AP Human Geography Unit 6 Vocabulary

Qualitative Data

Data based on descriptions and rich narratives, it is based on collecting data about observable phenomena. It is collected in the field through interviews, focus groups, surveys, and observations about the past and present.

Quantitative Data

Data that can be measured, counted, and put into numerical context. Techniques include taking measurements (eg. air quality, traffic studies), examining test results, conducting questionnaires, and using data collected into existing databases.

Nodes

Focal points of a functional business.

Walkability

How safe, convenient, and efficient it is to walk in an urban area. Measures of it may include ratio of people who walk or bike vs. those who drive within a community, and the availability of stores or workplaces within walking distances of people's houses.

Southeast Asian City Model

In this urban model, cities grown around ports and lack a defined CBD. There are only 2 formal zones that remain constant: a port zine and a zone of intensive market gardening on the periphery. The rest of the city shares characteristics with the concentric model like a Western commercial zone, a nonindigenous Asian commercial zone called "alien commercial zone", fixed land use, suburban housing, squatter settlements, middle density, and a wealthy residential area.

Squatter Settlements

Informal housing areas in disamenity zones that are beset with overcrowding and poverty. Sometimes called shantytowns, they feature temporary homes often made of wood scraps or metal sheeting. They lack basic infrastructure and services (eg. freshwater, electricity, etc.), and those who live there aren't legally permitted to be there.

Inclusionary Zoning Laws

Laws or policies that create affordable housing by offering incentives for developers to set aside a minimum percentage of new housing construction to be allocated for low-income renters or buyers. Supporters say it requires fewer government subsides than other affordable housing policies and promotes economic, racial, and cultural integration in urban areas. Critics say it could cause an increase in the cost of housing for a large segment of the population as consumers who pay market rates are asked to financially support lower-income housing.

Harris and Ullman Multiple-Nuclei Model

Most big US cities don't grow in sectors or rings but by progressive integration of multiple nodes. This theory states that land use depends on the local context, specifically these 4 factors: 1) highly specialized activities involving specific sites (major roads need airports, etc.) 2) related companies find it economically beneficial to arrange themselves together in certain areas of the city which leads to specialized districts, by clustering they all have access to the same pool of expertise and workers, suppliers, informational channels (ex. healthcare-related facilities located near a hospital) 3) negative consequences of commerce and industry that form nodes because some activities repel each other (eg. higher-class residents avoid neighborhoods near industry) 4) economic considerations influence other types of nodes, for example, large warehouses that need lots of land are located farther from the CBD where land is cheaper.

Regional Planning

Planning conducted at a regional scale that seeks to coordinate the development of housing, transportation, urban infrastructure, and economic activities. By sharing the costs of planning, regions can achieve economies of scale be more effective than individual municipalities.

Smart-Growth Policies

Policies, strategies, and regulations aimed to encourage certain types of development. They aim to create sustainable communities by placing development in convenient locations and designing them to be more efficient and environmentally responsible. Example: Arlington, VA, offers builders financial incentives to encourage mixed-use development.

De Facto Segregation

Segregation resulting from resident settlement patterns rather than prejudicial laws. It often occurs now when low-income people of color are unable to afford to live in desirable new developments which become populated by wealthier white residents.

World Cities

Sometimes called global cities, they have an influence not just in their country or region but across the globe. The major cities of the world make up a network of economic, social, and, and informational flows, and these act as nodes/focal points of the network. They may not be the biggest in population but they are in influence. They are major centers for communication, banking and finances, and sites of leading global markets for commodities, investment, and foreign exchange. They're also home to media powerhouses and fashion design, entertainment, and cultural industries. Example: New York City, London, Tokyo

Infrastructure

The basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a city like roads and highways, hospitals, prisons, drinking water systems, and internet services.

Transportation-Orientated Development

The creation of dense, walkable, pedestrian-orientated, mixed-use communities centered around or located near a transit station. Example: Arlington, VA, has several walkable and bike friendly metro-transit villages, and as a result, major streets have seen a decrease in automobile traffic while metro ridership has risen.

Range

The distance that someone is willing to travel for a good or service. People will travel farther for high-order goods and services (luxury cars, high-end fashion, famous museums, sporting events) while people won't travel as far for lower-order goods (gas, milk, a Target or Walmart, hair salon, barbershop, post office, etc.).

Land Tenure

The legal rights, as defined by a society, associated with owning land. The concept involves who can use land, for how long, and under what conditions.

Threshhold

The minimum number of people needed to support a good or service, it helps determines the size and location of a central place.

Urban Renewal

The nationwide movement in the 1950s and 1960s when cities were given massive federal grants to tear down and clear out crumbling neighborhoods and former industrial zones as a way to rebuild their downtowns. 3 policies were enacted post WWII to make it happen: the Housing Act of 1949, the Housing Act of 1954, and the Federal Highway Act of 1956. The housing acts established federal funding to cover a large part of the cost of tearing down and rebuilding, and the highway act launched the building of the Interstate Highway System. 1 million people were displaced during urban renewal and a majority of the areas targeted were low-income and Black.

