AP Human - Ch 15 Vocab

Ecumene

is a variety of community types with a range of

population densities

urban

areas (cities) with high concentrations of people

rural

areas (farms and villages) with low concentrations of people

suburb

that are primarily residential areas near cities

settlement

is a place with a permanent human population.

urbanization

The process of developing towns and cities is known as

Percent urban

an indicator of

the proportion of the population that lives in cities and towns as compared to

those that live in rural areas.

site

describes the characteristics at the immediate

location—for example, physical features, climate, labor force, and human

structures.

situation

refers to the location of a place relative to

its surroundings and its connectivity to other places. Examples would include

near a gold mine, on the coast, or by the railroad.

Market area

or zone that contains people who will purchase goods or

services, surrounds each central place.

city-state

consisted of an urban center (the city) and its

surrounding territory and agricultural villages.

Urban hearth

or area generally associated with defensible sites and river valleys in

which seasonal floods and fertile soils allowed for an agricultural surplus:

• the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (Mesopotamia) in modern Iraq

• the Nile River Valley and Nile Delta in modern Egypt

• the Indus River Valley in modern Pakistan

• the Huang-He floodplain in modern China

city

is a higher-density area with territory inside officially recognized political

boundaries.

Metropolitan area

(metro)

A collection of adjacent cities economically connected, across which population

density is high and continuous is a

Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)

s

another way to define a city. An ————— consists of a city of at least 50,000 people,

the county in which it is located, and adjacent counties that have a high degree of

social and economic integration, or connection, with the urban core

Micropolitan statistical area

are cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants (but

less than 50,000), the county in which they are located, and surrounding

counties with a high degree of integration.

Nodal region

or focal point in a matrix of

connections.

Social heterogeneity

meaning that the population of

cities, as compared to other areas, contains a greater variety of people.

Hexagonal hinterlands

Christaller chose to depict these

market areas as —————— because this shape was a compromise

between a square—in which people living in the corners would be farther from

6.4: The size and distribution of cities 385

the central place—and a circle—in which there would be overlapping areas

of service. Nesting hexagons allowed for central places of different sizes to

distribute themselves in a clean pattern across the region.

Time-space compression

is the shrinking “time-distance,” or relative

distance, between locations because of improved methods of transportation

and communication.

Borchert’s transportation model

to

describe urban growth based on transportation technology. Each new form of

technology produced a new system that changed how people moved themselves

and goods in and between urban areas. He divided urban history into four

periods, which he called epochs. Each epoch had profound effects on the local

scale related to a city’s form (shape), size, density, and spatial arrangement.

Additionally, transportation had profound impacts on the distribution and

connectivity of cities on a regional, national, and global scale.

Pedestrian cities

or cities shaped by the distances people could walk.

Streetcar suburbs

communities that grew up along rail lines, emerged, often

creating a pinwheel shaped city.

Suburbanization

involves the process of people moving, usually from cities, to residential areas

on the outskirts of cities.

Sprawl

is the rapid expansion of the spatial extent of a city and occurs for numerous

reasons:

• growth of suburbs

• lower land costs in suburbs compared to inner cities

• lower density single family housing

• weak planning laws

• the continuing growth of car culture

Leap-frog development

where developers purchase land and build communities beyond

the periphery of the city’s built area.

boomburbs

are rapidly growing communities (over

10 percent per 10 years), have a total population of over 100,000 people, and

are not the largest city in the metro area.

Edge cities

which are

nodes of economic activity that have developed in the periphery of large cities.

They usually have tall office buildings, a concentration of retail shops, relatively

few residences, and are located at the junction of major transportation routes.

threshold

he size of population necessary for any particular service to exist and

remain profitable is the

Counter-urbanization

While cities are the destination for many of the world’s migrants,

the counter-flow of urban residents leaving cities is known as

exurbs

the prosperous residential districts beyond the suburbs. Contributing

to exurbanism is the ability of people to work remotely via technology, which removes the need to commute

reurbanization

as some suburbanites return to live in

the city, in a process called

megacities

have a

population of more than 10 million people.

meta cities

sometimes called hypercities, are defined in two ways:

• continuous urban area with a population greater than 20 million people

• attributes of a network of urban areas that have grown together to form a

larger interconnected urban system

megalopolis

goes back to the early 1900s and describes a chain of

connected cities. It became more common after 1961, when French geographer

Jean Gottman used it to describe the continuously developed string of cities

from Boston—through New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore—to

Washington, DC. The “Bos-Wash Corridor” now includes nearly 50 million

residents.

Conurbation

an uninterrupted urban area made of towns, suburbs, and cities.

World cities (Global)

exert

influence far beyond their national boundaries. All are currently media hubs

and financial centers with influential stock exchanges, banks, and corporate

headquarters. Many are the headquarters of international organizations

Urban hierarchy

or

ranking, based on influence or population size.

range

The distance people will travel to obtain specific goods or services is

Nodal cities

are command centers on a regional and occassionally national

level.

Urban system

an interdependent set of cities that interact on the

regional, national, and global scale.

Rank-size rule

describes one way in which the sizes of cities within a region

may develop. It states that the nth largest city in any region will be 1/n the size of

the largest city. That is, that the rank of a city within an urban system will predict

the size of the city. For example, the third-largest city in a system that exhibits the

rank-size distribution would be approximately one-third the size of the largest city.

Higer-order services

are usually expensive,

need a large number of people to support, and are only occasionally utilized.

Examples include major sports teams, large malls, luxury car dealerships, and

large specialized research hospitals.

Lower-order services

are usually less

expensive than higher-order services, require a small population to support,

and are used on a daily or weekly basis. Examples include gas stations, local

grocery stores, or small restaurants.

Primate city

f the largest city in an urban system is more than twice as large as the next largest city,

the largest city is said to have primacy, or be a

Gravity model

states that larger and closer places will have more interactions

than places that are smaller and farther from each other. This model can be used

to predict the flow of workers, shoppers, vacationers, migrants, information, mail,

products, economic activity, and nearly any other flow between cities.

Central Place Theory

In 1933, Walter Christaller, a German geographer, proposed the ———————— to explain the distribution of cities of different sizes across a region. The

model used consumer behavior related to purchasing goods and services to explain

the distribution of settlements.

Central Place

a location

where people go to receive goods and services. It might be a tiny community,

such as a hamlet, with only lower-order services, such as a convenience store,

post office, and religious center. Or it might be a slightly larger village, town,

or small city with more stores and services.