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Chapter 4
Europe and Russia
Term | Definition |
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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 | An independent political entity consisting of a single city with (and sometimes without) an immediate hinterland |
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 | country whose population possesses cultural homogeneity and unity. The ideal form to which most nations and states aspire—a political unit wherein the territorial state coincides with the area settled by a certain national group or people. |
Nation | term encompassing all the citizens of a state, it also has other connotations. Most definitions now tend to refer to a group of tightly knit people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, and other shared cultural attributes. |
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 (Fig. G-8), 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 | territory constituted by most of Europe’s countries within which people are free to cross international boundaries without formal border checks. Certain EU members do not fully participate: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, and Romania. |
Four Motors of Europe | Rhône-Alpes (France), Baden-Württemberg (Germany), Catalonia (Spain), and Lombardy (Italy). 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 wholly by land. Without coasts, such a country is disadvantaged in terms of accessibility to international trade routes, and in the scramble for possession of areas of the continental shelf and control of the exclusive economic zone |
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. In a port, the cargoes of oceangoing ships are unloaded and put on trains, trucks, or perhaps smaller river boats for inland distribution. An entrepôt |
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 |