| A | B |
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| Annexation | Legally adding land area to a city in the United States. |
| Barriadas | Squatter settlements found in the periphery of Latin American cities. |
| Census tract | An area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published; in urbanized areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods. |
| Central business district (CBD) | The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered. |
| Centrality | The strength of an urban center in its capacity to attract producers and consumers to its facilities; a city's "reach" into the surrounding region. |
| Centralization | The movement of people, capital, services, and government into the central city. |
| City | An urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an independent, self-governing unit. |
| Cityscapes | Similar to a landscape, but used to refer to that of a large urban area. |
| Combined statistical area (CSA) | In the United States, two or more contiguous core-based statistical areas tied together by commuting patterns. |
| Commercialization | The transformation of an area of a city into an area attractive to residents and tourists alike in terms of economic activity. |
| Commuter zone | Outermost zone of the concentric zone model that represents people who choose to live in residential suburbs and drive into the Central Business District to work each day. |
| Concentric zone model | A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially arranged in a series of rings. |
| Core based statistical area (CBSA) | In the United States, the combination of all metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas. |
| Council of government | A cooperative agency consisting of representatives of local governments in a metropolitan area in the United States. |
| Decentralization | The process of dispersing decision-making outwards from the center of authority. |
| Density gradient | The change in density in an urban area from the center to the periphery. |
| Edge city | A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area. |
| Emerging cities | City currently not having a significant population but increasing in size at a fast rate. |
| Ethnic neighborhood | Neighborhood, typically situated in a larger metropolitan city and constructed by or comprised of a local culture, in which a local culture can practice its customs. |
| Favela | A shantytown or slum, especially in Brazil. |
| Filtering | A process of change in the use of a house, from single-family owner occupancy to abandonment. |
| Food desert | An area in a developed country where healthy food is difficult to obtain. |
| Gateway city | A settlement which acts as a link between two areas. |
| Gentrification | A process of converting an urban neighborhood from a predominantly low-income renter-occupied area to a predominantly middle-class owner-occupied area. |
| Great cities | Cities with populations over one million. |
| Greenbelt | A ring of land maintained as parks, agriculture, or other types of open space to limit the sprawl of an urban area. |
| In-filling | Building on empty parcels of land within a checkerboard pattern of development. |
| Inner city | Central area of a major city; often applied to poorer parts of a US city center. |
| Invasion and succession | Process by which new immigrants to a city move to dominate or take over areas or neighborhoods occupied by older immigrant groups. |
| Lateral commuting | Traveling from one suburb to another suburb to work. |
| Megacities | Cities with more than 10 million people. |
| Megalopolis/conurbation | Term used to designate large coalescing supercities that are forming in diverse parts of the world. |
| Metropolitan statistical area | In the U.S., a central city of at least 50,000 population, the county within the city is located, and adjacent counties meeting of several tests indicating a functional connection to the central city. |
| Micropolitan statistical area | An urbanized area of between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants, the county in which it is found, and adjacent counties tied to the city. |
| Multiple nuclei model | A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a collection of nodes of activities. |
| Office park | Agglomeration of office buildings with facilities established for infrastructure to enhance the possibility of business success. |
| Peak land value intersection | The area with the greatest land value and commercial trade. |
| Peripheral model | A model of North American urban areas consisting of an inner city surrounded by large suburban residential and business areas tied together by a beltway or ring road. |
| Planned communities | A city, town, or community that was designed from scratch, growing more or less to a particular plan. |
| Postindustrial city | A stage of economic development in which service activities become relatively more important than secondary and primary economic activities. |
| Postmodern urban landscape | The material character of a more contemporary urban area. |
| Primary census statistical area (PCSA) | In the United States, all of the combined statistical areas plus all of the remaining metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas. |
| Public housing | Housing owned by the government; in the United States, it is rented to residents with low incomes, and the rents are set as 30% of the families' incomes. |
| Racial steering | The practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on race or ethnicity. |
| Redlining | A process by which banks draw lines on a map and refuse to lend money to purchase or improve property within the boundaries. |
| Restrictive covenants | A statement written into a property deed that restricts the use of land in some way. |
| Rush (or peak) hour | The four consecutive 15-minute periods in the morning and evening with the heaviest volumes of traffic. |
| Sector model | A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are arranged around a series of sectors, or wedges, radiating out from the central business district. |
| Segregation | The separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences. |
| Slum | A district of a city marked by poverty and inferior living conditions. |
| Smart growth | Legislation and regulations to limit suburban sprawl and preserve farmland. |
| Social area analysis | Statistical analysis used to identify where people of similar living standards, ethnic background, and lifestyle live within an urban area. |
| Sprawl | Development of new housing sites at relatively low density and at locations that are not contiguous to the existing built-up area. |
| Squatter settlement | An area within a city in a less developed country in which people illegally establish residences on land they do not own or rent and erect homemade structures. |
| Street pattern (grid, dendritic, access, control) | Way in which streets are designed; types are grid, dendritic (few streets based on the amount of traffic each is intended to carry). |
| Suburb | A subsidiary urban area surrounding and connected to the central city; many are exclusively residential; others have their own commercial centers or shopping malls. |
| Suburbanization | Movement of upper- and middle-class people from urban core areas to the surrounding outskirts to escape pollution as well as deteriorating social conditions. |
| Symbolic landscape | Smaller landscapes that symbolize a bigger area or category. |
| Tenement | A building in which several families rent rooms or apartments, often with little sanitation or safety. |
| Underclass | A group in society prevented from participating in the material benefits of a more developed society because of a variety of social and economic characteristics. |
| Urban area | A dense core of census tracts, densely settled suburbs, and low density land that links the dense suburbs with the core. |
| Urban cluster | In the United States, an urban area with between 2,500 and 50,000 inhabitants. |
| Urban growth rate | The rate of an urban population. |
| Urban hydrology | How a city manages to get clean water to its citizens and back into the water cycle. |
| Urban morphology | The study of the physical form and structure of urban places. |
| Urban renewal | Program in which cities identify blighted inner-city neighborhoods, acquire the properties from private owners, reallocate the residents and businesses, clear the site, build new roads and utilities, and turn the land over to private developers. |
| Urbanization | An increase in the percentage and in the number of people living in urban settlements. |
| Urbanized area | In the United States, an urban area with at least 50,000 inhabitants. |
| Urbanized population | The proportion of a country's population living in cities. |
| Zone in transition | An area of mixed commercial and residential land uses surrounding the Central Business District. |
| Zoning ordinance | A law that limits the permitted uses of land and maximum density of development in a community. |
