Cities & Urban Land-Use
Caleb Lopez
5 min read
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Study Guide Overview
This AP Human Geography study guide covers urban systems, including the rank-size rule and primate cities. It explores central place theory, focusing on threshold and range. The guide examines urbanization and suburbanization trends, and the distribution and growth of cities, including megacities, metacities, and global cities. Finally, it discusses various city models and their components like the CBD and edge cities.
#🏙️ AP Human Geography: Urban Systems - Your Night-Before Guide 🌃
Hey there, future geographer! Let's get you prepped and confident for your AP Human Geography exam. This guide is designed to be your quick-scan, high-impact resource. We'll make sure everything clicks, so you can ace this test!
#🌍 The “Why of Where” for Cities
Geographers use models to understand how cities are distributed. Key concepts include:
- Rank-Size Rule 🥇🥈🥉: A statistical relationship where the nth largest city has 1/n the population of the largest city.
- Primate Cities 💪: A single city that dominates a country's economic, cultural, and political life (e.g., Mexico City).
Understanding the difference between rank-size rule and primate cities is crucial for analyzing urban hierarchies.
#Rank-Size Rule
- Describes the size distribution of cities within a region.
- Formula: P(n) = K/n (Population of nth city = Constant / Rank)
- Example: If the largest city has 1 million, the 2nd largest has 500k, the 3rd has ~333k, and so on.
- Observed in many countries but not a strict rule.
#Primate Cities
- Significantly larger than other cities in a country or region.
- Dominates econo...
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