Central Business District: Back to contents
Of an urban area contains the principal commercial streets and major buildings and is the centre for business and commerce.
Conurbation: A large and almost continuous urban area built up from separate centres which through urban growth and sprawl have joined.

Core & Periphery: Back to contents
Core: Area of concentration of economic development. A city centre can be a core, but so can regions for example the European Union is a core on a global scale.

Definition – Sustainable urban development: Back to contents
Development that meets the needs of the present (housing, business, water, transport, energy, education, health and services etc) without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

Gentrification: Back to contents
This is a process of housing improvement associated with a change in neighbourhood composition when more affluent people, usually in professional or managerial occupations displacing lower income groups. This is one of the processes that can regenerate the inner cities. It essentially involves the rehabilitation of old houses and streets, often in areas originally developed in the early part of the nineteenth century. Gentrification often depends on the co-operation of property developers, estate agents, building societies and local authorities. Improvements are carried out by the residents moving into the area.

Periphery: Back to contents
This refers to an area of low or declining economic development. It is usually applied to an area of a country that is experiencing high unemployment, outmigration, low personal incomes, lowering living standards and high rates of crime. The periphery is often an undesirable geographical location.

Population density: Back to contents
The ratio of a population to a given unit area. This is an indicator of urbanisation and of rurality. An urban area will have a significantly higher population density than a rural area.

Rural-urban continuum: Back to contents
The belief that between the truly rural and the truly urban are many shades of ‘grey’. If we look along the scale from the single isolated farm all the way to the large city, we do not find any clear boundaries between hamlets, villages, towns and cities. This change is seen as a continuum.

Suburbanisation: Back to contents
A suburb is a section of the city whose main role is residency for workers of the city. Suburbanisation is the process whereby residential sections of the city expand. Three factors that encourage suburbanisation are:

Townscape: Back to contents
The visible scene of the urban area or ‘image’ of a city. It can be recognised by the layout of the street plan, the land use and the architectural style of the buildings.

Urban area: Back to contents
An urban area contains a settled population not directly involved in the primary production of food and other raw materials. A city is the biggest and most populated urban area. A large city is one with at least 2 million people, a megacity is one with 10 million people or more, of which there are currently twenty-four in the world. A city has various specialised land uses, and many institutions to control resource use.

Urbanisation: Back to contents
Urbanisation is the process by which urban areas increase in size and population density, the percentage of the population living in an urban area is increasing. In other words a process of concentrating population in urban areas. Urbanisation usually accompanies social and economic development, but rapid urban growth on today's scale strains the capacity of local and national governments to provide basic services such as water, electricity and sewerage.

Urbanism: Back to contents
The tendency for people to lead urban ways of life.

Urban growth: Back to contents
Absolute increase in the physical size and total population of urban areas.

Urban sprawl: Back to contents
Urban sprawl is the expansion of urban areas into surrounding non-urban areas. In "developing" countries it occurs largely as a result of rapid growth of cities, which is often due to socially inequitable economic policies. In "developed" countries car-dependence is a major factor in urban sprawl, particularly in America and Australia, and increasingly so in European countries.

Urbanisation: Back to contents
Urbanisation is the process by which urban areas increase in size and population density, the percentage of the population living in an urban area is increasing. In other words a process of concentrating population in urban areas. Urbanisation usually accompanies social and economic development, but rapid urban growth on today's scale strains the capacity of local and national governments to provide basic services such as water, electricity and sewerage.

Counterurbanisation: Back to contents
Counter-urbanisation is the process by which people and employment move out of large settled areas to smaller ones - a process of decentralisation. Counter-urbanisation may have begun in European cities with the industrial revolution, in protest against the pollution and overcrowding of the cities. In the 1970s there was a marked movement of Western populations out of major cities to small settlements and rural. This occurs for a number of reasons, the main one being a reaction against urban areas and lifestyles. The introduction of new technology, particularly in the field of communications, has reduced the need to move towards urban centres.

Urban consolidation: Back to contents
Urban consolidation (e.g. CBD and inner city regeneration) is being attempted in some Western cities, in order to contain urban sprawl, and to increase the population density of a city. Such consolidation could make public transport and services more efficient and affordable, provide a stronger sense of community, reduce the wastage of agricultural land, and avoid environmental damage.