Urbanization

The population shift from rural to urban areas, the decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the development of cities.

Zoning

The process of dividing a city or urban area into zones within only certain land uses are permitted. Zones can be further subdivided, for example, a residential area might be strictly for sing-family homes. Zones enforced by municipal governments are different from zones depicted in urban models.

Filtering

The process of neighborhood change in which housing vacated by more affluent groups passes down the income scale to lower income groups.

Suburbanization

The shifting of populations from cities to surrounding suburbs, it accelerated as more city dwellers wanted cheaper housing, more space, and now agricultural land is often being bought to develop suburban neighborhoods.

Slow-Growth Cities

Urban areas that have slowed the pace of development to retain their sense of place and to preserve open spaces. Example: Boulder, Colorado

Infill

Used to address and counter sprawl, it is redevelopment that identifies and develops vacant parcels of land within previously built areas. It focuses on areas already served by transportation and other public infrastructure.

Urban Sprawl

When urban areas expand in an unplanned and uncontrolled way, covering large expanses of land in housing, commercial development, and roads. Land is recklessly developed at the edge of urban areas with no plan and infrastructure may not keep up. It is common in US metropolitan areas that grew up with the rise of automobiles and freeway expansion. Example: LA, Atlanta, Dallas

Mixed-Use Zoning

Zoning that permits multiple land uses in the same place or structure.

Traditional Zoning

Zoning that separates zones based on land-use type or economic function like various categories of residential (low-, medium-, or high-density), commercial, or industrial.

Urban Growth Boundary

A boundary that borders a city's edges and defines where new development can take place. They separate urban land uses from rural land uses by limiting how far a city can expand.

Primate City

A city that far exceeds in population and size, the country's next largest city and have outsized political, economic, and cultural influence. When these cities exist, a country has a few or no other large or medium sized cities. They indicate uneven development because the population disproportionately goes to the city for economic opportunities. Example: Mexico City's metropolitan area has a population 21.8 million people while the next largest city, Guadalajara, only has 5 million people.

Ecological Footprint

A city's impact on the environment expressed as the amount of the land required to sustain its use of natural resources.

Exurb

A fast growing community outside or on the edge of a metropolitan area beyond the suburbs where residents and communities are closely connected to the central city and suburbs. They're often low density residential communities that may include wealthy estates or small rural towns. Example: Lancaster and Palmdale to Los Angelous.

Rank-Size Rule

A geographic concept that describes the relationship between cities' population size and rank in the urban system. A country's largest city is the baseline and the second largest city is half the size of the largest city, the third largest city will a third the size of the largest city and so on. It's no always applicable to all country's and doesn't take into account factors like a country's size or geographic distance. Example: Australia, Libya, Nigeria, and Brazil all fit

Eminent Domain

A government's right to take privately owned property for public use or interest. The rationale is that is allows the government to make decisions that benefit the population rather than private land owners only. In the US, it is named in the Fifth Amendement of the Constitution and has historically been used to claim farmland for railroad tracks but it now also used to eliminate or renovate urban areas fallen to despair.

Redlining

A method of housing discrimination when a lending institution refuses to offer home loans on the basis of a neighborhoods racial or ethnic make up. In the 1930s, the US government made a map indicating poor investments for lending institutions which highlighted mostly Black areas in red. These areas fell victim to urban blight since residences couldn't get loans to purchase or repair houses. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed the practice.

Blockbusting

A method of racial segregation where real estate agents would convince white home owners that Black families were moving in and therefor their property value would decrease. White sellers sold at a loss and Black buyers paid too much while real estate agents profited from property sales and the racial make up of a neighborhood drastically changes. It was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Megacity

A metropolitan area with a population of 10 million people or more.

Metacity

A metropolitan area with a population of 20 million people or more.

Burgess Concentric-Zone Model

A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially arranged in a series of rings growing outward from the central business district. 1) The actual CBD where most economic activities occur and where major transportation hubs, main offices of buildings and financial institutions, headquarters of political and civic organizations can be found, is the most accessible area. 2) The ring next to the CBD is the zone in transition and an area of mixed land use, moving from industrial factor production and wholesale light manufacturing to older, densely populated, declining neighborhoods, usually the poorest income neighborhoods. 3) Home to the working class and benefits from being near factories for an easier commute, population density decreases, and people live closely together in single-family homes, apartments, and duplexes. 4) Higher value homes for the middle-class like private homes and larger apartments with decreasing density. 5) Farthest from the ring, it is the commuter sone and contains more expensive, single-family detached homes in a more spacious suburban setting with the lowest density.,

Gravity Model

A model used to explain the relationship between cities of various sizes. The model states the level of spatial interaction like trade, traffic flow, number of visitors, and communication between two cities depends on the size of the cities' population and the distance between them. Larger cities will interact more with each other than smaller cities, and larger cities will draw interaction from smaller cities nearby.

Gentrification

A process of converting an urban neighborhood from a predominantly low-income renter-occupied area to a predominantly middle-class owner-occupied area. While it does increase property value and businesses, it often displaces low-income residents.

