Unit 9 APhug
● Annexation: Legally adding land area to a city in the United States.
● Census tract: An area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are
published; in urban areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.
● Central Business District (CBD): The area of a city where retail and office activities are
clustered.
● Central city: An urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an
independent, self-governing unit.
● Concentric Zone Model: A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups
are spatially arranged in a series of rings.
● Edge city: A node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area.
● Galactic (or Peripheral) Model: A model of North American urban areas consisting of an
inner city surrounded by large suburban residential and business areas tied together by a
beltway or ring road.
● Gentrification: A process of converting an urban neighborhood from a predominantly
low-income, renter-occupied area to a predominantly middle-class, owner-occupied
area.
● Megalopolis: A continuous urban complex in the northeastern United States.
● Multiple Nuclei Model: A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups
are arranged around a collection of nodes of activities.
● Public housing: Government-owned housing rented to low-income people.
● Sector model: A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are
arranged around a series of sectors, or wedges, radiating out from the central business
district (cbd).
● Sprawl: Development of new housing sites at relatively low density and at locations that
are not contiguous to the existing built-up area.
● Suburb: A residential or commercial area situated within an urban area but outside the
central city.
● Urban area: A dense core of census tracts, densely settled suburbs, and low-density land
that links the dense suburbs with the core.
● Urban cluster: In the United States, an urban area with between 2,500 and 50,000
inhabitants.
● Urbanized area: In the United States, an urban area with at least 50,000 inhabitants.