Suburbanization

Low (auto-oriented) density suburban development near Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States

In some countries, declining satisfaction with the urban environment is held to blame for
continuing migration to smaller towns and rural areas (so-called urban exodus). Successful urban
planning supported Regional planning can bring benefits to a much larger hinterland or city region and
help to reduce both congestion along transport routes and the wastage of energy implied by excessive
commuting.

Environmental factors

Environmental protection and conservation are of utmost importance to many planning systems
across the world. Not only are the specific effects of development to be mitigated, but attempts are
made to minimize the overall effect of development on the local and global environment. This is
commonly done through the assessment of Sustainable urban infrastructure. In Europe this process is
known as Sustainability Appraisal.

In most advanced urban or village planning models, local context is critical. In many, gardening
and other outdoor activities assumes a central role in the daily life of citizens. Environmental planners
are focusing on smaller and larger systems of resource extraction and consumption, energy production,
and waste disposal. There is even a practice known as Arcology, which seeks to unify the fields of
ecology and architecture, using principles of landscape architecture to achieve a harmonious
environment for all living things. On a small scale, the eco-village theory has become popular, as it
emphasizes a traditional 100-140 person scale for communities.

An urban planner is likely to use a number of quantitative tools to forecast impacts of

development on the environmental, including roadway air dispersion models to predict air quality
impacts of urban highways and roadway noise models to predict noise pollution effects of urban
highways. As early as the 1960s, noise pollution was addressed in the design of urban highways as well
as noise barriers. The Phase I Environmental Site Assessment can be an important tool to the urban
planner by identifying early in the planning process any geographic areas or parcels which have toxic
constraints.

Light and Sound

The urban canyon effect is a colloquial, non-scientific term referring to street space bordered by
very high buildings. This type of environment may shade the sidewalk level from direct sunlight during
most daylight hours. While an oft-decried phenomenon, it is rare except in very dense, hyper-tall urban
environments, such as those found in Lower and Midtown Manhattan, Chicago's Loop and Kowloon in
Hong Kong.

In urban planning, sound is usually measured as a source of pollution. Another perspective on

urban sounds is developed in Soundscape studies emphasising that sound aesthetics involves more than
noise abatement and decibel measurements. Hedfors[24] coined 'Sonotope' as a useful concept in urban
planning to relate typical sounds to a specific place.

Light pollution has become a problem in urban residential areas, not only as it relates to its
effects on the night sky, but as some lighting is so intrusive as to cause conflict in the residential areas
and paradoxically intense improperly installed security lighting may pose a danger to the public,
producing excessive glare. The development of the full cutoff fixture, properly installed, has reduced this
problem considerably.

Process

Blight may sometimes cause communities to consider redeveloping and urban planning.

The traditional planning process focused on top-down processes where the urban planner
created the plans. The planner is usually skilled in either surveying, engineering or architecture, bringing
to the town planning process ideals based around these disciplines. They typically worked for national or
local governments.

Changes to the planning process over past decades have witnessed the metamorphosis of the
role of the urban planner in the planning process. More citizens calling for democratic planning &
development processes have played a huge role in allowing the public to make important decisions as
part of the planning process. Community organizers and social workers are now very involved in
planning from the grassroots level. The term advocacy planning was coined by Paul Davidoff in his
influential 1965 paper, "Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning" which acknowledged the political nature of
planning and urged planners to acknowledge that their actions are not value-neutral and encouraged
minority and under represented voices to be part of planning
decisions.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning - cite_note-25

Developers too have played huge roles in influencing the way development occurs, particularly
through project-based planning. Many recent developments were results of large and small-scale
developers who purchased land, designed the district and constructed the development from scratch.
The Melbourne Docklands, for example, was largely an initiative pushed by private developers who
sought to redevelop the waterfront into a high-end residential and commercial district.

