Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) (British Columbia): a provincial zoning plan dating from 1973 that excludes from urban development approximately 47,000 km2 of agricultural land province-wide -- about 5% of the province's land base.
Average household size: in a given territory, the population divided by the number of occupied dwellings. For a variety of social and economic reasons, average household size in industrialized countries has been in decline for several decades. The prospect of fewer residents occupying the same physical space as time goes on may have negative implications for the efficient provision of public services and infrastructure.
Average patch size: in the urban fringe analysis, a landscape pattern metric that indicates the relative fragmentation of urban development mapped in concentric bands adjacent to the edge of the 1990 urbanized area.
Block: a census geographic unit bounded on all sides by roads and/or boundaries of larger standard geographic areas.
Census Metropolitan Area (CMA): a census geographic unit consisting of one or more neighbouring municipalities situated around a major urban core, with a total population of at least 100,000, of which 50,000 or more live in the urban core.
Census Subdivision (CSD): a census geographic unit corresponding to a municipality or an area that is deemed to be equivalent to a municipality for statistical reporting purposes (e.g., an Indian reserve or an unorganized territory).
Centripetal incentives: efforts to make development in existing urban areas more attractive, thereby redirecting growth that would otherwise go to greenfield locations to infill and redevelopment sites.
Cluster analysis: in this study, analysis using the spatial statistics Moran's I and LISA to determine whether intensification is concentrated or evenly distributed, and to identify statistically significant "hot spots" or locations of intensification.
Containment policies: policies that seek to limit, temporarily or permanently, outward urban expansion onto greenfield lands; Nelson, Dawkins, and Sanchez (2007) identify three types: "unbounded," "bounded," and "natural," to which this report adds "comprehensive."
Continuous urban land base: an urban patch, large or small, that is uninterrupted by a non-urban land cover; see Swiss-cheese version of urban land base.
Core Area: The central part of an urban area largely built before 1951.
Density curve: in the urban fringe analysis, a representation of the relationship between density and distance. A downward sloping curve indicates that the amount of urban land decreases with distance from the edge of the 1990 urbanized area.
Developable land: land free of constraints to development (such as protected areas, First Nations reserves, water bodies, and previously urbanized land).
Dissemination area (DA): a small census geographic unit containing between 400 and 700 residents and several hundred dwellings, depending on household size; used in the 2001 and subsequent censuses; see enumeration area.
Enumeration area (EA): a small census geographic unit used in the 1996 census and previously; see dissemination area.
Exurban: low-density, semi-rural residential areas containing characteristics of both urban and rural areas; see rurban.
Governmental fragmentation: the division of authority in a metropolitan region across multiple municipalities.
Greater Golden Horseshoe (Ontario): a planning policy area centred on the City of Toronto as defined by the Ontario provincial government comprising 16 Census Divisions -- the Regional Municipalities of Niagara, Waterloo, Halton, Peel, York, and Durham; the Counties of Haldimand, Brant (including Brantford), Wellington (including Guelph), Dufferin (including Orangeville), Simcoe (including Barrie and Orillia), Peterborough (including the City of Peterborough), and Northumberland, and the Cities of Toronto, Hamilton, and Kawartha Lakes; divided into an Inner Ring and Outer Ring.
Greater Toronto Area, or GTA (Ontario): a common definition of the Toronto region comprising the City of Toronto, with the surrounding regional municipalities of Durham, York, Peel, and Halton.
Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD): see Metro Vancouver.
"Green" policy areas: land designated in plans or policies where urban development is restricted.
Green Zone (British Columbia): a policy area defined in Metro Vancouver's Livable Region Strategic Plan comprising designated floodplains, ecologically important lands, major parks and recreation areas, forests, and ALR lands. It covers approximately 210,000 hectares.
Greenbelt (Ontario): a zone surrounding the Greater Golden Horseshoe, established in 2005, that is subject to policies to protect its resources and limit development; it covers approximately 7,300 km2 and includes the Niagara Escarpment and the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Greenfield development: the conversion of previously non-urban, countryside land to urban uses. In this study, greenfield development is rural land converted to urban use between 1990 and 2001 and located outside the boundary of the 1990 urban land base. See also intensification.
Gross urban density: the population or number of dwelling units relative to the total urbanized land area (in the continuous urban land base in this study) of a city or metropolitan region.
Growth Concentration Area (British Columbia): an area defined in the Livable Region Strategic Plan, adopted in 1996, which comprises the core urbanized areas of the Cities of Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore, Surrey, and Delta.
Institutional collective action: an approach to the study of metropolitan governance focusing on the conditions under which municipal authorities will or will not work together.
Intensification: development in the form of infill on vacant lots, the redevelopment of previously built land parcels, or the renovation of existing buildings, with the effect of increasing urban density. In this study, residential intensification is defined as the net increase in dwellings between 1991 and 2001 located in the 1990 urban land base. See also greenfield development.
Intensification rate: see residential intensification rate.
Landscape pattern metrics: methods used to study changes in the composition and configuration of urban land, using techniques derived from landscape ecology; see also urban fringe analysis.
