AP Human Geography: Urban Geography Vocabulary
Primate City
A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the largest settlement has more than twice as many people s the second ranking settlement.
Periferico
A peripheral area beyond the ring highway that contains squatter settlements. Included in the Griffin-Ford Model updated by Larry Ford.
Greenbelt
A ring of land maintained as parks, agricultural, or other types of open space to limit the sprawl of an urban area
Restrictive covenants
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
Disamenity Zone
An area of a city where regular city services are not reliably available to the same degree that they are elsewhere. Although the term is usually used with regard to very poor neighborhoods, it may also describe a dysfunctional aspect of an otherwise upscale community, such as the traffic conditions in Lower Manhattan. Drug lords.
unincorporated areas
Areas that were once considered urban areas, even though only two or three families lived there
Industrial city
Cities that were developed hugely as an effect of the Industrial Revolution
Colonial City
City established by colonizing empires as administrative centers. Often they were established on already existing native cities, completely overtaking their infrastructures.
Griffin-Ford Latin American City Model
Combines elements of Latin American Culture and globalization by combining radial sectors and concentric zones. Includes a thriving CBD with a commercial spine. The quality of houses decreases as one moves outward away from the CBD, and the areas of worse housing occurs in the Disamenity sectors.
McGhee Model
Developed by geographer T.G. McGhee, a model showing similar land-use patterns among medium sized cities of Southeast Asia. Its focal point is the old colonial port zone. The model also does not find any CBD in asia, but rather he found elements of the CBD present as separate clusters surrounding the port zone.
Hoyt's Sector Model
Focuses on residential patterns explaining where the wealthy in a city choose to live. He argued that the city grows outward from the center, so a low-rent area could extend all the way from the CBD to the city's outer edge, creating zones which are shaped like pieces of a pie.
urban hydrology
How a city deals with getting clean water to its citizens, removing dirty water and cleaning it, and then putting it back into the worlds rivers and oceans
urban heat island
In large cities, expanses of paved surfaces, particularly asphalt, absorbs heat during day and radiates heat at night. Sparse vegetatation and paved surfaces increase rain runoff, furthering reducing cooling effects. Temperatures in the cities are usually 3-5 degrees hotter than surrounding country side.
Zoning Ordinances
Legal restrictions on land use that determine what types of building and economic activities are allowed to take place in certain areas. In the US, areas are mostly commonly divided into separate zones of residential, retail, or industrial use.
invasion and succession
Process by which new immigrants to a city move to and dominate or take over areas or neighborhoods occupied by older immigrant groups.
Blockbusting
Rapid change in the racial composition of residential blocks in American cities that occurs when real estate agents and others stir up fears of neighborhood decline after encouraging people of color to move to previously white neighborhoods. In the resulting outmigration, real estate agents profit through the turnover of property.
Islamic city
found in the Muslim regions; owe their structure to their religious beliefs; contain mosques, open-air markets, courtyards surrounded by walls, limiting foot traffic in residential neighborhoods.
Tear-downs
houses that new owners bought with the intention of tearing them down and building a larger home (sometimes called McMansions due to their super size and similar look); like gentrification in the city, it increases housing values and tax revenues, and average income; however, unlike gentrification, the houses are destroyed (not preserved), and this occurs in the wealthy suburbs (like Greenwich Connecticut, or the intercoastal in South Florida) not the central city.
Functional zonation
The division of a city into different regions or zones (residential or industrial) for certain purposes or functions (housing or manufacturing)
Second Urban Revolution
The historical transformation of a city accomplished by the industrial revolution which turned the city into an industrial center. Industrial Centers were often in close proximity to a power source. This Second Urban Revolution was made possible by the Second Agricultural Revolution. Due to rural to urban migration
First Urban Revolution
The innovation of the city that occurred separately in five different hearths. People became engaged in economic activities beyond agriculture, including crafts, the military, trade, and government.
Urbanization
The movement of people to, and the clustering of people in, towns and cities- a major force in every geographic realm today. Also when expanding cities absorb the rural countryside and transforms it into suburbs.
Urban Morphology
The physical layout of a city; its physical form and structure
in-filling
The process of cities that are close to each other merging together, such as DFW and Minneapolis-St.Paul; they are politically separate and have distinctive cultures, but they form one giant metropolitan area
Suburbanization/ Counterurbanization
The process of population movement from within towns and cities to the rural-urban fringe.
