12.6: Key Terms Defined
Annexation – legally adding land area to a city
Blue Banana – a discontinuous corridor of urbanization in Western Europe, from North West England to Northern Italy
Boswash – the United States megalopolis, extending from Boston to Washington D.C.
central business district (CBD) – the central nucleus of commercial land uses in a city
Centrality – the functional dominance of cities within an urban system
City-state – a sovereign state that consists of a city and its dependent territories
Clustered rural settlement – an agricultural based community in which a number of families live in close proximity to each other, with fields surrounding the collection of houses and farm buildings
Concentric zone model – a model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially arranged in a series of rings
City – an urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an independent, self- government unit
Dark Ages – early medieval period, A.D. 476-1000
Dispersed rural settlement – a rural settlement pattern in which farmers live on individual farms isolated from neighbors
Dualism – the juxtaposition in geographic space of the formal and informal sectors of the economy
Edge city – a nodal concentration of shopping and office space situated on the outer fringes of metropolitan areas, typically near major highway intersections
Fiscal squeeze – increasing limitations on city revenues, combined with increasing demands for expenditure
Fordism – principles for mass production based on assembly-line techniques, scientific management, mass consumption based on higher wages, and sophisticated advertising techniques
Gateway city – serves as a link between one country or region and others because of its physical situation
Gentrification – invasion of older, centrally located, working-class neighborhoods by higher-income households seeking the character and convenience of less expensive and well-located residences
Hearth areas – the locations of the five earliest urban civilizations
Informal sector – economic activities that take place beyond official record, not subject to formalized systems of regulation or remuneration
Iraal – a traditional African village of huts, typically enclosed
Megacity – very large city characterized by both primacy and high centrality within its national economy
Megalopolis (megapolitan region) – a continuous urban complex (the chain of metropolitan areas) along a specific area (a clustered network of cities)
Merchant capitalism – the earliest phase in the development of capitalism as an economic and social system
Multiple-nuclei model – a model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a collection of nodes of activities
Neo-Fordism – economic principles in which the logic of mass production coupled with mass consumption is modified by the addition of more flexible production, distribution, and marketing systems
Primacy – condition in which the population of the largest city in an urban system is disproportionately large in relation to the second- and third-largest cities
Primate city – the largest settlement in a country, if it has more than twice as many people as the second-ranking settlement
Protestant Reformation – a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther
Rank-size rule – statistical regularity in size distribution of cities and regions
Renaissance – a period in European history, from the 14 th to the 17 th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history
Reurbanization – growth of population in metropolitan central cores, following a period of absolute or relative decline in population
Scientific Revolution – a concept used by historians to describe the emergence of modern science during the early modern period
Sector model – a model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a series of sectors, radiating out from the central business district
Shock city – a city recording surprising and disturbing changes in economic, social, and cultural life in a short period of time
Sprawl – development of new housing sites at relatively low density and at locations that are not contiguous to the existing built-up area
Suburbanization – growth of population along the fringes of large metropolitan areas
Underemployment – situation in which people work less than full-time even though they would prefer to work more hours
Urban area – a dense core of census tracts, densely settled suburbs, and low-density land that links the dense suburbs with the core
Urban forms – physical structure and organization of cities
Urban system – interdependent set of urban settlements within a specified region
urbanism – way of life, attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior fostered by urban settings
Urbanization – increasing concentration of population into growing metropolitan areas
World city – city in which a disproportionate part of the world’s most important business is conducted
WorLd-empire – minisystems that have been absorbed into a common political system while retaining their fundamental cultural differences
Zone in transition – area of mixed commercial and residential land uses surrounding the CBD