Recent theories of urban planning, espoused, for example by Salingaros see the city as a
adaptive system that grows according to process similar to those of plants. They say that urban planning
should thus take its cues from such natural processes.

RELATED DEFINITIONS IN URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

An abutter is a person (or entity) whose property is adjacent to the property of another.
In land use regulations, concerns of an abutter may be given special attention, being the one most likely
to suffer specific harm from a hasty, uninformed decision. For example, a developer requesting a
subdivision may be required to notify (or pay to notify) all abutters of the proposal and invite them to a
public hearing. Regulations may also provide an abutter with the right to be heard at the hearing, unlike
others who must request permission to be heard, at the discretion of the board.

In the spirit of land use politics, even the unified voices of the concerned abutters may sound only faintly
against the machinery of "progress" or well-funded special interests. However, the courts will
objectively consider a proper case brought by an abutter whose rights have been arguably under-
appreciated. Generally, the more abutters interested in a project, the more likely someone will object to
it.

Some regulations otherwise expand or limit the participation of local owners, as where notice may be
required for "anyone whose property is within 200 feet of any point of the parcel under consideration."
Another expansive definition would include those whose properties are across a public way or flowing
waterway, where the parcels do not actually touch. Contrarily, regulations may define "abutter" to
include only those people who hold record title to an adjacent parcel, thus undermining the rights of
tenants, associations and partial owners (e.g., mineral rights and easement owners) to be notified, let
alone heard on a proposal. This would also eliminate participation of owners of unrecorded title, such as
adverse possession or those who have simply failed to record a deed or settle an estate involving the
adjacent property.

An aerotropolis (pl. aerotropolises or aerotropoli) is a new type of urban form comprising aviation-
intensive businesses and related enterprises extending up to 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) outward from
major airports.

It is similar in form and function to a traditional metropolis, which contains a central city core and its
commuter-linked suburbs. An aerotropolis has an airport city at its core and is surrounded by clusters of
aviation-related enterprises.

Airports have evolved as drivers of business location and urban development in the 21st century in the
same way as did highways in the 20th century, railroads in the 19th century and seaports in the 18th
century, according to Dr. John D. Kasarda, the American academic who defined the aerotropolis concept
in 2000.

Aerotropolises are powerful engines of local economic development, attracting air-commerce-linked

businesses to the land surrounding major airports, analogous to the function of central business districts
in the downtown areas of major cities.

Aerotropolises typically attract industries related to time-sensitive manufacturing, e-commerce

fulfillment, telecommunications and logistics; hotels, retail outlets, entertainment complexes and
exhibition centers; and offices for business people who travel frequently by air or engage in global
commerce. Clusters of business parks, logistics parks, industrial parks, distribution centers, information
technology complexes and wholesale merchandise marts locate around the airport and along the
transportation corridors radiating from them.

In the study of human settlements, an agglomeration is an extended city or town area comprising the
built-up area of a central place (usually a municipality) and any suburbs linked by continuous urban area.
In France, INSEE the French Statistical Institute, translate it as "Unité urbaine" which means continuous
urbanized area. However, because of differences in definitions of what does and does not constitute an
"agglomeration", as well as variations and limitations in statistical or geographical methodology, it can
be problematic to compare different agglomerations around the world. It may not be clear, for instance,
whether an area should be considered to be a satellite and part of an agglomeration, or a distinct entity
in itself.

The term "agglomeration" can also be linked to "Conurbation," which is a more specific term for large
urban clusters where the built-up zones of influence of distinct cities or towns are connected by
continuous built-up development (Essen - Dortmund and others in the Rhine-Ruhr district), even in
different regions, states or countries, Lille - Kortrijk in France and Belgium). Each city or town in a
conurbation may nevertheless continue to act as an independent focus for a substantial part of the area.

BANANA is an acronym for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (or Anyone). The term is
most often used to criticize the ongoing opposition of certain interest groups to land development.

