6.2-6.3

• suburbanization - the process of people moving, usually from cities, to residential areas ok the outskirts of cities
• leap frog development - developers purchase land and build communities beyond the periphery of the citys built area; encourages sprawl
• sprawl - rapid expansion of the spatial extent of a city and happens for numerous reasons:

  • growth of suburbs

  • lower land costs in suburbs compared to inner cities

  • lower density single family housing

  • weak planning laws

  • the continuing growth of car culture
• boomburbs - rapidly growing communities (over 10 percent per 10 years) have a total population of over 100,000 people and are not the largest city in the metro area
• edge cities - nodes of economic activity that have developed in the periphery of large cities
• counter-urbanization/deurbanization - counter flow of urban residents leaving cities
• exurbs - prosperous residential districts beyond the suburbs
• reurbanization - suburbanites returning to the city
• mega cities - have a population of more then ten million people

  they are defined in two ways:

  • continuous urban area with a population greater than 20 million people

  • attributes of a network of urban areas that have grown together to form a larger interconnected urban system
• megalopolis - a chain of connected cities
• conurbation - an uninterrupted ur a area made of towns, suburbs and cities
• world/global cities - cities that exert influence far beyond their national boundaries
• urban hierarchy - ranking based on influence or population size
• nodal cities - command centers on a regional and occasionally national level.