Leapfrog development: non-contiguous urban development outside urban areas that creates areas of vacant land between areas of developed land; sometimes called scattered or exurban development.
LISA: local indicator of spatial association; a spatial statistic used to identify "hot spots" of statistically significant clustering; see also cluster analysis.
Lower Mainland (British Columbia): an area constrained by the Pacific Ocean, mountains, and the U.S. border that extends east from Metro Vancouver to include the largely agricultural lowlands governed by the Fraser Valley Regional District.
Metro Vancouver: a regional district authority centred on the City of Vancouver; composed of 22 municipalities and one unincorporated electoral area; renamed from the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) in 2007.
Mixed pixel effect: in remote sensing, the acknowledgement that a pixel can contain a number of land covers without any one predominating. The dimensions of each image pixel in the Landsat Thematic Mapper 5 imagery used in this project are 30 metres by 30 metres.
Moran's I: a spatial statistic indicating, for a metropolitan area as a whole, the degree to which intensification is clustered (compact) or evenly distributed; see also cluster analysis.
Newer Suburbs: The part of a metropolitan area largely built after 1971.
New regionalism: an approach to the study of city-region governance that focuses on the ability of municipalities to organize on their own to achieve regional objectives.
Niagara Escarpment (Ontario): a 725 km-long ridge of sedimentary rock to the west of the Greater Toronto urbanized area on which the Ontario government restricts urban development: now part of the Greenbelt.
Nodes: areas designated in municipal planning documents that are intended to be the focus of mixed-use, transit-oriented, medium- to high-density development and the site of intensification; in metropolitan areas they include the downtowns of cities and towns, suburban centres, or important junctions within an urban transit system.
Oak Ridges Moraine (Ontario): an area of groundwater recharge that runs across the northern fringe of the Greater Toronto urbanized area on which the Ontario government restricts urban development; now part of the Greenbelt.
Older Suburbs: The part of a metropolitan area largely built in the 1950s and 1960s outside the Core Area.
Path dependence: the notion that choices, once made, are difficult or costly to reverse.
Percentage of urban patches: in the urban fringe analysis, a landscape pattern metric that indicates relative fragmentation of urban development in concentric bands adjacent to the edge of the 1990 urbanized area; calculated by dividing the number of urban patches in each band by the number of urban patches in all bands.
Planning culture: "the collective ethos and dominant attitudes of planners [as professionals] regarding the appropriate role of the state, market forces, and civil society in influencing social outcomes" (Sanyal, 2005:xii).
Regional district (British Columbia): established under provincial law in 1965, regional administrative units that cover the entire territory of British Columbia and provide services to member municipalities.
Regional municipality (Ontario): established in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a form of county government in highly urbanized parts of southern Ontario. Regional municipalities differ from counties in that they provide a more extensive array of services, including land use planning, and in that urban municipalities of more than 100,000 residents are not administratively separate from them. (For example, the City of Guelph is separate from surrounding Wellington County, but the City of Mississauga is part of the Regional Municipality of Peel.)
Remote sensing: analysis of satellite imagery of the earth's surface.
Residential intensification rate: the number of newly constructed dwelling units built during a given period (in this study, 1991-2001) within the existing urbanized area relative to the total number of dwelling units constructed in all locations in the same jurisdiction.
Rurban: a term coined by Hardwick (1974) to describe exurban development with both urban and rural characteristics.
Smart growth: a package of policies intended to counter urban sprawl by focusing growth in certain areas, protecting agricultural and environmentally sensitive land, and encouraging the creation and use of transit.
Submetropolitan zone: a subdivision of each region defined on the basis of its era of initial development; each region is divided into "core areas" "older suburbs," and "newer suburbs."
Supersuburbs: large suburban municipalities that offer a more diverse (and "urban") set of services to their residents, are more institutionally complete, and compete directly with the central city for economic development (see Lewis, 2004).
Swiss-cheese version of urban land base: an urban patch, large or small, with "holes" -- internal patches associated with vegetated land cover or other non-urban land use; see also continuous urban land base.
Unbuilt land: greenlands, forests, agricultural areas, and barren land.
UniCity principle (Alberta): Established in 1955, the idea that Calgary and Edmonton should incrementally annex surround territory in order to maintain a long-term supply of land for urbanization.
Urban fringe analysis: in this study, the use of landscape pattern metrics to describe patterns of 1990-2001 urban development in concentric bands adjacent to the edge of the 1990 urbanized area; see also urban land density, percentage of urban patches, and average patch size.
Urban land: a land cover type associated with built surfaces, also known as impervious surfaces. Excludes large vegetated areas separating built areas (municipal parks, conservation areas, and golf courses), roads that are not surrounded by built areas and that act simply as connectors between built areas, land that has been cleared for development but not yet built upon, and large-lot rural residential areas.
Urban land density: in the urban fringe analysis, a landscape pattern metric indicating the ratio of urbanized land to all land potentially available for development in concentric bands adjacent to the edge of the 1990 urbanized area.
Urban patch: a discrete area of urban land; used in urban fringe analysis.