List of urban studies topics - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Urban studies is the term for a diverse range of disciplines and approaches to the study of all aspects of cities, their suburbs, and other urban areas. This includes urban economics, urban planning, urban architecture, urban ecology, urban transportation systems, urban politics, and urban social relations. This can be contrasted with the study of rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

areas and rural lifestyles.

A

architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

- arcology

Arcology

Arcology, a portmanteau of the words "architecture" and "ecology", is a set of architectural design principles aimed toward the design of enormous habitats of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and...

- allotment (gardening)

Allotment (gardening)

An allotment garden, often called simply an allotment, is a plot of land made available for individual, non-professional gardening. Such plots are formed by subdividing a piece of land into a few or up to several hundreds of land parcels that are assigned to individuals or families...

- Automobile dependency

Automobile dependency

Automobile dependency is a term coined by Professors Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy to capture the predicament of most cities in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, large cities in Europe....

- autonomous building

Autonomous building

An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases, public roads.Advocates of...

C

car-free zone

Car-free zone

Pedestrian zones are areas of a city or town reserved for pedestrian only use and in which some or all automobile traffic may be prohibited. They are instituted by communities who feel that it is desirable to have pedestrian-only areas...

- car-pool lane
- city

City

A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

- community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

- community currency
- community emergency response team

Community Emergency Response Team

In the United States a community emergency response team can refer to* one of five federal programs promoted under the umbrella organization Citizen Corps, which is funded in part by the Stafford Act;...

- commuting

Commuting

Commuting is regular travel between one's place of residence and place of work or full time study. It sometimes refers to any regular or often repeated traveling between locations when not work related.- History :...

- congestion charge
- consumerism

Consumerism

Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...

- co-housing
-cultural diversity

Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...

-cultural activities

E

ecological health

Ecological health

Ecological health or ecological integrity or ecological damage are the symptoms of an ecosystem's pending loss of carrying capacity, its ability to perform ecological services, or a pending ecocide, due to cumulative causes such as pollution. it can also be defined as farming so as to minimize the...

- economies of agglomeration

Economies of agglomeration

The term economies of agglomeration is used in urban economics to describe the benefits that firms obtain when locating near each other . This concept relates to the idea of economies of scale and network effects...

- ecological footprint

Ecological footprint

The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to...

- Eco-industrial park

Eco-industrial park

An eco-industrial park is an industrial park in which businesses cooperate with each other and with the local community in an attempt to reduce waste and pollution, efficiently share resources , and help achieve sustainable development, with the intention of increasing economic gains and improving...

- Ecological sanitation

Ecological sanitation

Ecological sanitation, also known as ecosan or eco-san, are terms coined to describe a form of sanitation that usually involves urine diversion and the recycling of water and nutrients contained within human wastes back into the local environment....

- eco-village
- education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

- electricity generation

Electricity generation

Electricity generation is the process of generating electric energy from other forms of energy.The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday...

- energy

Energy

In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

- environmental health

Environmental health

Environmental health is the branch of public health that is concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment that may affect human health...

- environmental studies

Environmental studies

Environmental studies is the academic field which systematically studies human interaction with the environment. It is a broad interdisciplinary field of study that includes the natural environment, built environment, and the sets of relationships between them...

- externality

Externality

In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit...

H

haram

Haram

The Arabic term has a meaning of "sanctuary" or "holy site" in Islam.-Etymology:The Arabic language has two separate words, and , both derived from the same triliteral Semitic root . Both of these words can mean "forbidden" and/or "sacred" in a general way, but each has also developed some...

- hard energy
- housing

Housing

Housing may refer to:* A House* Social or public housing* Enclosure containing some equipment or mechanism*House dance...

- Hudson's village model

Hudson's village model

Hudson's village model is a geographical model of United Kingdom villages which shows the development of rural settlement patterns in villages over time. It was developed around the Lincoln, Lincolnshire area by Hudson...

- human development theory

Human development theory

Human development theory is a theory that merges older ideas from ecological economics, sustainable development, welfare economics, and feminist economics. It seeks to avoid the overt normative politics of most so-called "green economics" by justifying its theses strictly in ecology, economics and...

P

pedestrian-friendly
- pedestrian overpass
- pedestrian underpass
- personal rapid transit

Personal rapid transit

Personal rapid transit , also called podcar, is a public transportation mode featuring small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built guide ways...

- Place

Location (geography)

The terms location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term 'location' generally implies a higher degree of can certainty than "place" which often has an ambiguous boundary relying more on human/social attributes of place identity...

- Place identity

Place identity

Place identity refers to a cluster of ideas about place and identity in the fields of geography, urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture, environmental psychology, and urban sociology/ecological sociology. It concerns the meaning and significance of places for their inhabitants and users...

- Placemaking

Placemaking

Placemaking is a term that began to be used in the 1970s by architects and planners to describe the process of creating squares, plazas, parks, streets and waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable or interesting...

- planned cities
- political economy

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

- productivism

Productivism

Productivism is the belief that measurable economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human organization , and that "more production is necessarily good".-Arguments for productivism:...

- public transport

Public transport

Public transport is a shared passenger transportation service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, car pooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.Public transport modes include buses, trolleybuses, trams...

