6.1

• Ecumene


  The permanently inhabited portion of the earth's surface
• Types of settlements


  • Rural areas (farms and villages) with low concentrations of people
  • Urban areas (cities) with high concentrations of people
  • Suburbs that are primarily residential areas near cities
• City-states


  • Consisted of an urban center (the city) and surrounding territory and agricultural villages
  • Had their own political system and functioned independently from other city-states
  • Provided services and protection to the population in the surrounding villages and territory
  • Were often raided by other groups for their wealth
  • Had defense as a primary consideration, with military leaders evolving into political rulers, or kings
• Locations of early city-states

  • Tigris-Euphrates Valley (Mesopotamia) in modern Iraq
  • Nile River Valley and Nile Delta in modern Egypt
  • Indus River Valley in modern Pakistan
  • Huang-He floodplain in modern China
• Metropolitan statistical area (MSA)

  A city of at least 50,000 people, the county in which it is located, and adjacent counties that have a high degree of social and economic integration, or connection, with the urban core
• Micropolitan statistical area


  Cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants (but less than 50,000), the county in which they are located and surrounding counties with a high degree of integration
• Nodal region


  A focal point in a matrix of connections
• Morphology of an urban area

  • Built-up area: high concentration of people and structures
  • Outskirts: where built-up areas begin to give way to open spaces and underdeveloped areas
  • Urban border: the end of the continuously built-up area, whether or not it coincides with a legally defined boundary
• settlement - a place with a permanent human population
• urbanization - developing towns and cities
• percent urban - an indicator of the proportion of the population that lives in cities and towns as compared to those that live in rural areas
• site - the characteristics of an immediate location

  ex: physical feature, climate, labor force, and human structures
• situation - the location of a place relative to its surroundings and its connectivity to other places
• city-state - an urban center (the city) and its surrounding territory and agricultural villages
• urban area - a central city plus land developed for commercial, industria, or residential purposes, and includes the surrounding suburbs
• metropolitan/metro area - a collection of adjacent cities economically connected, across which population density is high and continuous
• social heterogeneity - the population of cities, as compared to other areas, contains a greater variety of people
• time space compression - the social and psychological effects of faster movement of information over space in a shorter period of time
• Borcherts transportation model - created by geographer John Borchert, it is used to describe urban growth based on transportation technology
• pedestrian cities - cities shaped by the distances people could walk
• streetcar suburbs - suburbs that were built around streetcar lines