Cities & Suburbs
The United States is filled with cities. People packed in close together. Taxis, subways, trains get you from place to place. As cities grow and expand, they need more land so they start to spread out into the surrounding lands. The surrounding lands might not be quite so crowded - this would be the suburbs. This expansion of cities is called urban sprawl. It has a major impact on the environment.
Urban Development
For many decades, urban development in the United States and Canada has been moving out from cities into suburbs. A suburb is an area of housing built at the edge of a city. Developers create suburbs by buying up land outside a city. They replace this open space with mile upon mile of housing tracts, shopping centers, and office parks. Often the only way to get from place to place in a suburban area is by car on traffic-clogged roads.
The rapid and often poorly planned spread of cities and suburbs is known as urban sprawl.
Draw this graphic in your notes. Label the city, the suburbs, and the rural fringe. Fringe simply means "edge."
Jot down some notes to help you remember the words urban, suburban, and rural. We will use these terms A LOT when we study the cities of the world.
urban = city, population is dense
suburban = just outside of city, population is less dense
rural = farmland, population is not dense at all, people are spread out
Metropolitan is on the next page after you finish the questions below...don't fret!
The rapid and often poorly planned spread of cities and suburbs is known as urban sprawl.
Draw this graphic in your notes. Label the city, the suburbs, and the rural fringe. Fringe simply means "edge."
Jot down some notes to help you remember the words urban, suburban, and rural. We will use these terms A LOT when we study the cities of the world.
urban = city, population is dense
suburban = just outside of city, population is less dense
rural = farmland, population is not dense at all, people are spread out
Metropolitan is on the next page after you finish the questions below...don't fret!