Urban Vocabulary - Unit 3

Question 1

Bid-Rent theory

Answer 1

a geographical economic theory that refers to how the price and demand for real estate changes as the distance from the Central Business District (CBD) decreases

Question 2

Blockbusting

Answer 2

a process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices out of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood

Question 3

Census tract

Answer 3

An area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published in urbanized areas census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods

Question 4

Central Business District

Answer 4

the area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.

Question 5

Central Place Theory

Answer 5

theory proposed by Christaller that explains how and where central places in the urban hierarchy should be functionally and spatially distributed with respects to one another

Question 6

Centralization

Answer 6

is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning decision-making, become concentrated within a particular location and/or group

Question 7

Cityscapes

Answer 7

is the urban equivalent of a landscape

Question 8

Counterurbanization

Answer 8

net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries

Question 9

Decentralization

Answer 9

the social process in which population and industry moves from urban centers to outlying districts

Question 10

Deindustrialization

Answer 10

is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial

Question 11

Edge Cities

Answer 11

a large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area

Question 12

Emerging cities

Answer 12

city currently without much population but increasing in size at a fast rate.

Question 13

Ethnic neighborhood

Answer 13

typically situated in a larger metropolitan city and constructed by or composed of a local culture, in which a local culture can practice its customs.

Question 14

Gateway Cities

Answer 14

a settlement which acts as a link between two areas

Question 15

Ghetto

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

Globalization

Answer 16

The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they become global in scale and impact. The processes of globalization transcend state boundaries and have outcomes that vary across places and scales.

Question 17

High-tech corridors

Answer 17

areas along or near major transportation arteries that are devoted to the research, development and sale of high technology products. These areas develop because of the networking and synergistic advantages of concentrating high-technology enterprises

Question 18

Hinterland

Answer 18

literally “country behind” the surrounding area served by an urban center.

Question 19

Indigenous city

Answer 19

originating in and naturally living, growing, or occurring in a region or country

Question 20

Infilling

Answer 20

new building on empty parcels of land within a checkerboard pattern of development

Question 21

Informal sector

Answer 21

That part of a national economy that involves productive labor not subject to formal systems of control or payment; economic activity or individual enterprise operating without official recognition or measured by official statistics

Question 22

Infrastructure

Answer 22

The basic structure of services installations and facilities needed to support industrial agricultural and other economic development included are transport and communications along with water power and other public utilities

Question 23

Megacities

Answer 23

a city that has a very large, and growing, population.

Question 24

Megalopolis

Answer 24

term used to designate large coalescing supercities that are formingin diverse parts of the world. “M” to refer to the Boston to Washington corridor.lowercase “m” as a synonym for conurbation

Question 25

Multiplier effect

Answer 25

direct, indirect and induced consequences of change in an activity 1. industrial agglomerations, the cumulative process by which a given change sets in motion a sequence of further industrial employment and infrastructure growth.

Question 26

Planned communities

Answer 26

A residential district that is planned for a certain class of residents

Question 27

Postindustrial city

Answer 27

area where economic development in which service activities become relatively more important than goods production, professional and technical employment supersedes employment in agriculture and manufacturing.

Question 28

Primate City

Answer 28

a country’s largest city ranking atop the urban hierarchy

Question 29

Racial steering

Answer 29

refers to the practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based

Question 30

Rank-Size Rule

Answer 30

In a model urban hierarchy, the idea that the population of a city or town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy

Question 31

Red lining

Answer 31

a discriminatory real estate practice in North America in which members of minority groups are prevented from obtaining money to purchase homes or property in predominantly white neighborhoods. name from the red lines depicted on cadastral maps

Question 32

Restrictive covenants

Answer 32

a statement written into a property deed that restricts the use of the land in some way often used to prohibit certain groups of people from buying property

Question 33

Segregation

Answer 33

a measure of the degree to which members of a minority group are not uniformly distributed among the total population

Question 34

Squatter Settlement

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

Barriadas

Answer 35

Squatter settlements found in the periphery of Latin American cities.

Question 36

favelas

Answer 36

the brazilian equivalent of a shanty-town, which are generally found on the edge of the city.

Question 37

Suburbanization

Answer 37

movement of upper and middle class people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts to escape pollution as well as deteriorating social conditions

Question 38

Symbolic landscape

Answer 38

landscapes that express the values, beliefs and meanings of a particular culture.

Question 39

Tenement

Answer 39

a run-down apartment house barely meeting minimal standards

Question 40

Threshold/Range

Answer 40

in central place theory the size of the population required to make provision of goods and services economically feasible.

Question 41

Underclass

Answer 41

a group in society prevented from participation in the material benefits of a more developed society because of a variety of social and economic characteristics.

Question 42

Underemployed

Answer 42

A situation in which a worker is employed, but not in the desired capacity

Question 43

Urban heat island

Answer 43

is a metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas

Question 44

Urban hydrology

Answer 44

Study of the effects of urban conditions on rainfall–runoff relationships

Question 45

Urbanization

Answer 45

A term with several connotations. the proportion of a country’s pop. living in urban places. involves the movement of people ot and the clustering of people in towns and cities- also occurs when an expanding city absorbs the rural countryside

Question 46

Walter Christaller

Answer 46

Made the central place theory that seeks to explain the number, size and location of human settlements in an urban system; settlements simply function as ‘central places’ providing services to surrounding areas; organized by hexagons to eliminate unserved or overlapping market areas.

Question 47

World City

Answer 47

dominant city in terms of its role in the global political economy. Not the world’s biggest city in terms of population or industrial output, but centers of strategic control of the world economy

Question 48

Zone in transition

Answer 48

the inner city area around the CBD. It is a zone of mixed land uses, ranging from car parks and derelict buildings to slums, cafes and older houses, often converted to offices or industrial use.

Question 49

Zoning

Answer 49

legal restrictions on land use that determine what types of building and economic activities are allowed to take place in certain areas.