The apparent opposition of some activists to every instance of proposed development suggests that
they seek a complete absence of new growth. Compare with the acronym NIMBY, Not In My Backyard,
which describes development stymied by those who do not want the development in "their backyard".

The term is commonly used within the context of planning in the United Kingdom. The Sunderland City
Council lists the term on their online dictionary of jargon.[1

Back-to-back houses are a form of terraced house in which two houses share a rear wall (or in which the
rear wall of a house directly abuts a factory or other building)..

Usually of low quality (sometimes with only two rooms, one on each floor) and high density, they were
built for working class people and because three of the four walls of the house were shared with other
buildings and therefore contained no doors or windows, back-to-back houses were notoriously ill-lit and
poorly ventilated and sanitation was of a poor standard.

Barrioization is a term used in the field of Human Geography.

It is defined by geographer James Curtis as the "dramatic" increase in Hispanic population in a given
neighbourhood. It is mostly likely to be related to the situation in the United States of America. The
origin of the word is barrio, which is the Spanish word for neighbourhood. It should be noted, however,
that it needs to have a dramatic change in the population.

Beautification is the process of making visual improvements in a town or city, typically to an urban area.
This most often involves planting trees, shrubbery, and other greenery, but frequently also includes
adding decorative or historic-style street lights and other lighting and replacing broken pavement, often
with brick or other natural materials. Old-fashioned cobblestones are sometimes used for crosswalks;
they provide the additional benefit of slowing motorists.

Beautification projects are often undertaken by city councils to refurbish their downtown areas, in order
to boost tourism or other commerce. Often, this is also spurred by broken sidewalks, which pose a
safety hazard for pedestrians and potentially insurmountable obstacles for wheelchair users. These
projects are frequently part of other larger projects such as construction, especially in conjunction with
ones for transit, such as streets and roads and mass transit.

The Laurel Hill Association of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1853, is the oldest incorporated
village beautification society in the country.[1] The Memphis City Beautiful Commission, the oldest city
beautification project in the United States, was established in 1930.

Binary distribution is when a country has 2 or more dominant cities (megacities).

Boomburb is a neologism for a large, rapidly growing city that remains essentially suburban in character
even as it reaches populations more typical of urban core cities. Like edge city, an older and more widely
accepted term, it describes a relatively recent phenomenon in North America.

Brownfields are abandoned or underused industrial and commercial facilities available for re-use.
Expansion or redevelopment of such a facility may be complicated by real or perceived environmental
contaminations.[1]

Brownfield status is a condition, within certain legal exclusions and additions, of real property, the
expansion, redevelopment or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence
of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant, which may include petroleum hydrocarbon
releases. Brownfield status generally means there are use or development restrictions on the site.
In town planning, brownfield land is an area of land previously used or built upon, as opposed to
greenfield land which has never been built upon. Brownfield status is a legal designation which places
restrictions, conditions or incentives on redevelopment.

Brusselization is a term used by urbanists to describe an anarchic urban development in a historic city.
The term origined as the result of the uncontrolled development of Brussels in the 1960s and 1970s. The
term can also describe developers method of destroying old buildings by neglect, allowing them to
decay to the point where demolition is unavoidable.

Build-out is an urban planner’s estimate of the amount and location of potential development for an
area. Sometimes called a "lot-yield analysis", build-out is one step of the land use planning process.
Evaluation of potential development impacts begins with a build-out analysis.

The phrase built environment refers to the man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human
activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places.

The term is also now widely used to describe the interdisciplinary field of study which addresses the
design, management and use of these man-made surroundings and their relationship to the human
activities which take place within them. The field is generally not regarded as an academic discipline in
its own right, but as a "field of application" (or "interdiscipline") which draws upon the individual
disciplines of economics, law, management, design and technology in sustainable sense.

