Terms & Definitions Flashcards
Differential Urbanisation
The theory that states that large, intermediate and small cities go through successive periods of fast and slow growth in a cycle of development.
Urbanisation Cycle
The primate city phase ➡️ the intermediate city phase ➡️ the small city phase.
Polarisation Reversal
Slowing growth in a primate city accompanied with a growth of intermediate sized centres near the primate city.
Urban Bias
The flow of public money being largely concentrated within towns and cities as government employees are predominantly urban dwellers.
Metacities
An urban agglomeration of over 20 million people.
Million Cities
Cities with 1million or more people residing there.
Megacities
A giant metropolis with a population of at least 7 million by the year 2000.
Hollowing out of the State
Globalisation has led to the supranational and local scales becoming more important loci of economic and political power than the nation-state.
Global Perspective
An acknowledgment of the importance of macro-scale structural forces in urban development, while recognising the reciprocal relationship between global and local forces.
Trigger Factors
Factors which contribute or initiate contemporary urban change.
E.g.
➡️ Demography; if a city is older or younger due to mortality or fertility rates.
➡️ Politics; a socialist city intended to bring national economic development etc…
➡️ Society; ideas towards birth control for instance can determine whether a city has a higher or lower rate of fertility.
➡️ Culture; if a culture is largely towards an idea of, for example materialism, then consumption plays a major role in lives of people.
➡️ The Environment; if there is more ocean pollution due to waste outputs, more coastal defences are put in place to reduce the damage to the other water ways causing the urban city to change.
Globalisation
A complex of relation economic, political, and cultural processes that have served to increase the interconnectedness of social life in the contemporary world.
Glocalisation
The process by which development in particular places are the outcome of both global and local forces.
Spatial Scale
The different levels at which global forces are operating at.
Demographic Transition
A general model describing the evolution of levels of fertility and mortality in a country over time.
Conventional Housing
Constructed through the medium of recognised formal institutions eg) banks and planning authorities, in accordance with legal practices and standards. Industrial production that uses wage labour, is capital intensive and uses sophisticated technologies.
Non-Conventional Housing
Does not comply with established procedures, is usually constructed outside of institutions and the formal banking industry, is in frequent contravention of existing legislation and is almost always unacceptable to prevailing middle class standards.
Squatter Settlements
The occupation of land without the permission of the owner or the erection/occupation of a building in contravention of existing legislation. Their status is strict legally which provides the government with justification if any action is required.
Possessor-occupier
The name given to households that live in shelters of which they are de facto not de jure owner occupiers. They could be illegally occupying the land on which they have built their house or through an illegal subdivision.
Slums
Legal permanent dwellings that have become substandard through age, neglect, subdivision. Develop due to inadequate maintenance from landlords, rental legislation or internal subdivision
Free-rent Tenants
Also known as sharers, they are permitted to occupy a dwelling with the owner or tenant. They are typically the children or employees of the owner. They are ‘disguised renters’ and make in-kind contributions through domestic work.
Security of Tenure
To develop into a recognised suburb there needs to be a high level of confidence that land will be retained and consolidate their dwelling. They are protected from involuntary removal.
Micro-finance
Often operate through NGOs this involves lending small amounts of capital that can be rotated once paid off.
Infiltration
Slower establishment of settlements by squatters that is not organised.
Pirate Subdivison
Where owners of peri-urban land illegally divide their land into buildings for buildings and sell them.
Slums of Hope
Future prospects are brighter than the present. Slum dwellers are optimistic for their future and this influences their current actions.
Slums of Despair
Slums are characterised as marginal and lock slum dwellers into a cycle of poverty where future prospects are bleak. Little actions is taken to change their existing circumstances.
Eviction
Forcible relocation of urban populations resulting in loss of main source of income and are faced with having to rebuild housing, community networks and livelihoods.
Land Invasion
Organised and planned operations by established migrant families with a reliable low income to occupy abandoned land and establish permanent settlements.
Land Sharing
Alternative to eviction where land is divided up and shared equally between owner and occupants. Formalises their land tenure.
Pavement Dwellers
Live in small shacks made of temporary materials on pavements and utilise the wall or fences that separate buildings from the pavement and street.
Incremental Development
Public infrastructure and service development occurs in stages and with sufficient settlers in the area.
Aided Self-help
Operates on the premise that residents will be able to improve their own housing if some public support is provided.
Site and Services Scheme
Provides security of tenure and the ability to develop housing at your own pace. Basic infrastructure s laid out and then lots of land is sold for development.
