AP HUGE Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes

City

A relatively large, densely populated settlement with a much larger population than rural towns and villages; cities serve as important commercial, governmental, and cultural hubs for their surrounding regions.

Urban

Means “relating to a city”

Agricultural Surplus

Crop yields that are sufficient to feed more people than the farmer and his or her family

Socioeconomic Stratification

The structuring of society into distinct socioeconomic classes, including leadership (for instance, a government or ruling class) that exercise control over goods and people.

The First Urban Revolution

The agricultural and socioeconomic innovations that led to the rise of the earliest cities.

Urban Hearth Areas

Regions in which the world’s first cities evolved.

Site

An absolute location of a place on Earth.

Situation

The relative location of a place in reference to its surrounding features, or its regional position with reference to other places.

Capitalism

An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than owned and run by the state.

Communism

An economic and political system in which all property is publicly owned and managed.

Streetcar Suburbs

An economic and political system in which all property is publicly owned and managed.

The Second Urban Revolution

The industrial innovations in mining and manufacturing that led to increased urban growth.

Metropolis

A very large and densely populated city, particularly the capital or major city of a country or region.

Urban Area

Any self-governing place in the United States that contains at least 2500 people.

Urbanized Areas

In the United States, an urban area with 50,000 people or more.

Urban Clusters

In the United States, an urban area with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.

Metropolitan Statistical Areas

In the United States, a region with at least one urbanized area as its core.

Micropolitan Statistical Areas

In the United States, a region with one or more urban clusters of at least 10,000 people as its cores.

Suburbs

Populated areas on the outskirts of a city.

Urbanization Rate

The percentage of a nation’s population living in towns and cities.

Suburbanization

The movement of people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts of a city

Sprawl

The tendency of cities to grow outward in an unchecked manner.

Automobile Cities

Cities whose size and shape are dictated by and almost require individual automobile ownership.

Decentralize

In an urban context, to move business operations from core city areas into outlying areas such as suburbs.

Edge City

A concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment that developed in the suburbs, outside of a city’s traditional downtown or central business district

Booburbs

A place with more than 100,000 residents that is not a core city in a metropolitan area; a large suburb with its own government.

Infill Development

The building of new retail, business, or residential spaces on vacant or underused parcels in already developed areas.

Exurb

A semi rural district located beyond the suburbs that is often inhabited by well-to-do families.

World Cities

A world center of trade, finance, information, and migration.

Gated Communities

Privately governed and highly secure residential area within the bounds of a city; often has a fence or a gate surrounding it.

Urban System

A set of interdependent cities or urban places connected by networks.

Urban Hierarchy

A ranking of cities, with the largest and most powerful cities at the top of the hierarchy.

Rank-size rule

The population of a settlement is inversely proportional to its rank in the urban hierarchy.

Primate City

A city that is much larger than any other city in the country and that dominates the country’s economic, political, and cultural life.

Central Place Theory

A model, developed by Walter Christaller, that attempts to understand why cities are located where they are.

Central Places

A settlement that makes certain types of products and services available to consumers.

Threshold

In central place theory, the number of people required to support businesses.

Range

In central place theory, the distance people will travel to acquire a good.

Gravity Model

The idea that the closer two places are, the more they will influence each other.

Concentric Zone Model

A model of a city’s internal organization developed by E. W. Burgess that shows rings of factory production and different residential zones radiating outward from a central business district.

Hoyt Model / Sector Model

A model of a city’s internal organization, developed by Homer Hoyt, that focuses on transportation and communication as the drivers of the city’s layout.

Multiple-Nuclei Model

A model of a city’s internal organization, developed by Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman, showing residential districts organized around several nodes (nuclei) rather than one central business district.

Galatic City Model / Peripheral Model

A model of a city’s internal organization in which the central business district remains central, but multiple shopping areas, office parks, and industrial districts are scattered throughout the surrounding suburbs and linked by metropolitan expressway systems.

Griffin-Ford Model

A model of the internal structure of the Latin American city developed by Ernst Griffin and Larry Ford.

Perceived Density

The general impression of the estimated number of people present in a given area.

