1. What role did food surplus, social stratification, and job specialization play in the development of early cities?

2. How did the emergence of a ruling class and service sector change the function of early settlements?

1. What is urbanization and what does the term 'percent urban' measure?

2. What challenges might cities face if urbanization occurs too rapidly?

3. Where is most urban population growth expected to occur by 2050?

1. How do site and situation differ, and why is each important in determining where cities develop?

2. What specialized functions do cities serve, and how does a city's location influence its function?

1. What is a city-state and what role did defense play in its political development?

2. What geographic characteristics defined urban hearths, and where did they emerge?

3. How did early city-states eventually lead to the formation of larger empires?

1. How did the growth of specialized skills in cities change the relationship between urban and rural areas?

2. What types of specialized services did early cities provide?

1. What is the legal definition of a city and why is this definition useful for governments?

2. How do metropolitan areas differ from legally defined cities?

3. What is a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and how does it define urban regions?

1. Why do cities have higher social heterogeneity than rural areas?

2. How does immigration contribute to urban diversity, and what effect does this diversity have on cities?

1. How have improvements in transportation and communication technology enabled cities to expand?

2. What is Borchert's transportation model and how did each epoch affect urban growth?

3. How did the automobile change the structure and density of cities compared to earlier transportation systems?

1. Why are advanced communication networks essential for cities to attract economic development?

2. How did new communication technologies diffuse to cities, and which cities benefitted first?

1. What push and pull factors drive rural-to-urban migration?

2. Where is the most rapid rural-to-urban migration occurring today, and what challenges does this create?

3. How has migration to cities in the American South and West differed from migration patterns in core countries?

1. How do cities compete for economic development, and what policies do they use to attract businesses?

2. How can a city's economic function change over time, and what role do government policies play in this change?

3. What was China's New Urbanization Plan and how did it guide urban development?

1. How did government policies and racial tensions contribute to suburban growth in the United States?

2. What is 'White flight' and how did it affect urban and suburban development?

1. How has the distribution of the U.S. population among urban, suburban, and rural areas changed since 1960?

2. What is urban sprawl and what factors encourage it?

3. How does the physical size of American cities compare to megacities in other regions of the world?

1. What are boomburbs and edge cities, and how do they differ from traditional cities?

2. What is counterurbanization and what factors drive people to move to exurbs?

3. What is reurbanization and how does it represent a shift in urban trends?

1. What is the difference between a megacity and a metacity?

2. What is a megalopolis and how does it differ from a metropolitan area?

3. Why have megacities become more common in less-developed countries in recent decades?

1. What challenges do megacities in poor countries face, and how do these differ from challenges in wealthy countries?

1. What is a world city and what characteristics make certain cities influential beyond their national boundaries?

2. How do world cities function as control centers for the global economy?

3. What factors do researchers use to rank a city's global influence?

1. What is urban hierarchy and how does connectivity relate to a city's influence?

2. What are nodal cities and how do they differ from world cities in terms of geographic influence?

3. How do cities with specialized functions fit into the urban hierarchy?

1. What is urban hierarchy and how is it determined on global, national, and regional scales?

1. What does the rank-size rule state about the relationship between a city's rank and its size?

2. What is the difference between higher-order and lower-order services, and how does this relate to city size?

3. What are the limitations of the rank-size rule model?

1. What is a primate city and what conditions typically produce primate city systems?

2. How do primate cities affect the distribution of services and opportunities within a country?

3. How do the United Kingdom and Mexico illustrate different outcomes of primate city systems?

1. What does the gravity model predict about interactions between cities?

2. What are the limitations of the gravity model in predicting city interactions?

1. What is central place theory and how does it explain the distribution of settlements?

2. Why did Christaller use hexagonal shapes to represent market areas?

3. What are threshold and range, and how do they determine which services exist in a central place?

4. What are the limitations of central place theory?