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Chapter 4
Question | Answer |
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Transition zone | An area of spatial change where the peripheries of two adjacent realms or regions join; marked by a gradual shift (rather than a sharp break) in the characteristics that distinguish these neighboring geographic entities from one another. |
Geographic information system (GIS) | A form of spatial analysis that integrates computer hardware, mapping software, and such specialized tools as models and algorithms. A versatile technique that is constantly being expanded in its applications |
Digital elevation model | A representation of a unit of terrain obtained from remote sensing imagery. |
Land hemisphere | The half of the globe containing the greatest amount of land surface, centered on western Europe. |
City-state | An independent political entity consisting of a single city with (and sometimes without) an immediate hinterland. |
Local functional specialization | A hallmark of Europe’s economic geography that later spread to many other parts of the world, whereby particular people in particular places concentrate on the production of particular goods and services. |
Industrial Revolution | The term applied to the social and economic changes in agriculture, commerce, and especially manufacturing and urbanization that resulted from technological innovations and greater specialization in late-eighteenth-century Europe. |
Sovereignty | Controlling power and influence over a territory, especially by the government of an autonomous state over the people it rules. |
Nation-state | A country whose population possesses a substantial degree of cultural homogeneity and unity. The ideal form to which most states aspire—a political unit wherein the territorial state coincides with the area settled by a certain national group or people. |
Nation | A term encompassing all the citizens of a state, it also has other connotations. Definitions now tend to refer to a group of tightly knit people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, and others. homogeneity prevails within few states |
Indo-European language family | The major world language family that dominates the European geographic realm. This language family is also the most widely dispersed globally and about half of humankind speaks one of its languages. |
Complementarity | Exists when two regions, through an exchange of raw materials and/or finished products, can specifically satisfy each other’s demands. |
Transferability | The capacity to move a good from one place to another at a bearable cost; the ease with which a commodity may be transported. |
Central business district (CBD) | The downtown heart of a central city; marked by high land values, a concentration of business and commerce, and the clustering of the tallest buildings. |
Centrifugal forces | A term employed to designate forces that tend to divide a country—such as internal religious, linguistic, ethnic, or ideological differences. |
Centripetal forces | Forces that unite and bind a country together—such as a strong national culture, shared ideological objectives, and a common faith. |
Supranationalism | A venture involving three or more states—political, economic, and/or cultural cooperation to promote shared objectives. |
Euro Zone | The 19 countries (as of mid-2016) whose official currency is the euro. |
Schengen Area | The territory constituted by most of Europe’s countries within which people are free to cross international boundaries without formal border checks. |
Four Motors of Europe | Each is a high-technology-driven region marked by exceptional industrial vitality and economic success not only within Europe but on the global scene as well. |
Devolution | The process whereby regions within a state demand and gain political strength and growing autonomy at the expense of the central government. |
Asylum | Legally protected residency status; usually granted by a host country to immigrants fleeing political oppression in their former homeland. |
Microstate | A sovereign state that contains a minuscule land area and population. They do not have the attributes of “complete” states, but are on the map as tiny yet independent entities nonetheless. |
Urban system | A hierarchical network or grouping of urban areas within a finite geographic area, such as a country. |
Primate city | A country’s largest city—ranking atop its urban hierarchy—most expressive of the national culture and usually (but not in every case) the capital city as well. |
Site | The internal locational attributes of an urban center, including its local spatial organization and physical setting. |
Situation | The external locational attributes of an urban center; its relative location or regional position with reference to other non-local places. |
Estuary | The widening mouth of a river as it reaches the sea; land subsidence or a rise in sea level has overcome the tendency to form a delta. |
Conurbation | General term used to identify a large multimetropolitan complex formed by the coalescence of two or more major urban areas. |
Landlocked location | Interior state who is surrounded by land |
World-city | A large city with particularly significant international (economic) linkages that also has a high ranking in the global urban system. Leading world-cities include London, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Paris. |
Metropolis | Urban agglomeration consisting of a (central) city and its suburban ring. See also urban (metropolitan) area. |
Break-of-bulk | A location along a transport route where goods must be transferred from one carrier to another. |
Entrepôt | A place, usually a port city, where goods are imported, stored, and transshipped; a break-of-bulk point. |
Shatter belt | Region caught between stronger, colliding external cultural-political forces, under persistent stress, and often fragmented by aggressive rivals. Eastern Europe is a classic example. |
Balkanization | The fragmentation of a region into smaller, often hostile political units. Named after the historically contentious Balkan Peninsula of southeastern Europe. |
Irredentism | A policy of cultural extension and potential political expansion by a state aimed at a community of its nationals living in a neighboring state. |
Exclave | A bounded (non-island) piece of territory that is part of a particular state but lies separated from it by the territory of another state. |