Ciclovía (also ciclovia or cyclovia) is a Spanish term, meaning "bike path," used in Latin America to mean
either a permanent designated bicycle route or a temporary event closing of the street to automobiles
to allow dominance by other users. Permanent designated bicycle lanes are also known as ciclo-rutas,
while streets temporarily closed for that purpose are always called ciclovías.

A city block, urban block or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city
block is the smallest area that is surrounded by streets. City blocks are the space for buildings within the
street pattern of a city, they form the basic unit of a city's urban fabric. City blocks may be subdivided
into any number of smaller lots or parcels of land usually in private ownership, though in some cases, it
may be other forms of tenure. City blocks are usually built-up to varying degrees and thus form the
physical containers or 'streetwalls' of public space. Most cities are composed of a greater or lesser
variety of sizes and shapes of urban block. For example, many pre-industrial cores of cities in Europe,
Asia and the Middle-east tend to have irregularly shaped street patterns and urban blocks, while cities
based on grids have much more regular arrangements.

City networks are the connections between cities.

The term city region has been in use since about 1950 by urbanists, economists and urban planners to
mean not just the administrative area of a recognisable city or conurbation but also its hinterland that
will often be far bigger. Conventionally, if one lives in an apparently rural area, suburb or county town
where a majority of wage-earners travel into a particular city for a full or part-time job then one is (in
effect) residing in the city region.

A civic center or civic centre (see "American and British English spelling differences") is a prominent land
area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains one or
more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, the term
"civic center" has been used in reference to an entire central business district of a community or a major
shopping center in the middle of a community. In this type of civic center, special attention is paid to the
way public structures are grouped and landscaped.

A Community Street Review is a new survey method where a Community Street Audit is combined with
a numerical rating system.[1] The methodology is the result of research commissioned by Land Transport
New Zealand for improving Walkability in New Zealand. The methodology involves taking a group of
community members to a location and have them review their perceptions of the walking environment.
The participant resonses are entered into a database and a level of service is assinged to the area.
Physical and operational variables are also collected at the time of the review and paired with the
responses and level of service calculations. Once enough reviews have been completed, it is expected
that walkability level of service will be derived straight from the measurement of physical and
operational variables.

A community separator (or simply a separator) is a parcel of undeveloped land, sometimes in the form
of open space, separating two or more urban areas under different municipal jurisdictions which has
been designated to provide a permanent low-density area preserving the communal integrity of the two
municipalities. Separators are typically created by one or more municipalities in situations of rapid urban
growth, where unchecked development might otherwise result in the contiguity of the urban areas. A
unilateral separator that partially or completely encircles a municipality is commonly known as a
greenbelt.

Separators often consist of undeveloped farmland, forests, floodplains, or other areas that may or may
not be desirable for residential or commercial development. The enactment of a separator is commonly
achieved through a variety of different means, including conservation easements, outright purchase of
land for parks, or zoning restrictions. Separators are often enacted along major highways connecting
municipalities in order to preserve the open viewshed that provides a natural boundary between two
communities.

Separators are sometimes controversial since they can withdraw desirable development land from the
marketplace, resulting not only in the loss of tax revenue but also incurring the cost of acquiring and
managing the land

A commuter town is an urban community that is primarily residential, from which most of the
workforce commute out to earn their livelihood. Many commuter towns act as suburbs of a nearby
metropolis that workers travel to daily, and many suburbs are commuter towns. Commuter towns
belong to the metropolitan area of a city, and a ring of commuter towns around an urban area is known
as a commuter belt.

A commuter town may also be known as a bedroom community or "bedroom suburb" (Canada and U.S.
usage), a dormitory town (UK Commonwealth and Ireland usage), or less commonly a dormitory village
(UK Commonwealth and Ireland). These terms suggest that residents sleep in these neighborhoods, but
mostly work elsewhere; they further suggest that these communities have little commercial or industrial
activity beyond a small amount of retail, oriented toward serving the residents.

