AP Human Geography, Urbanization

• Urbanization- Movement of people from rural areas to cities
• Megacity - city with over 10 million inhabitants
• Urban hearth- An area, like Mesopotamia or the Nile Valley, where large cities first existed
• City- conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics
• Metropolitan area/ metro area- all the areas surrounding a city that can be said to have a high-level of economic or social integration with the city.
• Borchert’s transportation model- focuses on the development of cities in relation to the development of transportation and communication
• Streetcar suburbs- a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation.
• Suburbanization- Movement of upper and middle-class people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts to escape pollution and social conditions
• Boomburbs- a suburban area experiencing significant growth in population and prosperity
• Edge cities- A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area, usually by a road
• Exurbs- Small communities lying beyond the suburbs of a city
• Megacities- Cities with more than 10 million people
• Metacities- A new term used to describe cities that have 20 million or more people
• World/global cities- urban areas that function as major nodes in the world economy
• Urban hierarchy- A ranking of settlements according to their size and economic functions.
• Rank-size rule- A pattern of settlements in a country, such that the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement.
• Higher-order services- specialized items such as cars, furniture, fine jewelry, and household appliances that are bought less often; large range and threshold
• Low-order services- Goods purchased more frequently, less expensive made as quick purchases
• Primate city- a city that dominates a country's economy, culture, and government and in which population is concentrated; usually the capital
• Gravity model- holds that the interaction between two places can be determined by the product of the population of both places, divided by the square of their distance from one another
• Christaller’s Central Place Theory- based on his idea that settlements only existed to function as "central places" to provide services for the surrounding area
• Threshold- the minimum number of people needed for a business to operate
• Range- the maximum distance people are willing to travel to get a product or service.
• Functional zonation- the division of a city into different regions or zones (e.g. residential or industrial) for certain purposes or functions
• Central business district (CBD)- The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.
• Industrial/commercial zones- these are areas where commercial and industrial activities are carried out.
• Residential zones- The areas of the city devoted to where people live rather than a commercial or industrial functions
• Burgess Concentric-Zone Model- A city that is described as a Concentric Zone Model city will have a central business district which is surrounded by a series of rings with varying levels of development
• Hoyt Sector Model- A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a series of sectors, or wedges, radiating out from the central business district (CBD).
• Harris & Ullman Multiple-Nuclei Model- A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a collection of nodes of activities.
• Galactic City Model- A collection of urban and suburban areas, all dispersed but connected by highways, that have become highly specialized.
• European city models- They often have center cores and most people live in/around these cores
• Islamic city models- a distinct category of city within the study of human geography
• Griffin-Ford Latin American City Model- Griffin-Ford: The CBD is dominant; it is divided into a market sector and a modern high-rise sector. The elite residential sector is on the extension of the CBD in the "spine". The further out, less wealthy it gets. The poorest are on the outer edge.
• Favelas- shantytowns near urban centers in Brazil
• African city models- De Blij: A model that suggests that African cities have more than one CBD, heavily influenced by colonial powers
• Informal/squatter settlements- 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.
• McGee Southeast Asian City Model- Terry (T.G.) McGee: A theory on SE Asian cities, where 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.
• Zoning ordinances- A law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development in a community.
• Filtering- the process of subdivision of houses and occupancy by succesive waves of lower-income.