Boomburb

A suburban area that is experiencing significant growth in population and prosperity.

Borchert's Epochs

Theory that American cities have undergone five major periods of development shaped by the dominant forms of transportation: sail-wagon period; iron horse period; steel rail period; auto-air amenity period; and satellite-electronic-jet propulsion and high technology period.

Central Business District

The downtown or nucleus of a city where retail stores, offices, and cultural activities are concentrated. They contain high building densities, and where transportation systems converge.

Central Place Theory

Walter Christaller's theory in the early 1900s that explains the size and distribution of cities in terms of a competitive supply of goods and services to a dispersed population.

Colonial Cities

Cities established by colonial empires as administrative centers. Often established on already existing native cities, completely overtaking their infrastructures.

Concentric Zone Model

Model that describes urban environments as a series of rings of distinct land uses radiating out from a central core, or central business district.

Environmental Justice

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

Exurbanite

Person who has left the inner city and moved to outlying suburbs or rural areas.

Forward Capital

A capital city relocated often to a more central location, but also perhaps to a remote or peripheral area, for economic, strategic, or symbolic reasons.

Galactic City Model

A circular city model that characterizes the role of the automobile in the post-industrial era. It is characterized by peripheral suburban nodes and a ring road looping around the city.

Gateway Cities

Cities that, because of their geographic location, act as ports of entry and distribution centers for large geographic areas.

Gentrification

The trend of middle- and upper-income people moving into city centers and rehabilitating much of the architecture but also replacing low-income populations and changing the social character of certain neighborhoods.

Ghettoization

The process occurring in many inner cities in which they become dilapidated centers of poverty, as affluent whites move out to the suburbs and immigrants and people of color vie for scarce jobs and resources.

Great Migration

An early 20th century mass movement of African Americans from the Deep South to industrial cities in the North.

Hinterland

The market area surrounding an urban center, which that urban center serves.

Inner City Decay

Parts of large urban areas that lose significant portions of their populations as a result of change in industry or migration to suburbs. Because of these changes, the inner city loses its tax base and becomes a center of poverty.

Islamic Cities

Cities in Muslim countries that owe their structure to religious beliefs. They contain mosques at the center and walls guarding the perimeter. They are characterized by open-air markets, courtyards surrounded by high walls, and dead-end streets.

Edge Cities

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

European Cities

Cities in Europe that were mostly developed during the Medieval Period and retain many of the same characteristics, such as extreme density of development with narrow buildings and winding streets, an ornate church that prominently marks the city center, and high walls surrounding the city that provided defense against attack.