Geographic Concepts
This type of map distortion results from projecting the 3D Earth onto a 2D surface
What is map projection?
The average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime.
What is total fertility rate?
The process of making an area more urban.
What is urbanization?
A computer system that captures, stores, and analyzes spatial data.
What is GIS (Geographic Information System)?
The area surrounding a city that is heavily influenced by the city’s economy.
What is the hinterland?
The term for the physical gap or interval between two objects.
What is space?
This model describes how population growth changes over time in relation to development.
What is the demographic transition model?
This model shows a city as a series of rings, each with different land uses.
What is the concentric zone model?
A system used to determine the precise location of something on Earth.
What is GPS (Global Positioning System)?
This term describes the legally defined boundary of a city.
What is a city proper?
A region defined by a central point and the activities that surround it.
What is a functional region?
People forced to flee their country due to conflict, persecution, or disaster.
What are refugees?
The decline of urban areas due to suburban growth and economic shifts.
What is urban decay?
The idea that people shape the landscape to reflect their culture.
What is cultural landscape?
A measure of how land in urban areas is used for housing, business, industry, etc.
What is land-use pattern?
This type of diffusion involves the spread of an idea from people in authority to others.
What is hierarchical diffusion?
The number of deaths per 1,000 people in a year.
What is crude death rate?
The movement of middle-class people into deteriorated inner-city neighborhoods.
What is gentrification?
The name for data that is expressed in numbers, such as population figures.
What is quantitative data?
This model suggests cities grow around multiple nodes, not just one CBD.
What is the multiple nuclei model?
The theory that the environment determines social and cultural development.
What is environmental determinism?
This law theorizes patterns in distance and reasons for migration.
What is Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration?
A measure of how evenly wealth and resources are distributed across a city.
What is spatial inequality?
This concept refers to how things are spread out over space.
What is distribution?
This term describes cities that dominate their country economically, politically, and culturally.
What are primate cities?