APHG Terms Review

Agricultural Density – The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture

Arithmetic Density – The total number of people divided by the total land area

Base Line – An east-west line designated under the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying and

numbering of townships in the United States

Cartography – The science of making maps

Concentration – The spread of something over a given area

Connections – Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space

Contagious Diffusion – The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population

Cultural Ecology – Geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships

Cultural Landscape – Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group

Culture – The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group of

people’s distinct tradition

Density – The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area

Diffusion – The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time

Distance Decay – The diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing

distance from its origin

Distribution – The arrangement of something across Earth’s surface

Environmental Determinism – A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography

that argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences.

Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Expansion Diffusion – The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a

snowballing process

Formal Region – (or uniform or homogeneous region) An area in which everyone shares in one or more

distinctive characteristics.

Functional Region – (or nodal region) An area organized around a node or focal point

Geographic Information System (GIS) – A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and display

geographic data

Global Positioning System (GPS) – A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth

through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.

36Globalization – Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide

in scope

Greenwich Mean Time – The time in that time zone encompassing the Prime Meridian, or 0 degrees longitude

Hearth – The region from which innovative ideas originate

Hierarchical Diffusion – The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to

other persons or places

International Date Line – An arc that for the most part follows 180° longitude, although it deviates in several

places to avoid dividing land areas. When you cross the International Date Line heading east (toward America),

the clock moves back 24 hours, or one entire day. When you go west (toward Asia), the calendar moves ahead

one day.

Land Ordinance of 1785 – A law that divided much of the United States into a system of townships to

facilitate the sale of land to settlers

Latitude – The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring

distance north and south of the equator

Location – The position of anything on Earth’s surface

Longitude – The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring

distance east and west of the prime meridian (0°).

Map – A two-dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth’s surface or a portion of it

Mental Map – An internal representation of a portion of Earth’s surface based on what an individual knows

about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located.

Meridian – An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles.

Parallel – A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians.

Pattern – The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a study area.

Physiological Density – The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land suitable for

agriculture

Place – A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular character.

Polder – Land created by the Dutch by draining water from an area.

Possibilism – The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the

ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives.

Prime Meridian – The meridian, designated at 0° longitude, which passes through the Royal Observatory at

Greenwich, England.

Principal Meridian – A north-south line designated in the Land Ordinance of 1785 to facilitate the surveying

and numbering of townships in the United States.

Projection – The system used to transfer locations from Earth’s surface to a flat map.

Region – An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features.

Regional Studies – An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical

phenomena in a particular area study (cultural landscape)

Relocation Diffusion – The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to

another.

Remote Sensing – The acquisition of data about Earth’s surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or other

long-distance methods.

Resource – A substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically

feasible to access, and is socially acceptable to use.

Scale – Generally, the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole, specifically

the relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth’s surface.

Section – A square normally 1 mile on a side. The Land Ordinance of 1785 divided townships in the United

States into 36 sections.

Site – The physical character of a place

Situation – The location of a place relative to other places.

Space – The physical gap or interval between two objects.

Space-Time Compression – The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place, as a

result of improved communications and transportation systems

Stimulus Diffusion – The spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected.

Toponym – The name given to a portion of Earth’s surface.

Township – A square normally 6 miles on a side. The Land Ordinance of 1785 divided much of the United

States into a series of townships.

Transnational Corporation – A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in

many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located.

Uneven Development – The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a

result of the globalization of the economy.

Vernacular Region – An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity (perceptual region)

Agricultural density - The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture.

Agricultural revolution - The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer

relied entirely on hunting and gathering.

Arithmetic density - The total number of people divided by the total land area.

Census - A complete enumeration of a population.

Crude birth rate (CBR) - The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Crude death rate (CDR) - The total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Demographic transition - The process of change in a society's population from a condition of high crude birth

and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of

natural increase, and a higher total population.

Demography - The scientific study of population characteristics.

Dependency ratio - The number of people under the age of 15 and over age 64, compared to the number of

people active in the labor force.

Doubling time - The number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural

increase.

Ecumene - The portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

Epidemiological transition - Distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition.

Epidemiology – Branch of medical science concerned with the incidence, distribution and control of diseases

that are prevalent among a population at a special time and are produced by some special causes not generally

present in the affected locality.

Industrial Revolution - A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of

manufacturing goods.

