Urbanization

urban morphology

the layout of the city, its physical form and structure.

first urban revolution

the innovation of the city occurred and it happened independently in five separate hearths as an independent invention where something triggered the establishment of a leadership class and an agricultural surplus.

rank-size-rule

holds that in an ideal (or model) urban hierarchy, the population of a city or town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy.

trade area

every city and town has an adjacent region within which its influence is dominant. In a city's trade area its newspapers are read, television stations are watched, and people travel there for its high order central place functions.

threshold

From a business' or service-provider's perspective, the minimum population needed to justify the provision of a certain good or service. This may be expressed crudely, in population numbers, example

for a post office.

range

the maximum distance people are willing to travel to purchase a good or access a service.

central business district (CBD)

a concentration of business and commerce in the city's downtown. The American CBD typically has high land values, tall buildings, busy traffic, converging highways and mass transit systems.

central city

the urban area that is not suburban

suburb

an outlying, functionally uniform part of an urban area which is often adjacent to the central city. Most are residential but there are increasingly other land uses such as shopping centers and malls and office parks.

suburbanization

the process by which lands that were previously outside the urban environment become urbanized as people and businesses from the central city move into these areas.

Colonial City

a city founded by colonial powers, mostly in Latin America, Southeast Asia, India & Africa.

Concentric Zone Model

resulted from sociologist Ernest Burgess's model of a city divided into five concentric zones

Hoyt's Sector Model

Focused on residential patterns explaining where the wealthy in a city chose to live and argued that the city grows directionally outward from the center, but not in perfect rings. It looks more like wedges.

Multiple Nuclei Model

The model recognizes the declining dominance of the CBD and the growth the areas independent of the CBD.

megacity

a Metropolitan area whose population and density exceeds 10 million

census tract

an area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published: in urbanized areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.

infrastructure

the physical organization/services needed to operate a city (roads, sewers, telecommunications)

gentrification

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

greenbelt

a ring of land maintained as parks, agriculture, or other types of open space to limit the sprawl of an urban area

Primate cities

A city that is more than 2X as large as the next biggest city in a country

redlining

a process by which banks draw lines on a map and refuse to lend money to purchase and improve property within the boundaries.

blockbusting

a practice of realtors where they would solicit white residents of a neighborhood to sell their homes under the guise that the neighborhood was going downhill because an African American person or family had moved in. This contributed to "white flight."

smart growth

legislation and regulations to limit suburban sprawl and preserve farmland

squatter settlement

an area within a city in a less developed country in which people illegally establish residences on land they do not own or rent and erect homemade structures.

disamenity sector

the very poorest part of cities that in extreme cases are not even connected to city services and are controlled by gangs and drugs (Favellas in Rio).

sprawl

development of new housing sites at a relatively low density and at locations that are not contiguous to the existing built-up area.

new urbanism

an attempt to counter sprawl; new urbanists promote urban revitalization and suburban reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of housing and jobs as well as regional planning for open or greenspace, appropriate architecture and planning and the balanced development of jobs and housing.

edge city

describe how urbanization is shifting the population from the CBD to the suburbs. It is a concentration of business, residences, shopping and entertainment outside the traditional downtown.

Gravity Model

A model that holds that the potential use of a service at a particular location is directly related to the number of people in a location and inversely related to the distance people must travel to reach the service.

Infill

Development that fills in vacant lots within existing communities

Metacity

A city with a population over 20 million

Brownfields

contaminated industrial or commercial sites that may require environmental cleanup before they can be redeveloped or expanded

McGee Model

a model showing similar land-use patterns among the medium-sized cities of Southeast Asia

African Cities Model

Usually 3 CBDs - colonial CBD, period market zone, and transitional business CBD.

Griffin Ford Model

a model of the Latin American city showing a blend of traditional elements of Latin American culture with the forces of globalization that are reshaping the urban scene

Site

The physical character of a place

Situation

the location of a place relative to other places

Fall line

area along which rivers form waterfalls or rapids as the rivers drop to lower land

boomburb

a suburb that has grown rapidly into a large and sprawling city with more than 100,000 residents

Bid Rent Theory

geographical economic theory that refers to how the price and demand on real estate changes as the distance towards the Central Business District (CBD) increases.