Compiled by Ms. Huong Pham – huongpm@flss.edu.

vn

URBANIZATION & CHALLENGES

1. Annexation: control of land changing from one entity to another. For example, a
city acquiring territory and population by annexing a smaller, peripheral, or weaker
entity.

2. City: large permanent human settlement, larger than a town. Cities generally have
complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, and transportation. The
concentration of development greatly facilitates interaction between people and
businesses, sometimes benefiting both parties in the process, but it also presents
challenges to managing urban growth.

3. City Center: commercial, cultural, historical, political, and/or geographic heart of a

city.

4. Commuting: recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work,
or study, and in doing so exceed the boundary of their residential community.

5. Gentrification: process of renovating and improving a district or area so that it

conforms to middle-class taste: with the effect of increasing property values and the
displacing of lower-income families and small businesses.

6. Ghetto: section of a city inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other

minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or
hardships.

7. Greenbelt: area of woods, parks, or open land surrounding a community.

8. Mega City: usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess
of ten million people. A megacity can be a single metropolitan area, or two or more
metropolitan areas that converge. Some examples are Tokyo, Shanghai, Jakarta, New
York City, Seoul, Beijing, Karachi, Mexico City, Delhi, and São Paulo. What are some
others?

9. Megalopolis: chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas.

10. Metropolis: large city or urban area which is a significant economic, political, and
cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international
connections, commerce, and communications.

11. Metropolitan (Metro) Area: region consisting of a densely populated urban core
and its less populated surrounding territories, sharing industry, infrastructure, and
 Compiled by Ms. Huong Pham – huongpm@flss.edu.vn

housing. A metropolitan area can comprise multiple jurisdictions such as

neighborhoods, townships, suburbs, cities, etc.

12. Public Housing: housing that is owned or operated by a government and usually
offered at low rent to the needy, poor, or otherwise economically disadvantaged.

13. Public Transportation: also known as public transit or mass transit, is a shared
passenger transport service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct
from modes such as taxicab, carpooling or hired buses which are not shared by
strangers without private arrangement. Public transport modes include buses,
trolleybuses, trams (or light rail) and passenger trains.

14. Resident: person who establishes or maintains a residence (home) in a given

place.

15. Rural: geographic area that is located outside towns and cities.

16. Sanitation: services and infrastructure put in place to ensure that habitable spaces
and their environments are able to be cleaned and free from disease. Such as running
water, sewerage systems, toilets and waste disposal.

17. Slum: heavily populated urban settlement characterized by substandard housing,

inadequate housing, and miserable living conditions. They may lack reliable sanitation
services, supply of clean water, waste collection, storm drainage, street lighting, paved
sidewalks, reliable electricity, timely law enforcement, and other basic services. Slums
vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings that because of poor-quality
or construction have deteriorated into slums. They are often overcrowded, with many
people crammed into very small living spaces. Some slums may be built on land that
the occupant does not have a legal claim to, without any urban planning or adherence
to zoning regulations.

18. Squatter: someone who occupies an abandoned or unoccupied area of land, or a

building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have
lawful permission to use.

19. Suburb: residential area or a mixed use area, either existing as part of a city or
urban area, or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a
city.

20. Town: human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. Standards
vary, but generally a town has a population of fewer than 100,000 people.

21. Urban Area: characterized by high human population density and many built
features.
 Compiled by Ms. Huong Pham – huongpm@flss.edu.vn

22. Urban Decay: process where a city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and
decrepitude. It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or changing population,
restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families,
political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape.

23. Urban Planner: person whose job it is to plan and strategies the development of
urban places with respect to land uses, infrastructure and services with the aim of
improving the quality of life for residents and facilitating the social and economic
development of the city.

24. Urban Renewal: rehabilitation of urban areas by renovating or replacing

dilapidated buildings with new housing, public buildings, parks, roadways, industrial
areas, etc. Urban renewal involves the relocation of businesses, the demolition of
structures, and the relocation of people, and not always voluntarily.

25. Urbanization: process by which the population of a country, state, or territory,

becomes increasingly located in urban areas through both population growth in urban
centers and rural-urban migration.

26. Village: clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet (small
village) but smaller than a town, with a population ranging from a few hundred to a few
thousand.

27. World City: large city that has outstripped its national urban network and become
part of an international global system; centers of political power, world trade and
communications, leaders in banking and finance, stage, world entertainment and
sporting spectacles, the headquarters of NGOs and tourist meccas.