Infant mortality rate (IMR) - The total number of deaths in a year among infants under one year old for every

1,000 live births in a society.

Life expectancy - The average number of years an individual can be expected to live, given current social,

economic, and medical conditions. Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn infant can

expect to live.

Medical revolution - Medical technology invented in Europe and North America that is diffused to the poorer

countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Improved medical practices have eliminated many of the

traditional causes of death in poorer countries and enabled more people to live longer and healthier lives.

Natural increase rate (NIR) - The percentage growth of a population in a year, computed as the crude birth

rate minus the crude death rate.

Overpopulation - The number of people in an area exceeds the capacity of the environment to support life at a

decent standard of living.

Pandemic - Disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high proportion of the

population.

Physiological density - The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land suitable for

agriculture.

Population pyramid - A bar graph representing the distribution of population by age and sex.

Sex ratio - The number of males per 100 females in the population.

Total fertility rate (TFR) - The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing

years.

Zero population growth (ZPG) - A decline of the total fertility rate to the point where the natural increase rate

equals zero.

Brain drain - Large-scale emigration by talented people.

Branch - (of a religion) A large and fundamental division within a religion.

Chain migration - Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same

nationality previously migrated there.

Circulation - Short-term, repetitive, or cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis.

Counterurbanization - Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries.

Emigration - Migration from a location.

Floodplain - The area subject to flooding during a given number of years according to historical trends.

Forced migration - Permanent movement compelled usually by cultural factors.

Guest workers - Workers who migrate to the more developed countries of Northern and Western Europe,

usually from Southern and Eastern Europe or from North Africa, in search of higher-paying jobs.

Immigration - Migration to a new location.

Internal migration - Permanent movement within a particular country.

International migration - Permanent movement from one country to another.

Interregional migration - Permanent movement from one region of a country to another.

Intervening obstacle - An environmental or cultural feature of the landscape that hinders migration.

Intraregional migration - Permanent movement within one region of a country.

Migration - Form of relocation diffusion involving permanent move to a new location.

Migration transition - Change in the migration pattern in a society that results from industrialization,

population growth, and other social and economic changes that also produce the demographic transition.

Mobility - All types of movement from one location to another.

Net migration - The difference between the level of immigration and the level of emigration.

Pull factors - Factors that induce people to move to a new location.

Push factors - Factors that induce people to leave old residences.

Quota - In reference to migration, a law that places maximum limits on the number of people who can

immigrate to a country each year

Refugees - People who are forced to migrate from their home country and cannot return for fear of persecution

because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion.

Undocumented immigrants - People who enter a country without proper documents.

Voluntary migration - Permanent movement undertaken by choice.

British Received Pronunciation (BRP) - The dialect of English associated With upper-class Britons living in

the London area and now considered standard in the United Kingdom.

Creole or creolized language - A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the

indigenous language of the people being dominated.

Custom - The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people

performing the act.

Denglish – Combination of German and English

Dialect - A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

Ebonics - Dialect spoken by some African-Americans.

Extinct language - A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.

Folk culture - Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation

from other groups.

Franglais - A term used by the French for English words that have entered the French language, a combination

of franfais and anglai." the French words for "French" and "English," respectively.

Habit - A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.

Ideograms – The systems of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol

represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound as is the case with letters in English.

Isogloss - A boundary that separates regions in which different languages usages predominate.

Isolated language - A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any

language family.

Language - A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a

group of people to have the same meaning.

Language branch - A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand

years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can

confirm that the branches derived from the same family.

Language family - A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before

recorded history.

Language group - A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent

past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary.

Lingua franca - A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different

native languages.

Literary tradition - A language that is written as well as spoken.

Official language - The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and

publication of documents.

Pidgin language - A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua

franca, used for communications among speakers of two different languages.

Popular culture - Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences

in other personal characteristics.

Spanglish - Combination of Spanish and English, spoken by Hispanic-Americans.

Standard language - The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass

communications.

Taboo - A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Terroir – The contribution of a location’s distinctive physical features to the way food tastes.

Vulgar Latin - A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard

dialect, which was used for official documents.

Animism - Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes,

have a discrete spirit and conscious life.

Autonomous religion - A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates

informally.

Branch – A large and fundamental division within a religion.

Caste - The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned according to religious law.

Cosmogony - A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe.

