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Unit 6 Essentials

23 must-know vocabulary terms and the 4 big ideas anchoring Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land Use.

Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land Use🏠 Unit Hub📁 Flashcards🗺 Cheat Sheet⭐ The Essentials🎙 Podcast🎨 Visual Review📝 MC Practice✍ SAQ Practice
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Urbanization
Process by which a growing proportion of population lives in urban areas.
Urban Processes
Rank-Size Rule
Principle that city sizes follow a predictable hierarchy — 2nd city is half the 1st, etc.
Urban Hierarchy
Primate City
City disproportionately larger than all others in a country; dominates economy and culture.
Urban Hierarchy
Megacity
Urban agglomeration of 10 million or more people.
Urban Hierarchy
Global City
City serving as a major node in the global economy — finance, trade, and international organizations.
Urban Hierarchy
Central Place Theory
Christaller's theory that settlements are hierarchically distributed based on goods/services provided.
Urban Theory
Burgess Concentric Zone Model
Concentric rings of land use from CBD outward — transition zone, working-class, middle-class, commuter.
Urban Models
Hoyt Sector Model
Wedge-shaped sectors of land use extending from the CBD along transportation corridors.
Urban Models
Multiple Nuclei Model
City organized around multiple nodes rather than a single CBD; reflects automobile-era complexity.
Urban Models
Bid-Rent Theory
Land values decrease with distance from CBD; different users outbid each other at different distances.
Urban Theory
Zone of Transition
Ring around CBD with old housing, light manufacturing, and warehouses undergoing conversion.
Urban Models
Latin American City Model
CBD with commercial spine, elite housing along spine, concentric rings of decreasing quality to squatter settlements at periphery.
Urban Models
Gentrification
Higher-income residents moving into lower-income neighborhoods, raising values and often displacing residents.
Urban Processes
Suburbanization
Growth of residential/commercial areas on city outskirts driven by cars, highways, and affordable land.
Urban Processes
Urban Sprawl
Uncontrolled low-density outward expansion of automobile-dependent development.
Urban Processes
Counterurbanization
Movement of people from cities to rural or suburban areas — reversal of urbanization.
Urban Processes
Edge City
Large node of office, retail, and entertainment outside the traditional downtown, near highway interchanges.
Urban Processes
Squatter Settlement
Informal housing built on land residents don't legally own, lacking basic infrastructure.
Housing
Redlining
Discriminatory practice denying loans/mortgages to minority neighborhoods, preventing wealth accumulation.
Housing
Smart Growth
Planning strategy promoting compact, walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented development.
Urban Planning
New Urbanism
Design movement promoting walkable, traditional-style mixed-use neighborhoods as alternative to sprawl.
Urban Planning
Urban Renewal
Government redevelopment of deteriorated urban areas — often displacing existing residents.
Urban Planning
Urban Heat Island
Cities warmer than surrounding rural areas due to heat absorption by concrete and buildings.
Environment
Big Idea 1
Cities are organized according to models — but models have limits
The Burgess, Hoyt, and Multiple Nuclei models describe different patterns of urban land use. Each reflects a specific historical context (industrial city, automobile era, modern polycentric city). Knowing when each model applies — and when it doesn't — is more important than memorizing zones.
BurgessHoytMultiple Nuclei
Big Idea 2
Urban hierarchies explain the size and function of cities
The rank-size rule predicts a smooth hierarchy of city sizes in a developed country. When a primate city dominates instead, it signals uneven development and economic concentration. Central place theory explains why cities of different sizes provide different services at different scales.
Rank-SizePrimate CityCentral Place
Big Idea 3
Urbanization in the developing world looks different from historical models
Most of today's urban growth is in developing countries — producing megacities, informal settlements, and rapid expansion without the infrastructure to support it. Models developed from North American/European cities (Burgess, Hoyt) don't describe cities like Lagos, Mumbai, or São Paulo as well as they describe Chicago.
MegacitiesInformalityDevelopment
Big Idea 4
Urban policy shapes who benefits from cities and who is displaced
Gentrification, redlining, blockbusting, urban renewal, and smart growth all represent policy choices (or policy failures) that profoundly affect who can live where. Understanding the geographic consequences of housing policy is central to AP Human Geography Unit 6.
GentrificationHousingInequality