Modernisation Theory
A now discredited view of Developing World development as a convergent and evolutionary process in which diffusion of economic and cultural innovation from the West would move less developed societies towards the kind of advanced economic, social and political structures that prevailed in Western Europe and North America.
Dependency Theory
Relates the ‘backwardness’ of Developing World economies to the hegemony of Western nations over the world economic order and the consequent ability of these states and multinational corporations to exploit peripheral areas. Development and underdevelopment are viewed as different outcomes of the same process.
World-Systems Theory
Views the world as a single entity, the capitalist world economy, and considers that the study of social change cannot proceed country by country but must incorporate the whole world system.
Colonialism
The establishment and maintenance of rule, for an extended period of time, by a sovereign power over a subordinate and alien people that is separate from the ruling power.
Mercantile Colonialism
The establishment of commodity chains by private enterprises to European nations. These commodity chains were typically extensions of existing local trading, and there was little European influence or settlement.
Industrial Colonialism
The spread of (usually) European power into the periphery. The principal agent of organisation in this instance was the state. The objective of this extension of influence by European states was to acquire raw materials, food, and the acquisition of territory.
Independence
The population of a nation exercises self-governance over their territory. Commonly used after a nation has been governed by a foreign power.
Peripheral Urbanisation
A model which employs a political economy perspective to provide a generalised description of the impact of global capitalism on national urban systems in the Developing World. The expansion of capitalism into peripheral areas is seen to generate a strong process of urbanisation.
Exo-urbanisation
A pattern of foreign-investment-induced urbanisation in the Developing World characterised by labour-intensive and assembly-manufacturing types of export-oriented industrialisation based on low-cost input of large quantities of labour and land, which has in turn promoted rural-urban population migration.
Urban Primacy
Economic and political power concentrated on certain cities, at the expense of others.
Extended Metropolitan Region
The spatial outcome of a process of population deconcentration from the core area of a metropolitan area and higher growth rates in the outer areas.
Global Village
The world considered as a single community in which is linked to one another by telecommunications which is made possible through technology.
Theme Malls
Tourist Orientated and theme focused, occupying waterfront locations and promote a speciality theme or products.
Specialised Function Sites
Comprise retail and service functions that cluster due to mutual attraction or interdependence.
Commercial Blight
Constituted from economic, political. Functional and frictional blight and results in a commercial slum.
Regional Shopping Centres
Large shopping centres, moderate sales, relatively high area, at the intersection of express and major roads.
Retail Suburbanisation
The process in which the central market area lost the bulk of its external market and became increasingly dependant on the internal market.
Super-Regional Shopping Centres
Large shopping area, high sales, high market population, two or more department stores, at the intersection of major expressways, a 10mile + radius consumer market.
Retail Recentralisation
Development plan to promote urban regeneration of the town centres and mixed land use.
Spaces of Consumption
Retail consumption takes place in a variety of settings e.g. Home, informal markets, stores, streets, malls etc…
Town Centre Developments
Development of existing town centres and retail there
Ribbon Development
Unplanned retail units that evolve along highway corridors
Power Centres
A super community shopping centre that is found typically in California and Florida
E-Commerce
Alternative forms of shopping e.g. Through the Internet or television. Non-store shopping.
Shopertainment
An overlap of hybrid consumer activities that links shopping and entertainment experiences
.
Sector Model
Land use in the city characterised by sectors outwards
Out-of-town Centres
Retail decentralisation - large shopping centres outside of the city
Planned Shopping Areas
Common since the 1970’s - central city mall or an underground retail complex.
Retail Strip
Specialised retail functions on a corner, street or intersection
E.g. Kent Terrace and Cambridge Terrace = car dealers
Urban Morphogenesis
Analysis of the underlying changes in the pattern of urban land
Circulation of Capital
Infrastructures that facilitate the geographical transfer of profits in the search of optimum investment opportunities
Urban Ecology
Processes underlying the spatial configuration of the city were analogous to those found in nature - comparison, invasion, succession, dominant.
Nucleated Centres
Constitutes the main shopping areas in the city
E.g. Lambton Quay
Disadvantaged Consumers
Includes the poor, elderly, mobility-deprived of under-serviced inner-city areas and in peripheral areas.
Concentric Zone Model
Proposed as an ideal type of a city based on the study of one city at one point in time if radial expansion occurred
Unplanned Shopping Areas
Comprises the CBD, retail clusters at intersections etc.
