GEO 222 Urban Geography Vocabulary

Practice vocabulary flashcards defining core terms, urban theories, and frameworks from GEO 222 lecture notes.

Noticing

A way of looking that asks how what is visible was produced, whom it serves, and what it conceals.

Observation

Describing visible evidence rather than explaining a pattern or making unsupported claims.

Interpretation

Explaining an observed pattern by supporting the explanation with evidence.

Urbanization

An increasing proportion or share of a population living in urban areas, distinct from urban growth.

Urban growth

An increase in an urban population or its built area, which can occur without a national urban share rising.

Metropolitan region

A central city and surrounding places connected by commuting, jobs, housing, trade, and services, often crossing government boundaries.

Industrialization

Expansion of industrial production that concentrates jobs and attracts workers into urban areas, increasing demand for housing and services.

World city / global city

A strategically important center in international economic networks that organizes global economic activity through command, management, coordination, finance, and specialized services.

Command functions

Decisions about investment, production, and management that influence economic activity across other locations.

Surplus extraction

Capturing value generated through production beyond labor compensation and relevant production costs, helping organize profit, rent, and interest.

Dispersal-concentration relationship

The dynamic where global operations spread across countries while complex coordination and advanced producer services concentrate in key cities.

Advanced producer services

Specialized services supporting firms, such as finance, law, accounting, and consulting, that assist in managing complex international operations.

Ordinary cities

Jennifer Robinson's concept that every city deserves study as a source of urban knowledge rather than being evaluated only against dominant global models.

Colonialism

Direct political domination and control of a territory or people by an outside power.

Neocolonialism

Indirect influence or domination maintained through economic dependence, finance, trade, corporations, or political pressure without formal colonial rule.

Neoliberalism

A political-economic approach emphasizing markets, competition, privatization, deregulation, and austerity, where states still enforce property, contracts, and market institutions.

Washington Consensus

A set of market-oriented policy recommendations associated with international financial institutions, characterized by privatization, liberalization, trade opening, and fiscal restraint.

New International Division of Labor (NIDL)

The reorganization of production across countries, with different places specializing in tasks such as manufacturing, management, and services, with unevenly distributed power and benefits.

Automobility

The wider system supporting car travel, including roads, vehicles, laws, planning priorities, cultural expectations, and related industries.

Citadel

In the urban course context, an assemblage of elite residential and commercial spaces separated from the wider city.

Abandoned city

A course label for urban space experiencing severe disinvestment or exclusion, rather than a place containing literally no residents.

Tenement city

A course label emphasizing dense, overcrowded, poorly maintained multi-family housing and unequal urban conditions.

Hostile design

Physical design of public space that intentionally discourages particular uses or users.

Stranger

Someone positioned by social relationships as outside a group, who can be treated as unfamiliar or out of place despite being a long-term resident or citizen.

Othering

Defining and treating people as outside an assumed 'us' through suspicion, stereotypes, harassment, or everyday treatment.

Eyes on the street

Informal observation of public space by residents, shopkeepers, passersby, and people in nearby buildings, supported by daily street life.

Sidewalk ballet

Jane Jacobs's concept describing the patterned but spontaneous interactions of residents, workers, shoppers, and visitors that generate everyday urban order.

Mobility

The ability and conditions of physical movement across space, which does not guarantee safe access to opportunities.

Accessibility

The ability to reach and use opportunities, destinations, and services, shaped by social and physical barriers beyond travel alone.

Redlining

Discriminatory area-based restrictions on housing credit associated with racialized neighborhood risk grading.

White flight

The movement of many white residents from central cities to suburbs, contributing to reduced central-city tax resources, deepened segregation, and unequal investment.

Deindustrialization

A decline in industrial employment or activity, which can reduce jobs, population, and public resources in affected places.

Uneven development

Unequal patterns of growth, investment, and opportunity across places and social groups.

Space of flows

Manuel Castells's concept for the networked organization of information, capital, goods, and coordination across distance.

Space of places

Manuel Castells's concept for lived locations where people experience daily life, form relationships, and create social meaning.

Miasma theory

A historical explanation attributing disease to foul or poisonous air, distinct from the actual microbiological causes of infection.

Germ theory

The scientific understanding that microorganisms cause infectious diseases, with cholera spreading primarily through contaminated water or food rather than foul air.