Comprehensive planning is a term used in the United States by land use planners to describe a process
that determines community goals and aspirations in terms of community development. The outcome of
comprehensive planning is the Comprehensive Plan which dictates public policy in terms of
transportation, utilities, land use, recreation, and housing. Comprehensive plans typically encompass
large geographical areas, a broad range of topics, and cover a long-term time horizon.

A conurbation is an urban area or agglomeration comprising a number of cities, large towns and larger
urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one
continuous urban and industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric
agglomeration, in which transportation has developed to link areas to create a single urban labour
market or travel to work area.[1]

The term "conurbation" was coined as a neologism in 1915 by Patrick Geddes in his book Cities In
Evolution. He drew attention to the ability of the (then) new technology of electric power and motorised
transport to allow cities to spread and agglomerate together, and gave as examples "Midlandton" in
England, the Ruhr in Germany, and New York-Boston in the USA.[2]
A conurbation can be confused with a metropolitan area. As the term is used in North America, a
metropolitan area consists of many neighborhoods, while a conurbation consists of many different
metropolitan areas that are connected with one another. Internationally, the term "urban
agglomeration" is often used to convey a similar meaning to "conurbation".[3]

A county island is an unincorporated area within a county, usually, but not always, surrounded on all
sides by another incorporated area, such as a city. On maps, these geopolitical anomalies will form
jagged or complex borders and 'holes' in the city limits. Generally found more frequently in the western
United States, county islands form in areas of expansion when previously smaller cities will annex and
incorporate more land into their jurisdiction. If residents or landowners in a particular unincorporated
area do not vote to incorporate with the surrounding city, the area remains unincorporated. The
formation of a county island usually follows stages where it will come into being on the edge of an
incorporated area, and as more territory is incorporated, be cut off from the rest of the unincorporated
area within the county. These areas are not, by definition, exclaves because they are simply
unincorporated within a surrounding city.

Coving is a method of urban planning used in subdivision characterized by non-uniform lot shapes and
home placement. When combined with winding roads, lot area is increased and road area reduced.
Coving is used as an alternative to conventional "grid" subdivision layout in order to reduce costs, such
as road surfacing, while improving aesthetics, and increasing the amount of land available for
construction

Downtown is a term primarily used in North America to refer to a city's core or central business district,
usually in a geographical, commercial, and community sense.

Ecovillages are intended to be socially, economically and ecologically sustainable intentional

communities. Some aim for a population of 50-150 individuals because this size is considered to be the
maximum social network according to findings from sociology and anthropology.[1] Larger ecovillages of
up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that
allows for social networks within a broader foundation of support. Certain ecovillages have grown by the
nearby addition of others, not necessarily members, settling on the periphery of the ecovillage and
effectively participating in the ecovillage community.

Ecumenopolis (from Greek: οικουμένη, meaning world, and πόλις (polis) meaning city, thus a city made
of the whole world; pl. ecumenopolises or ecumenopoleis) is a word invented in 1967 by the Greek city
planner Constantinos Doxiadis to represent the idea that in the future urban areas and megalopolises
would eventually fuse and there would be a single continuous worldwide city as a progression from the
current urbanization and population growth trends. Before the word ecumenopolis had been coined, the
American religious leader Thomas Lake Harris (1823-1906) mentioned city-planets in his verses, and
science fiction author Isaac Asimov uses the city-planet Trantor as the setting of some of his novels.

Edge city is an American term for a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a
traditional urban area in what had recently been a residential suburb or semi-rural community. The term
was first used in Tom Wolfe's 1968 novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and popularized in the 1991
book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while
working as a reporter for the Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the
standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the
19th-century central downtown. Other terms for the areas include suburban activity centers,
megacenters, and suburban business districts.

