Urban Environments Keywords

Accessibility: the ease with which one location can be reached from another; the degree to which people are able to obtain goods and services, such as housing and healthcare

Brownfield site: land that has been previously used, abandoned and now awaits a new use

Congestion: acute overcrowding caused by high densities of traffic, business and people

Counterurbanisation: the movement of people and employment from major cities to smaller cities and towns as well as to rural areas

Environmental quality: the degree to which an area is free from air, water, noise and visual pollution

Ethnic group: a group of people united by a common characteristic such as race, language or religion

Greenfield site: land that has not been used for urban development

Land value: the market price of a piece of land; what people or businesses are prepared to pay for owning and occupying it

Megacity: a city or urban area with a population larger than 10 million

Poverty: where people are seriously lacking in terms of income, food, housing, basic services (clean water and sewage disposal) and access to education and healthcare. See also Social Deprivation.

Shanty town: an area of slum housing built of salvaged materials and located either on the city edge or within the city on hazardous ground previously avoided by urban development; I like to think of it as: a slum settlement (sometimes illegal or unauthorized) of impoverished people who live in improvised dwellings made from scrap materials: packing boxes, corrugated iron and plastic sheeting, often on undesirable locations such as steep slopes or on the city edge.

Social deprivation: when the well-being and quality of life of people falls below a minimum level

Social segregation: the clustering together of people with similar characteristics (class, ethnicity, wealth) into separate residential areas

Socio-economic group: a group of people sharing the same characteristics such as income level, type of employment and class

Squatter community: see Shanty town

Suburbanisation: the outward spread of the urban area, often at lower densities compared with the older parts of the city or town

Urban regeneration: the investment of capital in the reviving of old, urban areas by either improving what is there or clearing it away and rebuilding

Urban re-imaging: changing the image of an urban area and the way people view it

Urban managers: people who make important decisions affecting urban areas, such as planners, politicians and developers

Urbanisation: growth in the percentage of people living and working in urban areas