Chapter 9 Definitions

Question 1

The fortified religious centre of cities in ancient Greece; the literal translation is “highest point in the city.”

Answer 1

Acropolis

Question 2

The centre of ancient Greek civic life; the area where public meetings, trials of justice, social interaction, and commercial exchange took place.

Answer 2

Agora

Question 3

Agricultural production that exceeds the sustenance needs of the producer and is sold to or exchanged with others

Answer 3

Agricultural surplus

Question 4

Services provided primarily for other businesses, including financial, administrative, and professional activities such as accounting, advertising, banking, consulting, insurance, law, and marketing.

Answer 4

Business services

Question 5

A theory to explain the spatial distribution of urban centres with respect to their size and function.

Answer 5

Central Place Theory

Question 6

an urban centre that provides good and services for the surrounding population; may take the form of a hamlet, village, town, city or megacity

Answer 6

Central places

Question 7

a legally incorporated self-governing unit; an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village

Answer 7

City

Question 8

Services provided primarily for individual consumers, such as retail, hospitality, food, leisure, health care, education, and social welfare; represent approximately 50 per cent of employment in most countries of the more developed world.

Answer 8

Consumer services

Question 9

A popular but colloquial term that refers to a pronounced difference in the growth rates between a core city (slow growth or no growth) and its surrounding areas (faster growth), in a pattern that resembles the North American deep-fried confection; usually characterized by people moving out of the core or inner suburbs of a city and moving into newer peripheral suburbs.

Answer 9

Donut effect

Question 10

A city, usually a port, that functions as an intermediary for trade and transshipment and that exports both raw materials and manufactured goods.

Answer 10

Entrepots

Question 11

The centre of Roman civic, commercial, administrative, and ceremonial life; combined the functions of the ancient Greek acropolis and agora

Answer 11

Forum

Question 12

A city that is a key point of entry to a major geographic region or country for goods or people, often via an international airport, container shipping port, or major rail centre; a city in which several different cultural traditions are absorbed and assimilated

Answer 12

Gateway cities

Question 13

A city that is an important node in the global economy; a dominant city in the global urban hierarchy; sometimes referred to as a world city

Answer 13

Global cities

Question 14

The market area surrounding a central place; the spatial area from which the providers of goods and services in a central place draw their customers

Answer 14

hinterland

Question 15

a metropolitan area with a population more than 10 million

Answer 15

megacities

Question 16

A school of economic thought dominant in Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that argued for the involvement of the state in economic life so as to increase national wealth and power

Answer 16

mercantilism

Question 17

A region comprising two or more functionally connected urban areas and the less densely populated (or built-up) areas between them; examples include metropolitan New York and the Greater Toronto Area

Answer 17

Metropolitan area

Question 18

The largest city in an urban system, usually the capital, which dominates its political, economic, and social life; a city that is more than twice the size of the next-largest city in the system.

Answer 18

Primate City

Question 19

the maximum distance that people are prepared to travel to obtain a particular good or service

Answer 19

Range

Question 20

A descriptive regularity among cities in an urban system; the numerical relationship between city size and rank in an urban system; sometimes referred to as the rank-size rule

Answer 20

The Rank-Size Distribution

Question 21

a residential or mixed-use (residential and employment) area on the periphery of the city, typically displaying some degree of homogeneity in terms of economic status, socio-cultural characteristics, or build form

Answer 21

Suburbs

Question 22

A multinational grouping of independent states, where power is delegated to an authority by member governments.

Answer 22

Supranational organizations

Question 23

the minimum number of people (market size) required to support the existence of a particular economic function

Answer 23

threshold

Question 24

spatial extent of the built-up area surrounding and including an incorporated municipality, such as a city; typically assessed by some combination of population size, population density, and the nature of residents’ employment

Answer 24

urban areas

Question 25

An area where urban living originated; examples include Mesopotamia, Indus Valley (Pakistan and India), Huang Valley (China), and Nile Valley (Egypt)

Answer 25

Urban hearth

Question 26

the spread and growth of cities; an increasing proportion of a population living in urban areas (cities and towns)

Answer 26

urbanization

Question 27

The urban way of life; associated with a declining sense of community and increasingly complex social and economic organization as a result of increasing size, density, and heterogeneity.

Answer 27

Urbanism