Ch 14 Population and Urbanization Key Terms

alienation: Marx's term for workers' lack of connection to the product of their labor, caused by their assignation to repetitive tasks on a small part of a product; this leads to a sense of powerlessness and normlessness; also used in the general sense of not feeling a part of something (p.394)

basic demographic equation: growth rate = births - deaths + net migration (p.383)

city: a place in which a large number of people are permanently based and do not produce their own food (p.386)

community: a place with which people identify, where they sense that they belong and that others care about what happens to them (p.394)

crude birth rate: the annual number of births per 1,000 population (p.382)

crude death rate: the annual number of deaths per 1,000 population (p.382)

deindustrialization: a process by which fewer people work in manufacturing; one reason is automation, while another is the globalization of capitalism, which moves manufacturing jobs to countries where labor costs less (p.400)

demographic transition: a three-stage historical process of population growth: first, high birth rates and high death rates; second, high birth rates and low death rates; and third, low birth rates and low death rates; a fourth stage of population shrinkage may be emerging in the Most Industrialized Nations (p.375)

demographic variables: the three factors that influence population growth: fertility, mortality, and net migration (p.381)

demography: the study of the size, composition, growth, and distribution of human populations (p.374)

disinvestment: the withdrawal of investments by banks, which seals the fate of an urban area

edge city: a large clustering of service facilities and residences near a highway intersection that provides a sense of place to people who live, shop, and work there (p.390)

enterprise zone: the use of economic incentives in a designated area with the intention of encouraging investment there (

exponential growth curve: a pattern of growth in which numbers double during approximately equal intervals, thus accelerating in the latter stages (p.374)

fertility rate: the number of children that the average woman bears (p.381)

gentrification: the displacement of the poor as the relatively affluent purchase and renovate their homes (p.390)

growth rate: the net change in a population after adding births, subtracting deaths, and either adding or subtracting net migration (p.383)

human ecology: Robert Park's term for the relationship between people and their environment (natural resources, such as land); also called urban ecology (p.392)

invasion-succession cycle: the process of one group of people displacing a group whose racial ethnic or social class characteristics differ from their own (p.393)

Malthus theorem: an observation by Thomas Malthus that although the food supply increases arithmetically (from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, and so on), population grows geometrically (from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16, and so forth) (p.374)

megagcity: a city often million or more residents (p.387)

megalopolis: an urban area consisting of at least two metropolises and their many suburbs (p.387)

metropolis: a central city surrounded by smaller cities and their suburbs (p.387)

metropolitan statistical area (MSA): a central city and the urbanized counties adjacent to it (p.390)

net migration rate: the difference between the number of immigrants and emigrants per 1,000 population (p.382)

population pyramid: a graphic representation of a population, divided into age and sex (p.380)

population shrinkage: the process by which a country's population becomes smaller because its birth rate and immigration are too low to replace those who die and emigrate (p.376)

redlining: the officers of a bank refusing to make loans in a particular area p.400)

suburb: a community adjacent to a city (p.390)

suburbanization: the movement from the city to the suburbs (p.390)

urban renewal: the rehabilitation of a rundown area of a city, which usually results in the displacement of the poor who are living there (PAOO)

urbanization: the process by which an increasing proportion of a population lives in a city (p.387)

zero population growth: a demographic condition in which women bear only enough children to reproduce the population (p.385)