City Types & Classifications
This term describes a city that is disproportionately larger than any other city in its country, like Paris in France.
What is a primate city?
This is the process by which an increasing percentage of a population moves from rural areas to cities.
What is urbanization?
These are the fundamental facilities and systems serving a city, including transportation networks, utilities, and communication systems.
What is infrastructure?
Urban sprawl is characterized by increased dependence on this form of transportation.
What are automobiles (or cars)?
This megalopolis in China links Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in a continuous urban region.
What is the Pearl River Delta?
These major urban centers serve as command and control centers for the global economy, like New York, London, and Tokyo.
What are world cities (or global cities)?
This term describes the uncontrolled expansion of urban development into surrounding rural areas with low-density housing.
What is urban sprawl?
These government regulations designate specific areas for particular land uses such as residential, commercial, or industrial purposes.
What is zoning?
Edge cities typically emerge at the intersection of these transportation routes in suburban locations.
What are major highways?
This U.S. megalopolis stretches from Boston to Washington D.C. and is home to over 50 million people.
What is BosWash (or the Northeast Corridor)?
This extensive metropolitan area results from several cities merging into one continuous urban region, like the Boston to Washington D.C. corridor.
What is a megalopolis?
This is the spread of low-density development beyond city limits, featuring subdivisions and shopping centers connected by highways.
What is suburban sprawl?
This is the planned redevelopment of deteriorated urban areas through renovation or demolition to revitalize communities.
What is urban renewal?
Another movement of revitalizing areas that maintains buildings as they were, sometimes accused as gentrification.
Preservationist Movement or Historic Preservation
This triangular megalopolis connects Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio in the southern United States.
What is the Texas Triangle?
This concentration of business and shopping emerges outside traditional downtown areas, typically at highway intersections in suburbs.
What is an edge city?
This urban planning philosophy concentrates growth in compact, walkable centers to avoid sprawl and emphasizes transit-oriented development.
What is smart growth?
This transformation occurs when wealthier residents move into lower-income neighborhoods, often displacing original residents.
What is gentrification?
Megalopolises form when these two urban features expand and merge together into one continuous region.
What are cities and their suburbs?
This megalopolis surrounds the five interconnected freshwater bodies in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, including cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto.
What is the Great Lakes Megalopolis (or Great Lakes Megaregion)?
This region consists of a densely populated urban core and surrounding territories that maintain high social and economic integration with the core.
What is a metropolitan area?
This approach combines residential, commercial, cultural, and sometimes industrial uses in a single area to reduce sprawl and encourage walkability.
What is mixed-use development?
This phenomenon causes urban areas to experience significantly higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas due to heat-absorbing surfaces.
What is the urban heat island effect?
Smart growth emphasizes the preservation of this type of land to prevent overdevelopment.
What is open space?
This Japanese megalopolis connects Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, and Osaka along the Pacific coast.
What is the Tokaido corridor (Tokyo-Yokohama)