The term Ekistics (coined by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis in 1942) applies to the science of human
settlements.[1] It includes regional, city, community planning and dwelling design. It involves the study of
all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology - the physical environment- , and
human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political, and occasionally aesthetics.
As a scientific mode of study is currently found to rely on statistics and description, organized in five
ekistic elements: nature, anthropos, society, shells, and networks. It is generally a more academic field
than "urban planning", and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of
architectural theory.

In application, conclusions are drawn aimed at achieving harmony between the inhabitants of a
settlement and their physical and socio-cultural environments.[2]

In geography and urban planning, elbow roomers are people who leave a city for the countryside to
seek more land and greater freedom from governmental and neighborhood interference.

Facadism (also façadism or facadomy) is the practice of demolishing a building but leaving its facade
intact for the purposes of building new structures around it.

The Floor Area Ratio (FAR) or Floor Space Index (FSI) is the ratio of the total floor area of buildings on a
certain location to the size of the land of that location, or the limit imposed on such a ratio.

The Floor Area Ratio is the total building square footage (building area) divided by the site size square
footage (site area).

As a formula: Floor Area Ratio = (Total covered area on all floors of all buildings on a certain plot)/(Area
of the plot)

Thus, an FSI of 2.0 would indicate that the total floor area of a building is two times the gross area of the
plot on which it is constructed, as would be found in a multiple-story building.

Edward Soja uses the term fractal city to describe the "metropolarities" and the restructured social
mosaic of today's urban landscape or "postmetropolis". In his book, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of
Cities and Regions, he discusses how the contemporary American city has become far more complex
than the familiar upperclass vs. middleclass or black vs. white models of society. It has become a fractal
city of intensified inequalities and social polarization. The term "fractal" gives it the idea of having a
fractured social geometry. This is a patterning of metropolarities, or an intesification of socio-economic
inequalities, some of which Soja tries to pinpoint and discuss.

A green belt or greenbelt is a policy or land use designation used in land use planning to retain areas of
largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighbouring urban areas. Similar
concepts are greenways or green wedges which have a linear character and may run through an urban
area instead of around it. A green belt is basically an invisible line that goes around a certain area,
stopping people from building there so that some of the wild and agricultural land can be saved.

Greenfield land is a term used to describe a piece of previously undeveloped land, in a city or rural area,
either currently used for agriculture, landscape design, or just left to nature. In contrast, brownfield land
is an area that has previously been developed, such as the site of a gas station, a paved parking lot or
the site of a demolished building. Greenfield land can be unfenced open fields or urban lots, or
restricted, closed property kept off limits to the general public by a private or governmental entity.

Greenfield status is a term used to describe an end point wherein a parcel of land that had been in
industrial use is, in principle, restored to the conditions existing before the construction of the plant. It is
synonymous to a status of unrestricted re-use; the older term.

All power plants, coal, gas and nuclear, have a finite life beyond which it is no longer economical to
operate them. At this point they must be decommissioned; that is, they must be dismantled and their
components disposed of ether by sale or scrapping. In some cases the buildings that housed the plant
may be put to other uses. However, in many cases contamination is unacceptable and the buildings
must be demolished. The land on which the plant sat also may have been polluted with high levels of
toxins, and in this case other remedial measures like removal and replacement of the top soil or clay
capping may be required to render the site non-hazardous.

It is becoming standard practice in many jurisdictions to mandate a return to Green Field status at the
end of plant service as a condition of the initial site license, and potential licensees must demonstrate
that steps will be taken to assure the availability of funds via the posting of a Reclamation Bond for that
task before a site-license will be issued. While this concept has mainly applied to the power generating
industry, the term is coming into wider use in other areas of industrial decommissioning.

A greenway is a long, narrow piece of land, often used for recreation and pedestrian and bicycle traffic
and sometimes including multiple transportation (streetcar, light rail) or retail uses.

The term greenway comes from the "green" in green belt and the "way" in parkway, implying a
recreational or pedestrian use rather than a typical street corridor, as well as an emphasis on
introducing or maintaining vegetation, in a location where such vegetation is otherwise lacking. Some
greenways include community gardens as well as typical park-style landscaping of trees and shrubs.
They also tend to have a mostly contiguous pathway, allowing urban commuting via bicycle or foot.

