Exam Terms

Question 1

Filtering

Answer 1

D: A process whereby housing value declines over time due to aging while households move up the economic ladder and move into higher cost dwellings. The lower cost housing is “filtered down” to lower income groups.
S: Used to explain changes in housing occupancy over time. The process helps understand how neighbourhood characteristics (e.g. demographics) change over time as different groups move in and out of the area.

Question 2

Index of Dissimilarity

Answer 2

D: Compares the spatial distribution of two groups in an urban area
ranges from 0 to 100 (non segregation to complete segregation)
Toronto have some of the highest indices of dissimilarity of Canadian Cities due to the presence of ethnoburbs and their large minority population

S: Shows the demographics of the city, how it is segregated from Internal (Culture retention) and external (Discriminatory practices) factors
explains the formation of different neighbourhood
helps with social area analysis

Question 3

Broadacre City

Answer 3

D: City with large, privately owned lots that are widely spread out. These lots are linked by spacious and well landscaped highways. Also had large lots where people would grow food and recreate.
S: This was a utopican vision of a city, but it is closer to the modern suburbanized city. Toronto suburbs are modelled after this, note the connectivity to highways.

Question 4

Le Corbusier’s City of Towers

Answer 4

D: Extreme density with spaciousness
HIgh rise buildings with lots of greenbuilt space
two models: Contemporary City, Radiant City
Land held in common
Extreme functional separation - greenspace
Idea city has pop of 3M
Clusters of buildings linked by road or rail

S: New Urbanism criticize it for its lack of human scale and connection to its surroundings
Very common in Public Housing projects e.g. St.James Town

Question 5

Broadacre City

Answer 5

D: City with large, privately owned lots that are widely spread out. These lots are linked by spacious and well landscaped highways. Also had large lots where people would grow food and recreate.
S: This was a utopican vision of a city, but it is closer to the modern suburbanized city

Question 6

New Urbanism

Answer 6

D: New Urbanism or Neo Traditionalism
Argues that it is realling dealing with the “loss of sense of space”
summed up as seeking a return to ‘traditional’ forms of urban design
Characteristics: Sense of place of individual neighbourhoods
Emphasis on public spaces
Re-integration of uses, land and social
the idea looks good on paper but often is not fully executed or executed in a bad way (Dundas Square)

criticisms: Disconnection between theory and execution
faking a previous era, creating the false history
Regulatory requirements can turn the view and limit its full function

S:
This is the new city form that current planners used to address many planning issues

Creating a notion of what an actual english village should look like
Going to vegas and pretend you are in paris

Still doesnt not mitigate or solve the issue with urban sprawl

E.g. Regent Park Plan
-Creation of mixed income mixed use neighbourhood, shops, community services and economic development

Question 7

Megalopolis

Answer 7

D: A merging of big and adjacent cities mostly in North America through suburbanization and agglomeration, forming one urban area.

Example: San San,

S: The emergence of megalopolis was a key factor of the last stage (IV) of North American urbanization (Mature Industrial Capitalism)

Question 8

Colonies, Enclaves, Ghettoes

Answer 8

D: These terms are examples for locational expression of segregation. Colonies are formed as a ‘port-of-entry and are temporary. Enclaves form for functional reasons (i.e. immigrants wanting to live with similarly cultured people) and exist over several generations. Ghettoes form due to discrimination.
S: Defines the different types of segregated neighbourhoods. Belfast is an example, of an enclave and Apartheid is an example of a ghetto

Question 9

‘Classic’ Urban System

Answer 9

D: Describes the formation of classical cities. Having a social surplus and agglomeration forms a city.
S: Describes how early cities were formed (i.e. European cities)

Question 10

Fordism

Answer 10

D: Describes the economic system from the 1940s to 1970s, attributed to Henry Ford. Consisted of Vertical Integration, mostly manufacturing jobs that were unstable, economies of scale, skill demarcation, unionization and spatial division of labour.
S: Fordism led to the creation of many cities in the rust belt. i.e. Pittsburg and the Chicago.

Question 11

Gentrification

Answer 11

D: As the urban core becomes more desirable, higher income groups buy significantly lower income homes and renovate. Happens as long as there is a rent gap Also known as ‘Reverse Filtering’
S: Often shifts a neighbourhood’s ethnic composition and average income, something urban planners must consider.

