Unit 6 (Cities and Urban Land Use)

Consumer Services

Businesses that provide services primarily to individual consumers, including retail services and education, health, and leisure services.

Business Services

Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses, including professional, financial, and transportation services.

Public Services

Services offered by the government to provide security and protection for citizens and businesses.

Basic Industries

Industries that sell their products or services primarily to consumers outside the settlement.

Non-basic industries

Industries that sell their products primarily to consumers in the community.

Range

The maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service.

Threshold

The minimum number of people needed to support the service.

World Cities

A group of cities that form an interconnected, internationally dominant system of global control of finance and commerce.

Megacity

City with more than 10 million people.

Metacity

A city with a population over 20 million.

Megalopolis

A region in which several large cities and surrounding areas grow together.

Urban Sprawl

The process of urban areas expanding outwards, usually in the form of suburbs, and developing over fertile agricultural land.

Central Business District

The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.

Intensive Land Use

A high demand for land and space in the CBD so it begins to build both underground and higher up.

Empty Nesters

Middle-aged or older parents who do not have children living with them.

Yuppies

Young urban professionals.

Gentrification

A process of converting an urban neighborhood from a predominantly low-income renter-occupied area to a predominantly middle-class owner-occupied area.

Filtering

A process of change in the use of a house, from single-family owner occupancy to abandonment.

Ghettoization

A process occurring in many inner cities in which they become dilapidated centers of poverty, as affluent whites move out to the suburbs and immigrants and people of color vie for scarce jobs and resources.

Food Desert

An area in a developed country where healthy food is difficult to obtain.

Urban Decay

Situation in which a city area has fallen into a state of disrepair through its people leaving the area or not having enough resources to look after them.

Gravity Model

A spatial interaction model that predicts the likelihood of interaction between two places based on their population sizes and the distance between them.

Primate City

No direct relationship and has reliance on the biggest city.

Rank-Size Rule

Biggest City / next city rank (2nd, 3rd, 4th) = population.