Urban Geography and Economic Sectors Dictionary

Urban Geography and Morphology

Metropolitan Area: A large conurbation where a central city concentrates important functions, turning it into an extensive organizer that comprises several adjacent municipalities.

Old Town: Also called the historical core, it represents the oldest part of the city, featuring historical buildings, ancient walls, or traditional districts.

CBD (Central Business District): The area located where financial, administrative, and major commercial activities of a large city take place. It is equipped with high accessibility and is dominated by modern aluminum and glass skyscrapers.

Bedroom Community: Formed by neighborhoods or municipalities built on the outskirts of large cities, where inhabitants travel daily to work and return to sleep.

Conurbation: An agglomeration formed by continuous urban growth where formerly separate towns and cities join together.

Slums: Marginalized urban areas characterized by poor housing conditions, immigration attraction, urban degradation, and marginalization phenomena within the receiving society.

Ensanche: An expansion sector corresponding to the 19th-century or early 20th-century growth of a town or city.

Urban Functions: The set of activities carried out within a city that exert an attractive force of varying extent over its surrounding environment.

Urban Hierarchy: Classification of cities according to their fundamental ability to organize the territory, based on three criteria: population size, number and specialization of functions, and the extent of their urban influence area.

Periurban Area: The zone surrounding a city where urbanizations of chalets, townhouses, and similar homes have been built to absorb the growing population of the urban core.

General Urban Development Plan: A municipal urban draft designed to organize city development, locate key elements, and plan implementation processes.

City Plan: The graphic scale representation of a city's built and free surfaces. There are three main types: radiocentric, orthogonal, and irregular.

Urban Rehabilitation: The improvement of buildings and the conservation of historical urban structures while maintaining architectural interest.

Rururbanization: The transition space between the countryside and the city, located beyond the continuous built-up urban fringe, where land uses and ways of life from both rural and urban areas are mixed.

Macroeconomics and Trade Basics

Balance of Trade: The monetary difference between a country's exports and imports.

Balance of Payments: An accounting document that records all income generated from and payments made to the rest of the world.

Multinational Corporation: A company that operates not only in its home country but also establishes itself and operates in other countries.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP): The total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country during a specific period by both nationals and foreigners.

Per Capita Income: The economic relationship between a country's total GDP and its total amount of inhabitants.

Tertiary Sector: The economic sector that includes various service activities utilizing equipment and human labor to attend to demands in transport, communications, finance, stock markets, and insurance.

Commercial Distribution and Trade Policies

Internal Trade and Distribution Systems

• Consumption Suppression: Increased purchasing capacity among consumers.
• Distribution: Dominated by self-service, barcodes, and computers.
• Payment Methods: Widely driven by credit cards.
• Classification by Type: Divided into wholesale and retail trade. Traditional retail is handled by small, individual independent establishments.
• New Forms of Commerce: Department stores and shopping centers.
• Commercial Areas: Geographic zones whose population is directed toward an important entity for the purchase of non-daily goods.

Spanish Trade Policy Evolution

The first Spanish trade policy relied on two basic instruments:

• Plan to Improve the Quality of Trade: Addresses retailing problems by improving professional qualifications and modernizing retail laws.
• 1996 Liberalization: Implants free enterprise, business establishment freedom, and liberalized schedules.

Foreign Trade Dynamics

Foreign trade is the exchange of products and services between a country and the rest of the world. It includes:

• Exports: The sale of national products to foreign countries.
• Imports: The purchase of foreign products by a national country.

In recent years, both have increased. Exports have seen a decline in primary sector products and an increase in industrial goods, while imports heavily feature energy and agricultural products. Foreign trade areas have significantly transformed following Spain's entry into the European Union, which remains the primary recipient of Spanish exports.

Spanish trade policy is heavily influenced by the EU single market and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Current goals are to encourage exports by organizing fairs and exhibitions, granting credits, training business owners in foreign trade, and supporting the internationalization of small businesses.

Regional Economy: The Case of Extremadura

The Third Sector in Extremadura

Extremadura's active population rate sits around 60%, but the tertiary sector presents specific characteristics. Until the late 1970s, the regional economy was heavily weighed down by the primary sector, incipient industrialization, low disposable income, deficient transport infrastructure, and low migration-driven labor force. Configuration and growth have since been promoted through public subsector developments.

Transport Networks and Systems

Transport heavily influences business location and trade. Rail transport has experienced significant deterioration in recent years as RENFE prioritized economic profitability, leading to the suppression of various services. However, future plans include connecting Madrid and Lisbon via a high-speed rail line. Road networks feature the A-5 motorway (linking Badajoz, Madrid, and the Silver Route crossing Extremadura from north to south), the A-58 (linking Cáceres to Trujillo), and the N-430 (communicating Castilla-La Mancha with Badajoz and the Levantine coast). Air transport is currently limited to the Badajoz Airport (Talavera la Real), with plans to expand commercial services.

International Trade and Regional Promotion

Productivity in this sector is slightly lower than the national average. To alleviate problems, measures have been taken such as traditional fairs (focused on wine, cheese, olives in Trujillo, and almonds in Almendralejo), the promotion of Denominations of Origin, training and consulting support for cooperatives, and the creation of associated regional enterprises. Natural resources closely relate to the agrarian wholesale sector, while retail is dominated by small establishments, hypermarkets, and street vending.

Tourism and Cultural Heritage

Until the mid-1980s, tourism was a marginal activity. Today, tourism in Extremadura offers diverse modalities centered around rich tourist-historical and cultural heritage:

• Cultural Heritage: Includes monuments in Cáceres, Mérida, and the Monastery of Guadalupe, alongside a wide network of quality museums and festivals like WOMAD in Cáceres.
• Rural Heritage: Features the Monfragüe Natural Park, Garganta de los Infiernos, Cornalvo, various hiking trails, and thermal bath offers (such as Alange and Montemayor).
• Diverse Tourist Attractions: Gastronomy derived from Iberian pork, cheeses, nougat, and liquors. Traditional handicrafts include pottery from Salvatierra de los Barros, copperware from Guadalupe, and basketry from Montemayor. Folklore and popular traditions seamlessly merge with national tourist holidays.