Urban Geography Vocab

urban

not rural

suburban

urban areas because it is not rural outside the city

village

a community of people smaller than a town; agriculture workers who live together

urbanized area (UAs)

area with 50,000 people or more

urban places outside of UAs

incorporated place/census designated place with at least 2,500 inhabitants

rural places and territory

territory, population, housing units that Census Bureau does not classify as urban are classified as rural

megacity

urban agglomeration of more than 10 million people (according to UN)

metacity

urban agglomerations of more than 20 million people (according to UN)

urban monopoly

the study of urban landscape and place; what we sometimes call the "urban fabric"; how the city is shaped and how people interact within it

formal settlements

straight/right angles

informal settlements

zig-zags

Central Place Theory

model that attempts to understand why cities are located where they are; 5 assumptions: surface of a region is flat with no physical barriers, soil quality is the same everywhere, population and purchasing power are evenly distributed, region has uniform transport networks that permit direct travel from settlement to other settlements, from any place any good or service can be sold in all directions out to certain distance

central places

settlements that make certain types of products/services available to consumers

Walter Christaller

German urban geographer who based his Central Place Theory on 5 assumptions and believed cities were primarily economic centers with purpose to distribute goods and services to people who are willing to travel certain distances to acquire them

hamlets

small village

towns

political unit that is larger than a village and smaller than a city

threshold

number of people required to support a business

range

distance people travel for good/service

first order places

large regional cities

second order places

cities

third order places

towns

fourth order places

villages and hamlets

Hearths of Urbanism

first civilizations (India, Yellow-River, Mesopotamia)

First Urban Revolution

first places where cities developed; beginning of surplus crops (River valley civilizations)

Second Urban Revolution

node of city stops being agriculturally focused and become factories (Industrial Revolution); agglomeration occurred to build stuff

Third Urban Revolution

globalized trade (globalization) and tertiary economic activities (service-based); get big cities connected globally; allowed cities to sprawl and expand; could eventually blend into one another (Megalopolis)

Rank-Size Rule Theory

biggest city will be twice as big as second biggest and three times as big as third biggest and so on

Primate City Theory

one city is bigger than others (prime city) which is usually caused by physical geography, connections to outside world, historical reasons, monarchy government systems, unitary governments (Austria, Bahamas, France)

Global City Phenomenon

Saskia Sassen; there are some cities that have gravity; global cities = global gravity - suck money, tourists, etc into them (New York, Tokyo, LA, London); to be a global city you need: global headquarters, in the economic core, big population, rich people that can contribute to the economy, tertiary activities, tourism; global cities are for banking/finance, legal services, multinational corporate headquarters

CBD

central business district ("downtown")

Burgess Model/Concentric Zone Model

as you move out from the center of the city, density decreases and wealth increases; 1) CBD 2) factories 3) individual workers' homes; land is most expensive in the center and poorer people live in the center; invasion and succession - new groups invade a zone and old groups succeed and move out

Hoyt's Sector Model

sectors are around CBD in pie slices along streetcar/railroad; development follows the lines of tranportation

Harris and Ullman Multiple Nuclei Model

developed after WWII; not a circle; suburbanization; center is losing importance; beginning of sprawl

Galactic (Peripheral) Model

urban area is multiple "cities"; centers in other places surrounding CBD; has own gravity (self-sustaining)

edge cities

cities on the edge of an area that are independent

boomburgs

edge cities with over 100,000 people (really big edge cities); megacity of suburbs; transportation (automobile) allows for sprawl of cities)

morphology

what explains shape of the US suburbs: zoning; Depression/WWII - GI Bill/Federal Aid Highway Act/Mass production techniques; leads to sprawl (b/c of parking lots and roads)

FHA

Federal Housing Administration; New Deal organization which goal was to make home living more affordable; loans need to be available; subsidizes loans

"white flight"

white people leaving city proper; population in city drops but country population doesn't really drop; less tax dollars (harm public services); move out of cities to suburbs

blockbusting

"there goes the neighborhood"; mixing races is bad and hurts population value; increased segregation; ends up with urban decay

disamenity zones

places that end up without amenities (parks, fire stations, grocery stores)

urban renewal

a government-led policy to destroy homes and bring people back to cities

gentrification

educated/middle class people who move back to the city; displacement when wealthier people move into community, it displaces people who already live in the community