Denomination - A division of a branch that unites a number of local religious congregations in a single legal

and administrative body.

Diocese – The basic unit of geographic organization in the Roman Catholic Church.

Ethnic religion - A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be

based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

Fundamentalism - Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious

branch, denomination, or sect).

Ghetto - During the middle Ages, a neighborhood in a city set up by law to be inhabited only by Jews;

now used to denote a section of a city in which members of any minority group live because of social,

legal, or economic pressure.

Hierarchical religion - A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control.

Missionary - An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion.

Monotheism – The doctrine or belief of the existence of only one god.

Pagan - Follower of a polytheistic religion in ancient times.

Pilgrimage - A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes.

Polytheism - Belief in or worship of more than one god.

Sect - A relatively small group that has broken away from an established denomination.

Solstice - Time when the Sun is farthest from the equator.

Universalizing religion - A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular

location.

Apartheid - Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different

geographic areas.

Balkanization - Process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.

59Balkanized - A small geographic area that could not successfully be organized into one or more stable states

because it was inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other.

Blockbusting - A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low

prices because of fear that black families will soon move into the neighborhood.

Centripetal force - An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.

Ethnic cleansing - Process in which more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order

to create an ethnically homogeneous region.

Ethnicity - Identity with a group of people that share distinct physical and mental traits as a product of common

heredity and cultural traditions.

Multi-ethnic state - State that contains more than one ethnicity.

Multinational state - State that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination that

agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities.

Nationalism - Loyalty and devotion to a particular nationality.

Nationality – Identity with a group of people that show legal attachment and personal allegiance to a particular

place as a result of being born there.

Nation-state - A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been

transformed into a nationality.

Race - Identity with a group of people descended from a common ancestor.

Racism - Belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences

produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Racist - A person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism.

Self-determination - Concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves.

Sharecropper - A person who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent and repays loans by

turning over to the landowner a share of the crops.

Triangular slave trade - A practice, primarily during the eighteenth century, in which European ships

transported slaves from Africa to Caribbean islands, molasses from the Caribbean to Europe, and trade goods

from Europe to Africa.

Balance of Power – Condition of roughly equal strength between opposing countries or alliances of countries.

Boundary – Invisible line that marks the extent of a state’s territory.

City-state – A sovereign state compromising a city and its immediate hinterland.

Colonialism – Attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic and

cultural principles in another territory.

Colony – A territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than completely independent.

Compact state – A state in which the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly.

Elongated state – A state with a long, narrow shape.

Federal state – An internal organization of a state that allocates most powers to units of local governments.

Frontier – A zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control.

Gerrymandering – Process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in

power.

Imperialism – Control of territory already occupied and organized by an indigenous group.

Landlocked state – A state that does not have a direct outlet to the sea.

Microstate – A state that encompasses a very small land area.

Perforated state – A state that completely surrounds another one.

Prorupted state – An otherwise compact state with a large projecting extension.

Sovereignty – Ability of a state to govern its territory free from control of its internal affairs by other states.

State – An area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government with control over its

internal and foreign affairs.

Unitary state – An internal organization of a state that places most power in the hands of central government

officials.

Development – A process of improvement in the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge

and technology.

Fair trade – Alternative to international trade that emphasizes small businesses and worker-owned and

democratically run cooperatives and requires employers to pay workers fair wages, permit union organizing and

comply with minimum environmental and safety standards.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) – Investment made by a foreign company in the economy of another country.

Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) – Compares the ability of women and men to participate in

economic and political decision making.

Gender-Related Development Index (GDI) – Compares the level of development of women with that of both

sexes.

Gross domestic product (GDP) - The value of the total output of goods and services produced in a country in a

given time period (normally 1 year).

Human Development Index (HDI) – Indicator of level of development for each country, constructed by the

United Nations, combining income, literacy, education and life expectancy.

Less developed country (LCD) – A country that is at a relatively early stage in the process of economic

development.

Literacy rate – The percentage of a county’s people who can read and write.

Millennium Development Goals – Eight international development goals that all members of the United

Nations have agreed to achieve by 2015.

More developed country (MDC) – A country that has progressed relatively far along a continuum of

development.

Primary sector – The portion of the economy concerned with the direct extraction of materials from Earth’s

surface, generally through agriculture, although sometimes by mining, fishing and forestry.