Zoning Regulations

Laws that dictate how land can be used.

Fiscal Squeeze

Occurs when city revenues cannot keep up with increasing demands for city services and expenditures on decaying urban infrastructure.

Built Environment

The human-made space in which people live, work, and engage in leisure activities on a daily basis.

Smart Growth Policies

Policies that combat regional sprawl by addressing issues of population density and transportation.

Compact Design

Development that grows up (in the form of taller buildings) rather than out (in the form of urban sprawl).

Diverse Housing Options

Policy that encourages building quality housing for people and families of all life stages and income levels in a range of prices within a neighborhood.

New Urbanism

An approach to city planning that focuses on fostering European-style cities of dense settlements, attractive architecture, and housing of different types and prices within walking distance to shopping, restaurants, jobs, and public transportation.

Greenbelt

A zone of grassy, forested, or agricultural land separating urban areas.

Zoning

The classification of land according to restrictions on its use and development.

Slow-Growth Cities

A city that changes its zoning laws to decrease the rate at which the city spreads horizontally, with the goal of avoiding the negative effects of sprawl.

Anti-Displacement Tenant Activists

Advocates for poor and working-class residents who are at risk of losing their affordable housing to new development.

De Facto Segregation

Racial segregation that is not supported by law but is still apparent.

Mortgage

A loan that is taken out to purchase a home.

Redlining

The practice of identifying high-risk neighborhoods on a city map and refusing to lend money to people who want to buy property in those neighborhoods.

Blockbusting

A practice in which realtors persuade white homeowners in a neighborhood to sell their homes by convincing them that the neighborhood is declining due to black families moving in.

White Flight

The mass movement of white people from the city to the suburbs (a result of blockbusting).

Affordability

The maximum price that a buyer can afford to pay for a house or apartment.

Housing Choice Voucher Program

A federal government program to assist very-low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled with affordable, decent, safe, and sanitary housing.

Violent Crime

A category of crime that includes murder, robbery, and aggravated assault.

Social Controls

Formal or informal institutions that help to maintain law and order in a place.

Environmental Racism

Occurs when areas inhabited by low-income people of color are targeted for environmental contamination.

Environmental Justice

The movement to fix environmental discrimination.

Squatter Settlements

An area of degraded, seemingly temporary, inadequate, and often illegal housing.

Land Tenure

The right to own or hold property; it defines the ways in which rights to that property are managed.

Inclusionary Zoning (IZ)

Municipal and county planning ordinances that require a given share of new construction to be affordable for people with low to moderate incomes.

Exclusionary Zoning

Municipal and county planning ordinances that require a given share of new construction to be affordable for people with low to moderate incomes.

NIMBYs

Abbreviation for “not in my backyard”; term for a person who tries to prevent the construction of affordable housing and other types of development in their neighborhood.

Below Market Rate Housing

Housing that costs much less than the going (or market) rate.

Urban Renewal

Large-scale redevelopment of the built environment in downtown and older inner-city neighborhoods.

Fiscal Imbalance

Occurs when a government must spend more than it receives in taxes.

Fiscal Zoning

The practice of using local land-use regulation to preserve and possibly enhance the local property tax base.

Ecological Footprint

The total amount of natural resources used and their impact on the natural environment.

Urban Heat Island

A mass of warm air in cities, generated by urban building materials and human activities, that sits over a city.

Urban Footprint

The spatial extent of an urban area’s impacts on the natural environment.

Urban Risk Divide

The idea that disasters and disaster risk become urban phenomena as the world’s population becomes increasingly concentrated in large cities.

Brownfields

Properties whose use or development may be complicated by the potential presence of hazardous substances or pollutants.

Brownfield Remediation

The process of removing or sealing off contaminants so that a site may be used again without any health concerns.

Phytoremediation

The removal of contaminants with plant species that react with or degrade contaminants or draw up contaminants from the soil into shoots and leaves.

Farmland Protection Policy Act (FPPA)

U.S. law that grants municipalities oversight over federally funded development projects on farmland.

Scattered Developments

Subdivisions or developments that do not border on existing settlements and that remove agricultural land from production.