Question 12

Housing Submarkets

Answer 12

D: Urban housing market is not uniform and depends on these factors: Supply Restrictions, Accessibility Restrictions, Neighborhood restrictions, Institutional Restrictions, Racial restrictions,
S: Affects social diversity of neighborhoods. Also important for urban planners to consider the submarket when developing.

Question 13

Global City

Answer 13

D: A city with strong linkages with the rest of the world. Usually economic linkages. A city affected by decisions made by other cities.
S: Describes growth and development of cities around the world. i.e. Shenzheng as the manufacturing for Apple in Cupertino.

Question 14

Primate City

Answer 14

D: When the urban system is dominated by one huge city, and doesn’t follow Zipf Rule
S: Describes the urban system of developing countries. i.e. Russia,

Question 15

Transportation Activity System

Answer 15

D:The idea that the linkage must recognize the two points it’s connecting, the surrounding activities, and the people it’s serving (e.g. why would people use the linkage?)

S: The concept is important for transportation and urban planner on where to locate certain facilities and what kind of public transit are needed to most efficiently match the needs of most people
When travel rather than focusing on the distance between two points, it is the ease of travel that we cared about the most.

Question 16

Localization Economies

Answer 16

D: External economies of scale or agglomeration economies
occurs when an increase in the size of an industry in a city leads to an increase in productivity of a particular activity
e.g. HIghly concentraded high tech industry in Silicon Valleys exemplifies industrial localization. Benefit from proximity of high skilled labour pool, increases face to face interactions allows exchange of ideas.

S: shows how economy benefits accuring to concentration of activities in space, shared resources and economic of scale
shows how agglomeration brings economic benefits and city’s growth as economic centers

Question 17

Bastides

Answer 17

D: Examples of small walled cities focused on local defense unlike ancient cities that were centers of trade. slow growth of European cities between 5th -17th centuries after the fall of Roman Empire

S: Emphasized the importance of how trading linkages and migration between places accelerates city growth. When the trading linkages breaks and people are more defensive to outside populations, city growth stagnates

Question 18

Garden Cities

Answer 18

D: Each Garden City would have pop of 32000
City would be self supporting
Diversity of activity
Spacious layout
Greenbelt
Public Ownership of land
Central district and distributed residential and manufacturing space lots of greenspace
S: New suburbs developed e.g. Don Mills drew on the Garden Cities concept

Question 19

Hoyt’s Sector Model

Answer 19

D:Bunch of districts, that are either in rings or wedges with the CBD in the model
S: helps understanding with the internal structure of the city
a modification of the burgess’s ring model, closer to modern day distribution of the districts

Question 20

City Beautiful Movement

Answer 20

D: Advocated the city as a work of art - ‘cities as gardens’
e.g. Central Parks
Chicago exposition where prototype city built
Daniell Burnham - 1905 Chicago Plan
DC Mc Millian Plan for US Capital buildings and monuments
S: Significant in North American Urban Planning

Question 21

Social Area Analysis

Answer 21

D:City reflects complexity of modern society 
influenced by 3 factors:
- social rank or economic status
-urbanization or family status
-segregation or ethnic status

Urban Mosaic :

• mapped social area analysis on to physical spaces within the city
• overlaying patterns created a mosaic

S: map out neighbours with high priority where you need investments and funding
Modelling the city as a social space

Question 22

Positivism

Answer 22

D:General paradigm shift in the 1950s
Human behaviour is determined or influenced by scientific and universal laws
How scientific laws produced observed patterns of urban activity or from ‘on the ground’
two broad approaches - ecological, and neo-classical
Ecological: Most powerful groups obtain the most advantageous place in a given space
Neo-Classical: Driving force was rationality, cost minimization or benefit maximization
S: Approaches to Urban Geography and Urban Morphology

Question 23

Zipf Rule

Answer 23

D: City size and rank are directly linked - Ranked size Rule
Population of city A is directly proportional to the population of the city ranked #1 divided by the rank of city A
-Perfect Rank Relation: high level of economic development under capitalism
-Primate City distribution: Dominated by one huge city, developing nations/colonial economics, Russia
Intermediate city dominant distribution: Transitional phase of urban development, commonly in large and highly fragmented nations: china, india
S:Analysis of temporal shifts in the urbanization process
allows comparisons of different urban systems in terms of : dominance of one city in the urban system
metropolitan growth or decline
density of economic linkages
and useful for planning