Urban Planning Terms: Definitions and Concepts
Vocabulary: Functions
Economic sectors and activities devoted to the population living in a city. They provide the necessary resources for the life of the city and determine its development. The largest cities have more complex functional exercises. These include residential, commercial, industrial, and administrative functions.
Urban Morphology
The characteristic shape of a city depending on its situation, location, or plan. It is the result of the historical evolution of the city and planning.
Conurbation
An urban form that arises when two or more autonomous and independent cities physically merge because of their large urban growth. It may result in an urban and regional scale greater than a megalopolis.
Metropolitan Areas
An urban form with a central city with high functional activity, which organizes a wide area encompassing several satellite cities or dormitories. They maintain intensive exchanges with the central city to which they are linked by good transport facilities.
City-Satellites
Cities of small or medium size, with residential, industrial, or mixed functions, near a large city that sometimes arise to functionally decongest the major cities.
Widening
An urban approach made outside of old cities due to the lack of serviced land for housing demand by the bourgeoisie and the working classes. They adopt orthogonal plans with home-building blocks. Next to the center were occupied by the bourgeoisie, others less favored by the working classes.
Garden City
A 19th-century urban planning concept that sought to unite the city and the countryside. Located on the outskirts of the city, they consist of single-family homes with gardens and abundant green spaces and low population densities. An example is Arturo Soria Ciudad Lineal in Spain.
Planning
Develop and implement actions to improve urban planning and the quality of life of the inhabitants. Manifested in the layout of streets, facilities, or types of buildings.
Urban Zoning
Different functions of the city located spatially in a sector of the city, closely related to land uses.
Functionality
An urban current emerged in Europe after World War 1, intended to adapt the buildings to the role they would play. Principal Representative: Le Corbusier, projects carried out city blocks composed of high-rise buildings for maximum space allocated for green areas. They solved the problem of space and were based on zoning.
CBD (Central Business District)
The business center of a city. It can be in the center of the city, well-served areas, or buildings of singular prestige. It concentrates banks, offices of major corporations, and centers of economic and financial power.
Fixing Lines
Preventing or encouraging the growth of a city through certain physical or human areas. They mark the city limits but may yield to population pressure and speculative construction.
Speculation
Excessive gain achieved from a deal with a good, good, or value.
Subsidized Housing
Public land offering managed by public companies. No more than 90 m2.
Social Housing
Houses for disadvantaged social classes who cannot afford to buy a home.
Rehabilitation
An operation to improve and conserve buildings of interest, keeping the urban environment. It aims to improve the quality of housing in compliance with the urban environment.
General Urban Plan
Proposed development of the city that attempts to correct sprawl and preserve the heritage of the city. Plan your city map and applications based on soil use. They classify land use.
Urban Planning and Urbanism
Objective: to order an entire municipality, both rural and urban land, designing new spaces and transforming existing ones to adapt to the uses sought by society.
Gain
Part of the value of a good net of expenses incurred for the same benefit of which is generally perceived by the owner.
Building Type
Types of buildings we can find in a city. It varies in the type of land use and is one of the fundamental aspects of the morphology of a city. We can distinguish between closed buildings built vertically, with no gaps, and open buildings, with houses built horizontally and a low abundance of green spaces.
Neighborhood
Geographical and administrative boundaries with historical, cultural, and economic homogeneity.
District
An administrative unit in which a city is divided, for various purposes such as email, the census, or the city council.