Urban Field Glossary
This is a glossary (work in progress) of the surprising amount of neologisms associated with urban fields. The glossary is restricted to terms that are more or less widely used, e.g. commonly cited in various works or used without reference. A number of related urban concepts is included for further illumination. If you can think of other such terms, better descriptions or interesting details, please mail to: Stefan Metaal
Title of one of the better publications on the subject. The 100-mile measure originates with Friedmann and Miller.
Is a term associated with low-value urban field employment centres. As opposed to office parks or technopoles.
Refers to a low rise type of strongly deconcentrated urbanised landscape. Broadacre city is still very 'modern' in the combination of individualism and uniformism that is typical of modernist utopias. Still, in its emphasis on deconcentration and decentralisation, this vision is surprisingly close to contemporary concepts such as Soja's exopolis.
The archetypical vision of a spatious high-rise environment, which is neither urban nor suburban, without coming close to today's urban field realities. (see the Brasilias of the Parallel Universes - under my selection of related Web Articles - for some entertaining megalomanic modernist visions).
A modernist vision.
This term is quite different from Fishman's well known technoburb. It suggests that for the lack of any focal points of urbanity, the individual dwelling becomes the only type of 'center' people are able to experience.
Is perhaps the earliest term that refers to polycentricity as an important element in urban processes.
What used to be restricted to cities is now happening everywhere. Urbanism is worldwide. Perhaps the whole world is a giant city.
By far the most frequently used term. Edge cities encompass offices, dwellings and all sorts of urban resources, without, however, containing a historical downtown core. They appear as clusters of urban activity along the highways that circle large American cities -- which accounts for the "edge" in the term.
A similar term to edge city, meaning "the city without". In this case the main feature is not clustering, but endless sprawl, lack of structure and the absence of a core.
Exurban is neither urban, nor rural, nor suburban. At the moment, it seems to be the most promising and neutral adjective to describe the polycentric, and functionally deconcentrated development typical of urban fields. Perhaps also because 'edge city' does not have a suitable adjective.
In its original formulation, the garden city is arelatively self-contained urban unit and not a residential suburb. However, the concept was used mostly to give ideological substance to the planning and development of residential suburbs. In its misuses, the term is akin to 'new town'.
Global cities form a powerful network across the globe. Capital flows accumulate in these nodes. States, or cities as the capital of a state, become less important. Related to the urban field concepts because of the emphasis on decentralised flows.
This idea rejects global homogenization. Worldwide cultural flows reach locales very differently and intermingle with local meanings. Therefore, unique new mixtures of culture come into being, which in turn may enter the global flow. The term is in some ways similar to the earlier concepts of secular city and ecumenopolis, and also bares resemblance to Appadurai's -scapes, and postcolonialism in general.
Gottmann wanted to distinguish the new residential areas in the megalopolis from suburbs. In his eyes, suburbs are satelites of a specific town. The adjective 'interurban' refers to residential areas between cities, which are neither urban nor rural.
Megacities combine elements of global cities and urban fields. They typically contain a central business district which is a node in the global space of flows. They also contain areas that are disconnected from the flows between global cities or the flows within the urban field.
Refers in the first instance to the cluster of cities on the East Coast of the United States. An urban region classifies as a megalopolis when it has a density of 500 inhabitants per square mile (and many more of such arbitrary numbers). Though worried about crowding, congestion and decentralised administration, Gottmann regarded the new environment as potentially beneficial to modern consumers. The concept predates deconcentration of business.
A modernist vision.
Widely used concept. Refers originally to cities with a network of satelite (new) towns, but it is now often used as an urban field concept.
A modernist vision.
Appeared almost everywhere in Europe in the twentieth century. The goal of this type of planning was originally to prevent sprawl and congestion. The result was low-rise but relatively dense large residential suburbs with hardly any employment centres.
A 'movement' that opposes endless suburban sprawl and exurban development, by re-introducing the central street, a mixture of housing types, a combination of functions and low-intensity public space. So far, it is representative of the latest type of American suburban development; with a large area of lower and higher middle-class suburban housing around a town or village theme.
Ways of life might not be linked to spaces at all. The predominance of a postmodern non-place landscape has been proclaimed, drowning the classic identity of city, village and even that of suburb, without replacing it with something meaningful. People are thought to lead a nomadic existence in a world where places no longer give them a true sense of identity, a sense of 'where' they are.
Or urban nomads, a term often used to depict the internationalised and highly mobile group of professionals and managers from the head-offices of multinationals. Also used as a term for inhabitants of urban fields that do not seem to have any long term connection with specific locales.
Are places of transport and transit which do not have an identity of any historical significance, thereby illuminating the gradual disappearance of the distinction between "centre" and "periphery" and the diminishing role of space and place in general. Often translated as 'non-place'.
See 'non-place urban realm' for the initial meaning of the term and 'non-lieux' for the contemporary discussion on non-places.
Even in the 1960s, a landscape that was neither urban nor rural was not inspiring to everyone. Urban theorists such as Webber began to doubt whether the new environments in urban fields had a tangible or meaningful identity.
High-value urban field employment centres and the most important ingredient for current concepts; it is in large part what makes the suburbs 'urban'
Similar to 'non-place urban realm'.
Used mostly to describe the urban field characteristics of the changing European metropolitan regions.
One of the classic concepts.
'Finanscapes', 'mediascapes' and the like have become more important to global society than actual landscapes or infrastructure.
Surprisingly, this is a theological concept. Ecumenical, cosmopolitan attitudes are hoped and expected to become more important then colloquial, parochial ones. 'Urbanism' as a cosmopolitan, dynamic and tolerant force, should encompass the entire world.
One of the most important 'spatial' concepts at the moment, which postulates that places are less and less important for much of the dominant flows of capital, information and people. In the contemporary urban environment, the megacity, segmentation occurs, while some areas remain disconnected from the dominant flows.
A member of the edge city family. The uglyness of the term is precisely what motivated its inventor to coin it, since he expresses a certain nostalgia for the classic (officeless) suburb.
Refers to technological innovation centres, situated mostly in the periphery of great metropolitan areas. They can be considered specific types of edge cites, important to global flows.
Tired of trying to fit crisscross relations into the old hierarchical model, these theorists took a radically different course. Something was happening that went beyond cities and countryside. See my definition for more details: What is an urban field?
This term usually depicts a group of towns around and including a city and could therefore be condidered a predecessor of the urban field concept. However, in Geddes' formulation it refered to the complete process of production, from farming and mining to supposedly parallel industrial crafts in the city. His 'urban region' is closer to a perfectionist urban-rural model than to an urban field.
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100-Mile City (Deyan Sudjic)