Greyfield land is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe economically obsolescent,
outdated, failing, moribund and/or underutilized real estate assets or land.

Infill in its broadest meaning is material that fills in an otherwise unoccupied space. The term is
commonly used in association with construction techniques such as wattle and daub, and civil
engineering activities such as land reclamation.

Local community is a geographically defined community of place, a group of people living close to each
other.

The term community suggest that its members have some relations that are communal - experiences,
values, and/or interests may be shared, they may interact with each other and are concerned about
mutual and collective well-being.

In real estate, a lot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner(s). A lot is
essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property (meaning
practically the same thing) in other countries. Possible owner(s) of a lot can be one or more person(s) or
another legal entity, such as a company/corporation, organization, government, or trust. A common
form of ownership of a lot is called fee simple in some countries.

A megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million
people.[1] Some definitions also set a minimum level for population density (at least 2,000
persons/square km). Megacities can be distinguished from global cities by their rapid growth, new forms
of spatial density of population, formal and informal economics, as well as poverty, crime, and high
levels of social fragmentation. A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more
metropolitan areas that converge upon one another. The terms conurbation, metropolis and metroplex
are also applied to the latter. The terms megapolis and megalopolis are sometimes used synonymously
with megacity.

A megalopolis (sometimes called a megapolis) is defined as an extensive metropolitan area or a long

chain of roughly continuous metropolitan areas.

A metroplex is large metropolitan area containing several cities and their suburbs.[1] It is also sometimes
used as an alternative to metropolis or megalopolis, which is a chain of continuous metropolitan areas.
The term was coined for, and is still commonly used to describe, the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.[2][dead
link]
Sometimes, a region is not clearly defined. It can be seen as a metroplex or a single metropolitan
area (for example, Dallas - Fort Worth is closer to the definition of a metro and Norcal is closer to the
definition of a megalopolis).
Microdistrict, or microraion (Russian: микрорайо́ н), is a residential compound—a primary structural
element of the residential area construction in the Soviet Union and in some post-Soviet states.
Residential districts in most of the cities and towns in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet
Union were built in accordance with this concept.

A microtown is a municipality with less than 500 residents that is not part of the suburbia of a
neighboring city. (Such towns might also be known as villages and hamlets.) Microtowns used to be
prevalent in the West and Midwest in the 18th and 19th centuries as people moved for cheaper land
and started their own municipality. Today, a microtown is usually a strong sign of a locality's decline, as
people have moved away to seek more properous opportunities elsewhere, although many such places
still exist today, always in rural America. The smallest documented microtown is in Maine with a
population of exactly one (it is legally a town), although a town usually has some degree of
independence. A population of zero is a ghost town.

Commonly referred to as a plaza, an office complex is often confused with an office building. Complexes
are just one story, with extensive fields available in retail positioning, but primarily used for medical
practitioners along with a stronghold potential for community development. This due to its non-
exclusive company occupants, as opposed to office buildings that are technology focused.

Open space reserve, open space preserve, and open space reservation, are planning and conservation
ethics terms used to describe areas of protected or conserved land or water on which development is
indefinitely set aside. The term green space or greenspace is often used in the same manner.

Overdevelopment refers to a process by which natural resources are impacted by urbanization and/or
road construction, at a rate significantly harmful to the ecosystem. Environmental activism is a frequent
response to overdevelopment, as well as are many fields of academic study. Sustainability is the
conceptual goal that is frequently cited[weasel words] as a response.

Rresidential area is a land use in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial
areas.