Environmental inequality

Unequal exposure to pollution and environmental hazards, alongside unequal protection or coping capacity across communities.

Land reclamation

Creating usable land from water or wet areas, expanding built space while altering ecological relationships and drainage.

Shipbreaking

Dismantling retired ships to recover materials like steel, linking maritime transport to recycling alongside hazardous labor and environmental risks.

Externalized cost

A burden borne by people outside an economic transaction and not reflected in its price, such as worker injury, pollution, or community destruction.

Smart city

A city or urban development using digital technology, data, communications, and technical systems to manage urban functions or support economic activity.

Dialectic

A reciprocal relationship in which processes or forces shape one another.

Agency

The capacity to act and make choices within or against structural constraints.

Structure

Institutions and wider social arrangements that enable and constrain action.

Hegemony

Dominance maintained partly through consent and ideas that make a power arrangement seem normal.

Brownfield

Former industrial or commercial land that may be contaminated and require cleanup before reuse.

Gentrification

Neighborhood reinvestment and change toward wealthier residents or users, where rising costs can displace existing residents.

Displacement

Being forced or pressured to leave a home, business location, or community.

Privatization

The transfer of public assets or services into private ownership or operation.

Deregulation

The reduction or removal of government rules governing an activity or industry.

Austerity

Policies reducing public spending and/or deficits, often affecting public services and social provision.

Homogenization

Places or practices becoming more alike, though global connections do not make every city identical.

Agglomeration

Economic advantages that arise from activities, firms, and workers locating near one another.

Capital

Resources invested to generate returns.

Segregation

Structured or enforced separation of social groups in space.

Informal settlement

Housing developed outside some formal planning or legal systems, often characterized by insecure tenure or services.

Urban entrepreneurialism

Governing a city with a primary focus on competing for investment, business, and prestige.

Social urbanism

Urban interventions linked to social inclusion, such as access-oriented transit and public spaces.

Digital divide

Unequal access to digital networks, devices, skills, or services.

Logistics

Coordination of the movement and storage of goods.

Containerization

Transport of goods using standardized containers that transfer seamlessly between ships, rail, and trucks.

Vulnerability

Susceptibility to harm shaped by exposure and capacity to cope.

Pathogen

An agent capable of causing disease.

Governance

Institutions and practices through which decisions are organized and implemented.

Livability

How well a place supports everyday needs, access, and quality of life.

Global circuit

A connected movement of money, people, goods, or information linking places across the world.

Spatial division of labor

The geographic distribution of distinct economic tasks across different places, such as manufacturing, corporate management, and services.

Free trade

International exchange characterized by reduced trade barriers, such as tariffs or quotas.

Liberalization

Economic reforms that open activity and sectors to markets, competition, or investment.

Economic restructuring

Major transformations in how an economy is organized, including shifts in dominant industries, production locations, and employment patterns.

Mixed uses

Different activities such as housing, retail, and workplaces located close together, attracting street users at varying times.

Informal social control

Everyday observation and shared social expectations that regulate public behavior without sole reliance on formal authorities.

Top-down planning

Urban decision-making led predominantly by powerful centralized institutions or authorities.

Public space

Physical space intended for shared or public activities, where formal openness does not necessarily ensure universal inclusion.

Built environment

The human-made physical surroundings, including buildings, streets, infrastructure, and modified landscapes.

Urbanity

The everyday social experience of city life, including social encounters, daily routines, relationships, and public activities.

Representation

How an urban area is portrayed through media, tourism branding, maps, or advertising, which can diverge from lived experience.

Network society

A form of social organization deeply shaped by technological networks linking activities, people, and institutions across geographic space.

Node

A physical strategic connection point within a network, such as a city, airport, central office, or port.

Fiber optics

A material telecommunications technology transmitting data as light pulses through thin fibers, forming the physical backbone of digital networks.

Selective connectivity

The provision of advanced network connections to favored districts or users while bypassing neighboring areas.

Sanitation

Physical systems and practices designed to manage sewage and waste safely to protect public health.

Infrastructure

Underlying physical and organizational systems—including water, sewers, transport, energy, and communications—that enable urban life.

Density

The quantity of people, housing, or economic activity concentrated per unit of land area.

Belonging

Being accepted and recognized as a full member of a place or social community, which legal presence alone does not guarantee.