Urban Geography and City Development Key Terms and Theories

Action space

The geographical area that contains the space an individual interacts with on a daily basis.

Beau Arts

This movement within city planning and urban design that stressed the marriage of older, classical forms with newer, industrial ones.

Blockbusting

As early as 1900, 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 large, rapidly growing city that is suburban in character but resembles population totals or large urban cores.

Borchert's Epochs

According to the geographer John R. Borchert, American cities have undergone five major epochs, or periods, of development shaped by the dominant forms of transportation and communication at the time.

Central business district

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

Central-Place Theory

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

City Beautiful Movement

Movement in environmental design that drew directly from the Beaux Arts school.

Colonial cities

Cities established by colonizing empires as administrative centers.

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.

Edge cities

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

Environmental justice

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

European cities

Cities in Europe that were mostly developed during the Medieval Period and that retain many of the same characteristics.

Exurbanite

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

Feudal cities

Cities that arose during the Middle Ages and that actually represent a time of relative stagnation in urban growth.

Forward capital

A capital city placed in 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.

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 Americans 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

A process occurring in many inner cities in which they become dilapidated centers of poverty.

Great Migration

An early 20th-century mass movement of African Americans from the Deep South to the industrial North, particularly Chicago.