Greenbelt

A ring of parkland, agricultural land, or other type of open space maintained around an urban area to limit sprawl. They can serve as urban growth boundaries because converting rural land to urban land is strictly prohibited within them. They contribute to the ecological health of a region by limiting pollution, promoting planting growth, and protecting wild life habitats.

New Urbanism

A school of thought associated with smart growth, it arose as a reaction to sprawling automobile central cities of the 20th century and focuses on limiting urban expansion while preserving nature and usable farmland. It advocates for practices supporting multiple transit options, the preservation of historic buildings, and respect for the local ecology. One of the goals is to create a sense of place in cities by designing an environment where residents can easily meet and engage with each other in welcoming, open spaces.

Boomburg

A suburb that has grown rapidly into a large and sprawling city with 100,00 + residents, sometimes population exceeds nearby cities. They are made up of planned communities that have begun to merge together. Examples: Anaheim ,CA; Mesa, AZ

Central Place Theory

A theory that explains the hierarchical patterns in number, size, and location of cities and other settlement. The theory is represented by a hexagon with a large city as a central place around in which smaller towns, villages, and hamlets are distributed with a larger number of a settlement as it becomes smaller (1 city, 3 towns, 5 villages, ect.). Consumer choices make the hierarchy because goods and services with higher ranges and thresholds are found in bigger cities while smaller settlements have every day services and goods with lower thresholds.

Edge City

A type of community located on the outskirts of a larger city. They are commercial centers with office space, retail complexes, and the amenities of a typical urban center with residential housing built by developers. They're perceived as destinations for work, shopping, entertainment, and housing. Example: Tyson's Corner, VA outside of DC

Mixed-Use Development (MUD)

A way to limit sprawl and design livable urban spaces, it is a single planned development designed to include multiple uses like residential, retail, educational, recreational, industrial, and office spaces. They can range in scale, but are intended to increase residential densities to minimize the need to travel outside the development, reducing transport and commute distances and costs. Example: a building with a grocery store on the first 2 floors and apartment buildings above.

Brownfields

Abandoned and polluted industrial sites in central cities and suburbs. However with remediation and redevelopment, they can promote neighborhood growth and reduce zones of abandonment.

Latin American City Model

Aka Griffin-Ford Model, this model shares some similarities to the concentric zone and sector model. The traditional central market shares the CBD with a modern business center plus important religious and government buildings. A high end commercial sector or spine extends out from the CBD generally along a boulevard with shops, offices, restaurants, and clubs. Wealthy residents live in the blocks adjoining both sides of the spine which typically ends at an edge city. A railroad likely circles the city, connecting a mall with an industrial park. As distance from the CBD increases, residential areas have decreasing wealth and quality. Zones of maturity near the CBD contains older but good quality residences, and areas between the sone of maturity and zones of peripheral squatter settlements are called zones of in situ accretion and have mixed quality housing but renovations and improvements from gentrification can occur.

Galactic City Model

Aka Peripheral Model, this theory states that cities have a traditional downtown and loose coalitions of other urban areas. This model helps explain what occurred in metropolitan areas that became decentralized and formed suburbs after automobile use became widespread. This model includes newer business centers, internal edge city complexes for back offices and research and development centers, specialized subcenter for education, entertainment, sports, and convention centers. Airports are located on the outside of the city but connected to it through highways. Example: Los Angelous, Detroit

Environmental Injustice

Aka environmental racism, it is used to describe how communities of color are more likely to be exposed to environmental burdens like air pollution or contaminated water. It also encompasses unequal environmental protection through laws, government policies, or enforcement.

Bid-Rent Theory

An economic theory that explains how land value determines type of land use and its value. In the context of urbanization, land closest to the CBD within the center of the city is more expensive and densely populated than land on the outskirts towards the suburbs.

African City Model

An urban model that includes concentric rings and sectors radiating from the center to reflect competition for accessible and affordable sites which drives urban growths. There are 3 CBDs: 1) created by the colonial power and often has a grid pattern for order and control 2) more traditional CBD with curbside commerce and generally one-story retail stores 3) zone for open markets. In this model, higher income neighborhoods, where higher quality services are located, are located in the CBDs but wealth and services decrease in the outer rings. Squatter settlements called informal satellite townships are found along the outside of the model and are often found in the same ring as mining and manufacturing.

Hoyt Sector Model

An urban model that shows cities develop in wedge shaped sectors and divisions emanate from the central business district and emerge along transit routes. The CBD's function remains the same, but the model assumes working-class residential wedges will develop alongside whole sale light manufacturing around the CBD. High class neighborhoods follow a definite path along transportation routes or along riversides not used by industry. New middle-class housing built on the city's periphery attracts those who want to move away from the CBD, and in the filtering process, low income groups move into the vacated urban area.

Disamenity Zones

Areas of mixed-quality housing in the Latin American city model, they're high poverty urban areas in disadvantaged locations containing steep slopes, flood prone ground, rail lines, landfills, or industry.

Zones of Abandonment

Areas that have largely been deserted due to lack of jobs, declines in land value, and falling demand. They are the results of years of redlining, blockbusting, and filtering and have a negative impact on property values. They're also hotspots for crimes.