AP Human Geography Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes | Notes and practice

Notes

Cities began where agriculture produced a surplus. Site and situation explain where they grow (harbors, rivers, trade routes).
Urbanization is the rise in the share of people living in cities. It's fastest today in Africa and Asia.
Megacities have over 10 million people; world (global) cities like New York, London and Tokyo are hubs of finance and culture.
Suburbanization grew with cars and highways; urban sprawl spreads low-density development. Edge cities form near highways. Boomburbs grow fast.

Rank-size rule: the $n$th largest city is $\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}$ the size of the largest. A primate city is much larger than the second city and dominates the country (Paris, Bangkok).
Central place theory (Christaller): cities provide goods and services to surrounding areas, with threshold (minimum customers) and range (distance people will travel). It creates a hierarchy of settlements in hexagonal market areas.
Gravity model: interaction between two places is greater when they're bigger and closer.

Concentric zone model (Burgess): rings around the CBD.
Sector model (Hoyt): wedges along transportation routes.
Multiple nuclei model (Harris and Ullman): several centers.
Galactic city (peripheral) model: the CBD surrounded by suburbs and edge cities linked by beltways.
Models for other regions: the Latin American city (the spine and the elite residential sector, with squatter settlements on the edges), the African city, and the Southeast Asian city.

Redlining and blockbusting created segregated neighborhoods. Gentrification brings investment but displaces low-income residents. Squatter settlements and informal economies grow in rapidly urbanizing countries.
Infrastructure, housing affordability, traffic and pollution.
Smart growth and New Urbanism: walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, public transit, and greenbelts to limit sprawl. Mixed-use zoning combines homes, shops and offices.

A primate city is:

According to the rank-size rule, if the largest city has 12 million people, the third largest has about:

In central place theory, "threshold" means:

Which model shows a city with wedges extending from the CBD along transportation routes?

The "spine" in the Latin American city model is:

Gentrification often leads to:

New Urbanism promotes:

Redlining was a practice in which:

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Free-response question

Answer (a), (b) and (c).

(a) Define urban sprawl.

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Low-density, spread-out development on the edges of a city, usually car-dependent.

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(b) Explain ONE negative effect of urban sprawl.

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It increases car use, traffic and air pollution and destroys farmland and natural habitats.

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(c) Explain ONE strategy a city could use to reduce sprawl.

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Create an urban growth boundary or greenbelt and allow denser, mixed-use development near transit (smart growth), as Portland, Oregon has done.

Check off the points you earned: