All flashcards topics

8.2 Urban systems and urban planningIB Environmental Systems and Societies SL: Flashcards

Card 1 of 130 of 13 known

Question

Define urban area.

Tap or press Space to reveal

Tap card or press Space to flip

See all 13 cards
Define urban area.
A built-up area with a high population density, buildings and infrastructure.
Give two inputs and two outputs of an urban system.
Inputs: people, food, water, fuel, electricity. Outputs: waste, wastewater, heat, exhaust gases.
Define urbanisation.
The population shift from rural to urban areas.
Give two push factors for rural-urban migration.
Low rural incomes, farm mechanisation, land shortage, drought or poor services.
Give two pull factors for rural-urban migration.
Jobs, higher wages, schools, healthcare and other services.
Define suburbanisation.
The movement of people from dense central urban areas to lower-density peripheral areas.
What proportion of the world's people lived in urban areas in 2020?
About 56% (about 30% in 1950).
Why do impermeable surfaces increase flood risk?
Rainwater cannot infiltrate, so surface runoff increases and reaches rivers quickly.
What is the urban heat island effect?
Cities are warmer than surrounding rural areas because buildings and roads absorb and release heat.
What is urban planning?
Deciding the best way to use land and buildings in an urban area.
How does ecological urban planning differ from other planning?
It is holistic, treating the city as an ecosystem and considering relationships between biotic and abiotic components.
Give an example of ecological or sustainable urban planning.
Curitiba, Brazil: bus rapid transit, flood-absorbing parks, recycling scheme.
Name two environmental effects of suburban sprawl.
Habitat loss and increased car use and emissions (also farmland loss, runoff).

Written by the Exaim team, led by Shaun Daswani (Head of Upper Secondary, Improve ME Institute; MSc Financial Mathematics, Imperial College London; BSc, UCL) and Jason Daswani (operational lead, Improve ME Institute; LSE).