Urban Geography

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Action Space

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the geographical area that contains the space an individual interacts with on a daily basis.

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Beaux Arts

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This movement within city planning and urban design that stressed the marrige of older, classical forms of design with the newer, industrial ones. Common characteristics of this period include wide thoroughfares, spacious parks, and civic monuments that stressed progress, freedom, and national unity.

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Central Business District

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the downtown or nucleous of the city where retail stores, offices, and cultural activities are concentrated; building densities are usually quite high; and transportation system converge.

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Central Place Theory

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A theory formulated by Walter Christaller in the early 1900s the explains the size and distributation of cities in terms of a competeive supply of goods or services to dispersed populations.

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City Beautiful Movement

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Movement in enviromental design that drew directly from the beaux arts school. Architects from this movement strove to impart order on hectic, industrial cneters by creating urban spaces that conveyed a sense of mortality and civic pride, which many feared was absent from the frenzied newi ndustrial world.

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Colonial City

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cities established by colonizing empires as administrative centers. Often they were established on already existing native cities, completely overtaking their infrastructures.

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Concentric Zone Model

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Model that describes urban environments as a series of rings of distinct land uses radiating out from the center core, or central bussiness district.

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Edge City

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Cities that are located on the outskirts of larger cities and serve many of the same purposes of urban areas, but in sprawling, decentralized suburban environment.

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European Cities

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Cities in Europe that were mainly built during the Medievil Period and pertain most of the same characteristics such as extreme density of development with narrow buildings and winding streets, an ornate church that prominently marks the city center, and high walls surrunding the city center that providied defense against attack.

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Exurbanite

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Perosn who has left the inner city and moved into the outlaying suburbs or rural areas.

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Feudal city

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Cities that arose during the Middle Ages and that actually represent a time of relative stagnation in urban growth. This system fostered a dependent relationship between wealthy landowners and p[easants who worked their land, providing very little alternative economic oppurtinies.

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Gateway City

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Cities that, because of their geographic location, act as ports of entry and distribution centers for large geographic areas.

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Gentrification

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The trend of middle- and high- class Americans moving into city centers and rehabilitating much of the architecture but also replacing low-income populations, and changing the social characetr of the certain neighborhoods.

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Ghettoization

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A process occuring in many inner cities in which they become dilapidated centers of poverty, as affluent whites move out of the suburbs and immigrants and people of color vie the scarce jobs and resources.

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Hinterland

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The market area surrunding an urban center, which taht urban center serves.

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Industrial Revolution

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period characetrized by the rapid social and economic changes in manufactoring and agricuklture that occured in England during the late 18th century and rapidly diffused to toehr parts of the developed world.

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Inner City Decay

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Those parts of large urban areas that lose significant portions of their populations as a result of change in industry or migration to suburbs. Because of these changes, the inner city looses its taxes and goes into poverty.

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Islamic Cities

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Cities in muslim countries that owe their structure to their religion beliefs. Islamic cities contain mosques at their center and walls guarding their perimeter. Open-air markets, courtyards surrunded by high walls, and dead-end streets which limit foot traffic in residential neighborhoods, also characetrize Islamic Cities.

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Latin American cities

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Cities in Latin America that owe much of their structure to colonialism, the rapid rise of industruilism, and continual rapid increases in the population. Similar to other colonial cities, they also demostrate distinctive sectors of industrial or residential development radiating out from the central business district, where most of the industrial and fincial activity occurs.

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Medieval Cities

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Cities that devloped in Europe during the Medieval Period and that contain such unique features such as extreme density of development with narrow buildings and winding streets, an ornate church that prominently marks the city center and high walls that surrund the city center for protection.

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Megacities

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Cities, mostrly characterized in the developing world, that high population growth and migration have caused them to explode in population since World war II. All megacities are plagued by chaotic and unplanned growth, terrible pollution, and widespread poverty.

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Megalopolis

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Several, metropolitan areas that were originally seperate but that have joined together to form a large, sprawling urban complex.

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Metropolitan Area

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Within the United States, an urban area consiting of one or more whole county units, usually containing several urbanized areas, or suburbs, that all act together as a coherent economic whole.

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Modern Architecture

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Point of view, wherein cities and buildings are thought to act like well-oiled machines, with little energy spenton frivolous details or ornate designs. Efficent, geometrical structues made of concrete and glass dominated urban forms for half a century.

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Multiple Nuclei Model

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Type of urban form wherein cities have numerous centers of business and cultural activity instead of one central place.

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Node

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geographical center of activity. A large city, such as LA, has numerous nodes.

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Postmodern Architecture

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A reaction in architecture design to the feeling of sterile alienation that many people gat from modern architecture, postmodernism uses older, historical styles and a sense of lightheartedness and eclecticism. Buildings combine pleasant-looking forms and playful colors to convey new ideas and to create spaces that are more people-friendly than their modernist predecessors.

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Primate City

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A country's leading city, with a population that is disproportionately greater than other urban areas within the same country.

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Rank-size Rule

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Rule that states that the population of any given town should be inversely proportional to its rank in the country's hierarchy when the distribution of cities accordinging to their sizes follows a certain pattern.

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Sector Model

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A model of urban land use that places the central bussiness district in the middle with wedge-shaped vectors radiating outwards from the center along transportation corridors.

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Segregation

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The proccess that results from suburbanization when affluent individuals leave the city center for the homogenous suburban neighborhoods. This process isolates those individuals who cannot afford to consider relocating to suburban neighborhoods and must remain in certain pockets of the central city.

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Squatter Settlements

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Resedintial developments characterized by extreme poverty that usually exist on land just outside of cities that is neither owned nor rented by its occupants.

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Suburb

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Residential communities, located outside of the city centers, that are usually relatively homogenous in terms of population.

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Urban Growth Boundary

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Geographical boundaries placed around a city to limit suburban growth within that city.

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Urban Revitalization

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The process occuring in some urban areas experianzing inner city decay that usually invoklves the construction of new shopping centers, entertainment venues, and cultural attractions to entice young urban professionals back into the cities where nightlife and culture are more accesible.

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Urban Sprawl

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The process of expansive suburban development over large areas spreading out from a city, in which the automobile provides the primary source if transportation.

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World City

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Centers of economic, culture, and political activity that are strongly interconnected and together control the global systems of finance and commerce.