Peak Land Value Intersection
The region within a settlement with the greatest land value and commerce. As such, it is usually located in the central business district of a town or city, and has the greatest density of transport links such as roads and rail.
Redlining
illegal discriminatory practice in the US where minorities are prevented from obtaining loans to buy homes or property in predominantly white or affluent areas.
Hamlet
lowest level of settlements (often not urban); offers few if any services.
Range
maximum distance people will travel for a good or service (economic reach).
Megacity
occur predominantly in LDCs; high population growth and migration cause these cities to attract massive amounts of population since WWII; tend to be plagued by chaotic and unplanned sprawling growth, pollution, and widespread poverty.
European city
older ones were mostly developed during the Medieval period; display less sprawl than US cities, in part since gasoline my cost up to 3-4 times more than in the US; also, some cities have greenbelts (undeveloped area neighboring an urban area, often protected from development by planning law) which confine urban sprawl.
Latin-American cities
owe much of their structure to colonialism, industrialization, and massive population growth; sector development radiates out from the CBD (which often contain a central plaza), where most industrial and financial activity occurs; also contain barrios (ethnic neighborhoods) which can often be associated with poorer sectors of the city.
Urban sprawl
process of expansive suburban development over large areas; the automobile provides the primary source of transportation.
Urban hierarchy
ranking of settlements according to their size and economic functions: unincorporated areas, hamlet, village, town, city, metropolis, megalopolis/ conurbation, world city.
racial steering
refers to the practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race
Suburb
residential communities, located outside of city centers; usually homogeneous in terms of population and ethnicity.
Shantytowns/ Squatter settlement
residential development characterized by extreme poverty; usually exists on land just outside of cities that is neither owned nor rented.
Gated communities
restricted neighborhoods or subdivisions, often literally fenced in, where entry is limited to residents and their guests
Central place theory (Walter Christaller)
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.
Functional specialization
some cities are characterized by one specific activity (e.g., Orlando - tourism, Las Vegas - gambling, ...); cities tend to lose their functional specialization as they grow. Typically specialize in management, research and development of a specific industry (motor vehicles in Detroit), or are centers of government and education, notably state capitals that also have a major university (Albany, Lansing, Madison, or Raleigh-Durham).
Rank-size rule
states without a true primate city may follow this rule (many MDCs lack primate cities b/c technology and wealth has diffused throughout their countries); the population of any given city should be inversely proportional to its rank in the urban hierarchy (e.g., if #1 = 12 million, then #2 = 6 million, #3 = 4 million, #4 = 3 million, ...).
American city
suburbanization began largely in the US after WWII (US is the only country in the world in which the majority of the population resides in the suburbs), however, more people have started the process of centralization since the 1990s (moving back into the central cities).
Canadian city
tend to be more centralized and less suburbanized that US cities; b/c of this their inner cities tends to be much less dilapidated due to fewer wealthy people leaving them.
Threshold
the minimum number of customers needed to keep the business running
Commercialization
transforming of an area of a city into spaces of consumption - areas attractive to residents and tourists alike in terms of economic activity.
Gentrification
trend of mid to high-income Americans moving into city centers and rehabilitating much of the architecture, but also replacing low-income population - changing the social character of certain neighborhoods.
Eastern European city
typically less affluent than Western European cities due to the communist urban planning by the USSR during the Cold War; most residential spaces were organized into microdistricts (designed to minimize cost by reducing roads and maximizing living space).
Central city
urban area that is not suburban; generally the older or original city surrounded by the newer suburbs.
New Urbanism/ Planned Communities
urban design originating in the US during the 1980s to work against sprawl; characterized by organized urban planning, suburban infill (filling in unused space), and are designed to be walkable (Celebration, Florida)
Metropolis
usually contains several urbanized areas and suburbs that act together as a coherent economic whole.
Nonbasic industry
work responsible for the functioning of the city itself (e.g., government, street cleaning, ...).
Mesoamerica
URBAN HEARTH Dates back to 1100 BCE The cities were religious centers Home to the Olmec and the Maya
Huang He Valley
URBAN HEARTH Dates back to 1500 BCE Had an inner wall for temples, palaces, and the leadership class demonstrated their power by building elaborate buildings such as the Great Wall of China and the mausoleum
Indus Valley
URBAN HEARTH Dates back to 2200 BCE Had a leadership class All of the houses were almost equal in size No monuments or palaces the discovery of coins from as far away as the Mediterranean suggests trade over long distances.