In land use, a setback is the distance which a building or other structure is set back from a street or
road, a river or other stream, a shore or flood plain, or any other place which needs protection.
Depending on the jurisdiction, other things like fences, landscaping, septic tanks, and various potential
hazards or nuisances might be regulated. Setbacks are generally set in municipal ordinances or zoning.
Setbacks along state, provincial, or federal highways may also be set in the laws of the state or province,
or the federal government.

Homes usually have a setback from the property boundary, so that they cannot be placed too close
together. This would not only be psychologically uncomfortable to residents staring through windows
into each others' blank exterior walls (or even into windows, causing a privacy problem), but would
present a fire hazard, particularly during windy conditions. Setbacks may also allow for public utilities to
access the buildings, and for access to utility meters. In some municipalities, setbacks are based on
street right-of-ways, and not the front property line.

A shopping mall, shopping center, or shopping centre is a building or set of buildings which contain
retail units, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit.

In an urban setting, a skyway, catwalk, or skywalk is a type of pedway consisting of an enclosed or

covered bridge between two buildings. This protects pedestrians from the weather. These skyways are
usually owned by businesses, and are therefore not public spaces (compare with sidewalk). Skyways
usually connect on the first few floors above the ground-level floor, though they are sometimes much
higher, as in Petronas Towers (though this skyway is often referred to as a sky bridge). The space in the
buildings connected by skyways is often devoted to retail business, so areas around the skyway may
operate as a shopping mall. Non-commercial areas with closely associated buildings, such as university
campuses, can often have skyways and/or tunnels connecting buildings.
A strip mall (also called a shopping plaza or mini-mall) is an open area shopping center where the stores
are arranged in a row, with a sidewalk in front. Strip malls are typically developed as a unit and have
large parking lots in front. They face major traffic arterials and tend to be self-contained with few
pedestrian connections to surrounding neighborhoods.

Subdivision is the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via
a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known as a subdivision in the United States. If it is used
for housing it is typically known as a housing subdivision or housing development, although some
developers tend to call these areas communities.

Subdivisions may also be for the purpose of commercial or industrial development, and the results vary
from retail malls with independently owned out parcels to industrial parks.

Synekism is a concept in urban studies coined by Edward Soja. It refers to the dynamic formation of the
polis state - the union of several small urban settlements under the rule of a "capital" city (or so-called
city-state or urban system). Soja's definition of synekism, mentioned in Writing the city spatially, is "the
stimulus of urban agglomeration."

In law, an unincorporated area is a region of land that is not a part of any municipality. To "incorporate"
in this context means to form a municipal corporation, a city or town with its own government. Thus, an
unincorporated community is usually not subject to or taxed by a municipal government. Such regions
are generally administered by default as a part of larger administrative divisions, such as a township,
borough, county, state, province, canton, parish, or country. It is not unknown, but uncommon, for small
towns in fiscal crisis to disincorporate in order to have services provided by a higher administration.

Urbanology is the study of specialized problems of cities (as planning, education, sociology, and politics).

Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is the spreading of a city and its suburbs over rural land
at the fringe of an urban area.[1] Residents of sprawling neighborhoods tend to live in single-family
homes and commute by automobile to work. Low population density is an indicator of sprawl. Urban
planners emphasize the qualitative aspects of sprawl such as the lack of transportation options and
pedestrian friendly neighborhoods. Conservationists tend to focus on the actual amount of land that has
been urbanized by spraw

White flight is a term for the demographic trend in which white people move away from urban
neighborhoods that are becoming racially desegregated to white suburbs and exurbs.[1][2][3] The
phenomenon was first named in the United States, but has occurred in other countries as well. A major
contributing factor for the start of this trend in the United States is considered to be the 1954 Brown v.
Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which began the process of desegregating the country's
public schools.

A Zone of Visual Influence is the area from which a development is theoretically visible. It is usually
represented as a map using color to indicate visibility.

Zone of transition is the area between the factory zone and the working class zone in the Concentric
zone model of urban structure devised by Ernest Burgess. The zone of transition is an area of flux where
the land use is changing.