Productivity – The value of a particular product compared to the amount of labor needed to make it.

Secondary sector – The portion of the economy concerned with manufacturing useful products through

processing, transforming and assembling raw materials.

Structural adjustment program – Economic policies imposed on less developed countries by international

agencies to create conditions encouraging international trade, such as raising taxes, reducing government

spending, controlling inflation, selling publicly owned utilities to private corporations and charging citizens

more for services.

Tertiary sector – The portion of the economy concerned with transportation, communications and utilities,

sometimes extended to the provision of all goods and services to people, in exchange for payment.

Transnational corporation – A company that conducts research, operates factories and sells products in many

countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located.

Value added – The gross value of the product minus the costs of raw materials and energy.

Agribusiness - Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food processing

industry usually through ownership by large corporations

Agriculture - The deliberate effort to modify a portion of earth's surface through cultivation of crops and the

raising of livestock to sustenance or economic gain.

Cereal grain - A grass yielding grain for food

Chaff – Husks of grain separated from the seed by threshing.

Combine - A machine that reaps threshes and cleans grain while moving over a field

Commercial agriculture - Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale of the farm.

Crop - A grain of fruit gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season

74Crop rotation - The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting

the soil.

Desertification - Degradation of land especially in semi arid areas primarily because of human actions such as

excessive crop planting animal grazing and tree cutting.

Double cropping - Harvesting twice a year from the same field

Grain - Seed of a cereal grass

Green revolution - Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology especially new high yield seeds and

fertilizers

Horticulture - The growing of fruits, vegetables and flowers.

Hull – The outer covering of a seed.

Intensive subsistence agriculture - A form of subsistence agriculture from which farmers must expend a

relatively large amount of effort to produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel of land

Milkshed - The area surrounding a city from which milk is supplied

Paddy - Malay word for wet rice, commonly but incorrectly used to describes a sawah

Pastoral nomadism - A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding animals.

Pasture - Grass or other plants grown for feeding grazing animals as well as land used for grazing

Plantation – A large farm in tropical and subtropical climates that specializes in the production of one or two

crops for sale, usually to a more developed country.

Prime agricultural farmland - The most productive farmland

Ranching - A form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area

Reaper - A machine that cuts grain standing in a field

Ridge tillage - System of planting crops on ridge tops to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil

conversation.

Sawah – A flooded field for growing rice.

Seed Agriculture – Reproduction of plants through annual introduction of seeds, which result from sexual

fertilization.

Shifting cultivation - A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another,

each field is used for crops for a few years, then left fallow for a relatively long period.

75Slash and burn agriculture - Another name for shifting cultivation, so named because fields are cleared by

slashing the vegetation and burning the debris.

Spring wheat - Wheat planted in the spring and harvested in the late summer.

Subsistence agriculture - Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer

and the farmer’s family.

Sustainable agriculture - Farming methods that preserve long term productivity of land and minimize

pollution typically by rotating soil restoring crops with cash crops and reducing inputs of fertilizers and

pesticides.

Swidden - A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.

Thresh – To beat out grain from stalks by trampling it.

Transhumance – The seasonal migration of livestock between mountainous and lowland pastures.

Truck farming - Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word

meaning bartering or the exchange of commodities.

Wet rice - Rice planted on a dry land in a nursery and then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote

growth.

Winnow – To remove chaff by allowing it to be blown away by the wind.

Winter wheat - Wheat planted in the fall and harvested in the early summer.

Break-of-bulk point - A location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation to another.

Bulk-gaining industry - An industry in which the final product weighs more or compromises a greater volume

than the inputs.

Bulk-reducing industry - An industry in which the final product weighs less or comprises a lower volume than

the inputs.

Cottage industry - Manufacturing based in homes rather than in a factory, commonly found before the

Industrial revolution.

Fordist production - Form of mass production in which each worker is assigned one specific task to perform

repeatedly.

Industrial Revolution - A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of

manufacturing goods

Labor-intensive industry - An industry for which labor costs comprise a high percentage of total expenses.

Maquiladora - Factories built by U.S. companies in Mexico near the U.S. border, to take advantage of much

cheaper labor costs in Mexico.

New international division of labor - Transfer of some types of jobs, especially those requiring low-paid less

skilled workers, from more developed to less developed countries.

