#6 Urban Vocabulary Flashcards
Megacities
Cities, mostly characteristic of the developing world, where high population growth and migration have caused them to explode in population since World War II. Cities with more than 10 million people.
metacities
Agglomerations of several cities, towns, and suburbs that have expanded so that they coalesce into a single, sprawling urban mass of more than 20 million people.
Urbanization
An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.
urban sprawl
The process of urban areas expanding outwards, usually in the form of suburbs, and developing over fertile agricultural land.
edge cities
A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area.
Boomburbs
rapidly growing city that remains essentially suburban in character even as it reaches populations more typical of a large city
World Cities
A group of cities that form an interconnected, internationally dominant system of global control of finance and commerce
Globalization
Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.
rank-size rule
the country’s nth-largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement
primate city
The largest settlement in a country, if it has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement.
Hoyt Sector Model
Focuses on residential patterns explaining where the wealthy in a city choose to live. He argued that the city grows outward from the center, so a low-rent area could extend all the way from the CBD to the city’s outer edge, creating zones which are shaped like pieces of a pie.
Harris-Ullman Multiple Nuclei Model
Developed in the 1950s by Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman, this model explains the changing growth pattern of urban spaces based on the assumption that growth occurred independently around several major foci (or focal nodes), many of which are far away from the central business district and only marginally connected to it.
Galactic City Model (Peripheral Model)
represents the post-industrial city with its several, dispersed business districts. This model represents a distinct decentralization of the commercial urban landscape as the economy has transitioned to services as the leading form of production. Manufacturing has declined significantly and become specialized.
Latin American City Model
Combines elements of Latin American Culture and globalization by combining radial sectors and concentric zones. Includes a thriving CBD with a commercial spine. The quality of houses decreases as one moves outward away from the CBD, and the areas of worse housing occurs in the Disamenity sectors.
Southeast Asian City Model
McGee model. Developed by T.G McGee. The focal point of the city is the colonial port zone combined with the large commercial district that surrounds it. McGee found no formal CBD but found seperate clusters of elements of the CBD surrounding the port zone: the government zone, the Western commercial zone, the alien commercial zone, and the mixed land-use zone with misc. economic activities.
African City Model
model that suggests that African cities have more than one CBD, which is a remanence of colonialism
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.
Infilling
The process by which population density in an urban centre is increased by building on waste land or underused land.
mixed-use development
An approach to urban design that combines different types of land use within a particular neighborhood or district
New Urbanism
development, urban revitalization, and suburban reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of housing and jobs
greenbelts
rings of open space. New housing is built in the older suburbs within the rings and planned extensions, small towns, and new towns are built beyond the rings
Slow-growth cities
urban communities where the planners have put into place smart growth initiatives to decrease the rate at which the city grows horizontally to avoid the adverse affects of sprawl
Redlining
A process by which banks draw lines on a map and refuse to lend money to purchase or improve property within the boundaries.
Blockbusting
A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood
food desert
An area in a developed country where healthy food is difficult to obtain
zones of disamenity
squatter communities closer to the center of the city, built on land that is deemed unsuitable for standard homes and businesses, favelas in Rio de Janiero, often unstable land
Central Business District (CBD)
The downtown or nucleus of a city where retail stores, offices, and cultural activities are concentrated; building densities are usually quite high; and transportation systems converge.
Suburbanization
The process of population movement from within towns and cities to the rural-urban fringe.
Urbanization
An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements.
Borchert’s model
American cities have undergone five major epochs, or periods, of development shaped by the dominant forms of transportation and communication at the time. These include sail-wagon epoch (1790-1830), iron horse epoch (1830-1870), steel rail epoch (1870-1920), auto-air-amenity epoch (1920-1970), and satellite-electronic-jet propulsion and high-technology epoch (1970-present).
site
The physical character of a place
situation
the location of a place relative to other places
Ecumene
The portion of Earth’s surface occupied by permanent human settlement.
Reurbanization
growth of population in metropolitan central cores, following a period of absolute or relative decline in population
metropolitan area (metro area)
a major population center made up of a large city and the smaller suburbs and towns that surround it
exurbinization
move farther out into rural areas and work remotely
threshold
The minimum number of people needed to support the service
range
The maximum distance people are willing to travel to use a service.
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.
global cities
a term for megacities that emphasizes their global impact as centers of economic, political, and social power
Urban Hearths
- The original ancient centers of civilization
- Where large cities first existed
- Example: Mesopotamia
time-space compression
the rapid innovation of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization that transforms the way people think about space and time
city
An urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an independent, self-governing unit.
city-state
a city that with its surrounding territory forms an independent state.