Peru
URBAN HEARTH Dates back to 900 BCE The largest settlement, Chavín, was 10,530 feet high in the Andean highlands.
Mesopotamia (Fertile Crescent)
URBAN HEARTH Leadership class had huge palaces Established a priest-king class and developed a religious and political ideology to support the priest-kings Mud wall surrounded the city Ordinary citizens lived in mud walled hous
Nile Valley
URBAN HEARTH Dates back to 3200 BCE Distinguished by its irrigation systems Created great feats of architecture such as the great pyramids, tombs, and the sphinx.
hydraulic civilization
a civilization based on large-scale irrigation systems as the prime mover behind urbanization and a class of technical specialists as the first urban dwellers. Cairo
Primate city
a country's largest city; most expressive of the national culture and usually the capital city as well (e.g., Paris, France; Lagos, Nigeria; Mexico City, Mexico; Dhaka, Bangladesh, Karachi, Pakistan ...).
Bid rent theory
a geographical economic theory that refers to how the price and demand on real estate changes as the distance towards the Central Business District (CBD) increases. It states that different land users will compete with one another for land close to the city centre.
festival landscape
a space within an urban environment that can accommodate a large number of people for celebrations Central Park, Hyde Park, People's Park
cityscape
artwork that shows a city Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, Manhattan Skyline
Concentric zone (1920s; Ernest Burgess) model
based on his studies of Chicago 1) CBD, 2) Zone of transition (residential deterioration & light industry), 3) Blue-collar workers, 4) Middle-class, 5) outer suburban ring; the model is dynamic (as the city grows, the inner rings encroach on the outer ones).
Gateway city
because of their geographic location, they act as ports of entry and distribution centers for large geographic areas (e.g., NYC, San Francisco, ...).
Edge city
characterized by extensive office and retail space, few residential areas, and modern buildings (built since the 1960s); signifies a newer worldwide trend of the movement of the loci of economic activity to the urban fringe (unlike the loci of activity around the CBD - which had dominated the industrial world).
Revitalization
city planners have redesigned their central cities to make them more amenable to people moving in, especially higher income residents.
City
clustered conglomeration of people and buildings together serving as a center of politics, culture, and economics; a town may have outskirts, but virtually all cities have suburbs (hinterlands).
Village
clustered human settlement larger than a hamlet and generally offering several services.
Town
clustered human settlement larger than a village; may range from a few to thousands of inhabitants (even hundreds of thousands); generally many goods and services are available.
Southeast Asian cities
consist of sectors and zones radiating from the port zone; influenced by colonialism and are often still focused on exporting goods.
Sub-Saharan African cities
consist of sectors and zones, but possess a great deal of centrality around the CBD (may contain multiple CBDs); typically have strong ethnic neighborhoods and squatter settlements on the outskirts.
Multiplier effect
(1/2 (or 1/3) for most large cities) for every worker in the basic sector, there are typically 2-3 workers in the nonbasic sector for most modern cities.
Multiple nuclei model
(1945; Chauncy Harris & Edward Ullman) claimed the CBD was losing its dominant position as the nucleus of the urban area; separate nuclei become specialized and differentiated, not located in relation to any distance attribute (urban regions have their subsidiary, yet competing, "nuclei").
Entrepôt
(French for "warehouse") a trading post (e.g., port) where merchandise can be imported and exported without paying import duties, often at a profit (e.g., Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, ...).
Megalopolis
(e.g. conurbation such as Bosnywash, SanSan, ChiPitts,...) occur predominantly in more developed countries; large coalescing supercities that were originally separate but have expanded and joined together.
World cities/ Great cities
A city in which a disproportionate part of the world's most important business is conducted. 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 rather centers of strategic control of the world economy.
Barrios/ Favelas
Poor slums in the disamenity sectors of many Latin American cities.
Basic industry
activities and services that generate income for a city (e.g., manufacturing, retail, ...).
Zoning laws
legal restrictions on land use; residential, commercial, or industrial.
Hinterland
literally "country behind"; refers to the surrounding area served by an urban center (the heartland).
CBD (central business district)
location of skyscrapers and companies (would always be the center of the 3 urban models, many people commute, few actually live there)