Post-Fordist production - Adoption by companies of flexible work rules, such as the allocation of workers to

teams that perform a variety of tasks.

Rank-size rule - A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population

of the largest settlement.

Right-to-work state - A U.S. state that has passed a law preventing a union and company from negotiating a

contract that requires workers to join a union as a condition of employment.

Site factors - Location factors related to the costs of factors of production inside the plant, such as land, labor,

and capital.

Situation factors - Location factors related to the transportation of materials into and from a factory.

Textile - A fabric made by weaving, used in making clothing

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

Business services - Services that primarily meet the needs of other businesses.

Central Place - A market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the surrounding area.

Central Place theory - A theory that explains the distribution of services, based on the fact that settlements

serve as centers of market areas for services; larger settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller

settlements and provide services for a larger number of people who are willing to travel farther.

City-State - A sovereign state comprising a city and its immediate hinterland..

Clustered rural settlement - A rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are

situated close to each other and fields surround the settlement.

Consumer Services - Businesses that provide services primarily to individual consumers, including retail

services and personal services.

Dispersed rural settlement - A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered

villages.

Economic base - A community's collection of basic industries.

Enclosure movement - The process of consolidating small landholdings into a smaller number of larger farms

in England during the eighteenth century.

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.

Market area (or hinterland) - The area surrounding a central place, from which people are attracted to use the

place's goods and services.

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

Personal Services - Services that provide for the well-being and personal improvement of individual consumers

Primate city rule - A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the largest settlement has more than twice as

many people as the second-ranking settlement.

Primate City -The largest settlement in a country, if it has more than twice as many people as the second-

ranking settlement.

Public Services - Services offered by the government to provide security and protection for citizens and

businesses

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

Rank-size rule - A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population

of the largest settlement.

Service - An activity that fulfills a human want or need and returns money to those who provide it.

Settlement - A permanent collection of buildings and inhabitants.

Threshold - The minimum number of people needed to support the service

Urbanization - An increase in the percentage of the number of people living in urban settlements.

Annexation - Legally adding land area to a city in the US.

Census tract - An area delineated by the US Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published; in

urbanized areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.

Central business district (CBD) - The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.

City - An urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an independent, self-governing unit.

Combined statistical area (CSA) - In the United States, two or more contiguous core based statistical areas

tied together by commuting patterns.

Concentric zone model - A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially

arranged in a series of rings.

Core based statistical area (CBSA) - In the United States, the combination of all metropolitan statistical areas

and micropolitan statistical areas.

Council of government - A cooperative agency consisting of representatives of local governments in a

metropolitan area in the US

Density gradient - The change in density in an urban area from the center to the periphery.

Edge city - A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area.

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

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.

88Metropolitan statistical area (MSA) - In the US, a central city of at least 50,000 population, the county within

which the city is located, and adjacent counties meeting one of several tests indicating a functional connection

to the central city.

Micropolitan statistical area - An urbanized area of between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, the county in

which it is found, and adjacent counties tied to the city.

Multiple nuclei model - A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a

collection of nodes of activities.

Peripheral model - A model of North American urban areas consisting of an inner city surrounded by large

suburban residential business areas tied together by a beltway or ring road.

Primary census statistical area (PCSA) - In the United States, all of the combined statistical areas plus all of

the remaining metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas.

Public housing - Housing owned by the government; in the US, it is rented to low-income residents, and the

rents are set at 30 percent of the families incomes.

Redlining - A process by which banks draw lines on a map and refuse to lend money to purchase or improve

property within the boundaries.

Rush (or peak) hour - The four consecutive 15-minute periods in the morning and evening with the heaviest

volumes of traffic.

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)

Smart growth - Legislation and regulations to limit suburban sprawl and preserve farmland

Social area analysis - Statistical analysis used to identify where people of similar living standards, ethnic

background and life style live within an urban area.

Sprawl - Development of new housing sites at relatively low density and at locations that are not contiguous to

the existing built-up area.

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.

Underclass - A group in society prevented from participating in material benefits of a more developed society

because of a variety of social and economic characteristics.

Urban renewal - Program in which cities identify blighted inner-city neighborhoods, acquire the properties

from the private owners, relocate the residents and businesses, clear the site, build new roads and utilities and

turn the land over to private developers.

Urbanized area - In the US, a central city plus its contiguous built-up suburbs.

Zoning ordinance - A law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development in a

community.