Urban planningUrban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks and their accessibility.
Urban sprawlUrban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning. In addition to describing a special form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development.
Texture mappingTexture mapping is a method for mapping a texture on a . Texture here can be high frequency detail, surface texture, or color. The original technique was pioneered by Edwin Catmull in 1974. Texture mapping originally referred to diffuse mapping, a method that simply mapped pixels from a texture to a 3D surface ("wrapping" the image around the object).
Smart growthSmart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term "smart growth" is particularly used in North America.
Reflection mappingIn computer graphics, environment mapping, or reflection mapping, is an efficient technique for approximating the appearance of a reflective surface by means of a precomputed texture. The texture is used to store the of the distant environment surrounding the rendered object. Several ways of storing the surrounding environment have been employed. The first technique was sphere mapping, in which a single texture contains the image of the surroundings as reflected on a spherical mirror.
Urban historyUrban history is a field of history that examines the historical nature of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urban sociology, urban geography, business history, and archaeology. Urbanization and industrialization were popular themes for 20th-century historians, often tied to an implicit model of modernization, or the transformation of rural traditional societies.
Bump mappingBump mapping is a texture mapping technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting calculations. The result is an apparently bumpy surface rather than a smooth surface although the surface of the underlying object is not changed. Bump mapping was introduced by James Blinn in 1978. Normal mapping is the most common variation of bump mapping used.
Sustainable urbanismSustainable urbanism is both the study of cities and the practices to build them (urbanism), that focuses on promoting their long term viability by reducing consumption, waste and harmful impacts on people and place while enhancing the overall well-being of both people and place. Well-being includes the physical, ecological, economic, social, health and equity factors, among others, that comprise cities and their populations.
Water resourcesWater resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. 97% of the water on Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh water; slightly over two-thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. The remaining unfrozen freshwater is found mainly as groundwater, with only a small fraction present above ground or in the air. Natural sources of fresh water include surface water, under river flow, groundwater and frozen water.
Urban areaAn urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population-density and an infrastructure of built environment. This is the core of a metropolitan statistical area in the United States, if it contains a population of more than 50,000. Urban areas originate through urbanization, and researchers categorize them as cities, towns, conurbations or suburbs. In urbanism, the term "urban area" contrasts to rural areas such as villages and hamlets; in urban sociology or urban anthropology it contrasts with natural environment.
Urban geographyUrban geography is the subdiscipline of geography that derives from a study of cities and urban processes. Urban geographers and urbanists examine various aspects of urban life and the built environment. Scholars, activists, and the public have participated in, studied, and critiqued flows of economic and natural resources, human and non-human bodies, patterns of development and infrastructure, political and institutional activities, governance, decay and renewal, and notions of socio-spatial inclusions, exclusions, and everyday life.
Urban resilienceUrban resilience has conventionally been defined as the "measurable ability of any urban system, with its inhabitants, to maintain continuity through all shocks and stresses, while positively adapting and transforming towards sustainability". Therefore, a resilient city is one that assesses, plans and acts to prepare for and respond to hazards, regardless whether they are natural or human-made, sudden or slow-onset, expected or unexpected. Resilient Cities are better positioned to protect and enhance people's lives, secure development gains, and drive positive change.
Web mappingWeb mapping or an online mapping is the process of using maps, usually created through geographic information systems (GIS) on the Internet, more specifically in the World Wide Web (the Web). A web map or an online map is both served and consumed, thus, web mapping is more than just web cartography, it is a service where consumers may choose what the map will show. The advent of web mapping can be regarded as a major new trend in cartography.
Collaborative mappingCollaborative mapping, also known as citizen mapping, is the aggregation of Web mapping and user-generated content, from a group of individuals or entities, and can take several distinct forms. With the growth of technology for storing and sharing maps, collaborative maps have become competitors to commercial services, in the case of OpenStreetMap, or components of them, as in Google Map Maker Waze and Yandex Map Editor.
Enhanced geothermal systemAn enhanced geothermal system (EGS) generates geothermal electricity without natural convective hydrothermal resources. Traditionally, geothermal power systems operated only where naturally occurring heat, water, and rock permeability are sufficient to allow energy extraction. However, most geothermal energy within reach of conventional techniques is in dry and impermeable rock. EGS technologies expand the availability of geothermal resources through stimulation methods, such as 'hydraulic stimulation'.
Geothermal energyGeothermal energy is thermal energy in the Earth's crust. It combines energy from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay. Geothermal energy has been exploited as a source of heat and/or electric power for millennia. Geothermal heating, using water from hot springs, for example, has been used for bathing since Paleolithic times and for space heating since Roman times. Geothermal power, (generation of electricity from geothermal energy), has been used since the 20th century.
GroundwaterGroundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock become completely saturated with water is called the water table.
InfrastructureInfrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and private physical structures such as roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, and telecommunications (including Internet connectivity and broadband access).
Groundwater rechargeGroundwater recharge or deep drainage or deep percolation is a hydrologic process, where water moves downward from surface water to groundwater. Recharge is the primary method through which water enters an aquifer. This process usually occurs in the vadose zone below plant roots and is often expressed as a flux to the water table surface. Groundwater recharge also encompasses water moving away from the water table farther into the saturated zone. Recharge occurs both naturally (through the water cycle) and through anthropogenic processes (i.
