Unit 6 Flashcards

Flashcards covering vocabulary and key concepts from Unit 6 of AP Human Geography, focusing on cities and urban land use.

favorable site and situation factors

Areas that have better access to arable land, connected to rivers and oceans that help in trade.

Megacity

A city with 10,000,000 or more residents, with a trend of locating more in periphery and semi-periphery countries.

Metacity

An area with more than 20,000,000 residents, located more in the periphery.

Urban Decentralization

A movement where population shifts away from the core urban area into more peripheral areas, causing shifts in resources, money, and power.

Urban Sprawl

Unrestricted growth or expansion, often replacing arable land and impacting the surrounding environment.

Boomburb

Rapidly growing suburban areas, large as a city yet still has the suburban feel

Exurb

A settlement outside the suburban area, still connected to the metro, but with fewer opportunities and lower population density.

Edge City

Areas near a highway with concentrated businesses, shopping, and services, linked to a larger city.

World City

Major cities that have an influence on the greater global population through their economy and culture.

Linkages

These are connections between different places, industry, and sectors.

Primate City

City that is significantly larger than the rest of the cities in a country, leading to uneven economic development.

Rank Size Rule

Second settlement in a country will have half the population of the first, third settlement will have a third, fourth, a fourth, and so on.

Interdependence

Reliance between different groups, organizations, or regions.

Gravity Model

A theory that states the the larger the place, the larger the city, the more opportunities they have. They have a bigger gravitational pole pulling other things in.

Threshold

The minimum number of people required to support a good or service.

Range

The distance people are willing to travel for a good or service.

Transit-oriented development

Urban planning where public transit stations are strategically located throughout a city.

New Urbanism

Urban design focused on the design and feel of a small-scale neighborhood.

Smart Cities

Cities utilizing technology and data to reduce inefficiencies.

Growth Boundaries

A boundary put in place to prevent any building outside of it.

Slow Growth Cities

Urban area that is trying to be more sustainable by limiting the actual growth.

Infilling

Buildings are built on land that is unused or underdeveloped.

Zoning

How a government regulates how land can be used and how it cannot be used in certain zones.

Urban Sustainability

Environment that promotes sustainable economic and social growth by focusing on social and economic equality for opportunity.

Infrastructure

Roads, pipes, internet cables, fiber optics, power, allowing the city to properly function.

Inclusionary Zones

An area where local policies are put in place to incentivize developers to create affordable housing

Informal Settlements

These are areas where residents have built structures where they do not legally own the land.

Disamenity Zones

Area within a city where it is lacking services, public services and quality infrastructure.

Ecological Footprint

The land and resources that are used to actually support the population of a city.

Brownfield

Abandoned properties that have some contamination from commercial use, hazarded pollutants.

Post de facto segregation

The separation of people along racial, economic, ethnic lines that is not enforced by laws or regulations.

Redlining

A practice where banks refused loans who lived in certain neighborhoods and deemed these areas as high risk, resulting in minority neighborhoods.

Gentrification

Process where cities improve and come back to life. This leads to properties increase in price, displacing lower income residents.

Blockbusting

Discriminatory practice where real estate agents would use misinformation about the minority moving communities moving into an area.

Environmental Injustice

Neighborhoods that disproportionately have more environmental hazards, more pollutants that are commonly found by these marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Placelessness

when different places start to look the same because they lose what makes them unique.