Urban Development and City Models

Flashcards covering key terms and definitions related to urban development and city models.

Infill Development

The building of new retail, business, or residential spaces on vacant or underused parcels in already developed areas.

New Urbanism

An approach to city planning that focuses on fostering European-style cities of dense settlements, attractive architecture, and housing of different types and prices within walking distance to shopping, restaurants, jobs, and public transportation.

Griffin-Ford Model

A model of the internal structure of the Latin American city developed by Ernst Griffin and Larry Ford.

Rank Size Rule

The population of a settlement is inversely proportional to its rank in the urban hierarchy.

Primate City

A city that is much larger than any other city in the country and that dominates the country’s economic, political, and cultural life.

Redlining

The practice of identifying high-risk neighborhoods on a city map and refusing to lend money to people who want to buy property in those neighborhoods.

Scattered Developments

Subdivisions or developments that do not abut existing settlements and that remove agricultural land from production.

Slow Growth City

A city that changes its zoning laws to decrease the rate at which the city spreads horizontally, with the goal of avoiding the negative effects of sprawl.

Squatter Settlement

An area of degraded, seemingly temporary, inadequate, and often illegal housing.

Sprawl

The tendency of cities to grow outward in an unchecked manner.

Suburbanization

The movement of people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts of the city.

Urban

Relating to a city.

World City

A world center of trade, finance, information, and migration.

Zoning

The classification of land according to restrictions on its use and development.

Urban Cluster

An urban area in the US with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.

Urban Footprint

The spatial extent of an urban area’s impacts on the natural environment.

Range

In central place theory, the distance people will travel to acquire a good.

Second Urban Revolution

The industrial innovations in mining and manufacturing that led to urban growth.

Redevelopment

A set of activities intended to revitalize an area that has fallen on hard times.

Boomburb (boomburg)

A place with more than 100,000 residents that is not a core city in a metropolitan area; a large suburb with its own government.

Central Place Theory

A model developed by Walter Christaller that attempts to understand why cities are located where they are.

Edge City

A concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment that developed in the suburbs, outside of a city’s traditional downtown or central business district.

Exclusionary Zoning

Zoning that attempts to keep low- to moderate-income people out of a neighborhood.

Galactic City Model

A model of a city’s internal organization in which the central business district remains central, but multiple shopping areas, office parks, and industrial districts are scattered throughout the surrounding suburbs and linked by metropolitan expressway systems.

Gentrification

The displacement of lower-income residents by higher-income residents as an area or neighborhood improves.

Hoyt Model

A model of a city’s internal organization, developed by Homer Hoyt, that focuses on transportation and communication as the drivers of the city’s layout.