- Principles of Intelligent Urbanism

Principles of Intelligent Urbanism

Principles of Intelligent Urbanism is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns...

R

Radical planning

Radical planning is a stream of urban planning which seeks to manage development in an equitable and community-based manner.The seminal text to the radical planning movement is Foundations for a Radical Concept in Planning , by Stephen Grabow and Allen Heskin...

- respiratory health
- recycling

Recycling

Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...

- redlining

Redlining

Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...

- regenerative development
- regenerative finance
- rural

Rural

-races, ethnic groups

S

schools
service economy

Service economy

Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. One is the increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. Services account for a higher percentage of US GDP than 20 years ago...

- seven-generation sustainability
- sewage system
- shared space

Shared space

Shared space is an urban design concept aimed at integrated use of public spaces. It encourages traffic engineers, urban planners and experts from other fields to consult with users of public space when planning and designing streets and squares in both built and non-built environments...

- shift-share
- smog

Smog

Smog is a type of air pollution; the word "smog" is a portmanteau of smoke and fog. Modern smog is a type of air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine...

- soft energy
- street reclaiming
- suburban
- suburban colonization

Suburban colonization

The suburban colonization process is observed in larger cities that have suffered population and political power loss to suburbs. Other colonialism is often studied for the effects upon those already inhabiting the colonized area, but students of suburban colonization tend to take greater interest...

T

traffic calming

Traffic calming

Traffic calming is intended to slow or reduce motor-vehicle traffic in order to improve the living conditions for residents as well as to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Urban planners and traffic engineers have many strategies for traffic calming...

- toll bridge

Toll bridge

A toll bridge is a bridge over which traffic may pass upon payment of a toll, or fee.- History :The practice of collecting tolls on bridges probably harks back to the days of ferry crossings where people paid a fee to be ferried across stretches of water. As boats became impractical to carry large...

- toll road

Toll road

A toll road is a privately or publicly built road for which a driver pays a toll for use. Structures for which tolls are charged include toll bridges and toll tunnels. Non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically fuel tax or general tax funds...

- terrorism

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

- transit-oriented development

Transit-oriented development

A transit-oriented development is a mixed-use residential or commercial area designed to maximize access to public transport, and often incorporates features to encourage transit ridership...

U

urbanization

Urbanization

Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....

- urban agriculture

Urban agriculture

Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around, a village, town or city. Urban agriculture in addition can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agro-forestry and horticulture...

- urban anthropology

Urban anthropology

Urban anthropology is a subset of anthropology concerned with issues of urbanization, poverty, and neoliberalism. It is a relatively new and developing field, which became consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s....

- urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

- urban car
- urban culture

Urban culture

Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. In the United States, Urban culture may also sometimes be used as a euphemistic reference to contemporary African American culture.- African American culture :...

- urban decay

Urban decay

Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...

- urban debt
- urban design

Urban design

Urban design concerns the arrangement, appearance and functionality of towns and cities, and in particular the shaping and uses of urban public space. It has traditionally been regarded as a disciplinary subset of urban planning, landscape architecture, or architecture and in more recent times has...

- urban ecology

Urban ecology

Urban ecology is a subfield of ecology which deals with the interaction between organisms in an urban or urbanized community, and their interaction with that community. Urban ecologists study the trees, rivers, wildlife and open spaces found in cities to understand the extent of those resources and...

- urban exploration

Urban exploration

Urban exploration is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities. Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or...

- urban geography

Urban geography

Urban geography is the study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority of economic activities are in the secondary sector and tertiary sectors...

- urban history

Urban History

Urban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach tends to be multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urban sociology, urban geography and archaeology.At...

- Urban Land Institute

Urban Land Institute

The Urban Land Institute, or ULI, is a non-profit research and education organization with offices in Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, and London...

- urban outdoorsman
- urban planner

Urban planner

An urban planner or city planner is a professional who works in the field of urban planning/land use planning for the purpose of optimizing the effectiveness of a community's land use and infrastructure. They formulate plans for the development and management of urban and suburban areas, typically...

- urban planning

Urban planning

Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....

- urban primacy

Urban primacy

In urban studies, urban primacy indicates the largest city in a country. Such a city is called a primate city. In other words, urban primacy can be defined as the central place in an urban or city network that has acquired or obtained a great level of dominance. The level of dominance is measured...

- urban renewal

Urban renewal

Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...

- urban secession

Urban secession

Urban secession is a city's secession from its surrounding region, to form a new political unit. This new unit is usually a subdivision of the same country as its surroundings, but in some cases, full sovereignty may be attained, in which case the unit is usually called a city-state...

- urban sociology

Urban sociology

Urban sociology is the sociological study of social life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doing so providing inputs for planning and policy making. Like...

- urban sprawl

Urban sprawl

Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...

- urban tribe

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

- urban wilderness

Urban wilderness

Where appreciation for the importance of biodiversity meets the New Urbanism movement, one can find the pursuit of the creation of urban wilderness...

- urbicide

Urbicide

Urbicide is a term which literally translates as "violence against the city." The term was first coined by the author Michael Moorcock in 1963 and later used by critics of 1960s urban restructuring in the US...

- unemployment

Unemployment

Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...

- urbanomics

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See also