AP Human Geography, AP exams, 12–17%

Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes

Unit 6 covers urbanization, city systems, internal urban structure, and contemporary urban challenges. Central place theory and the rank-size rule explain relationships among cities, while the classic and world-region models explain patterns within them. Gentrification, sprawl, and sustainability supply the unit's applied questions.

Position: 6 of 7 units
Published weighting: 12–17% in the official framework
Topics covered: 7 topics in this guide

What is covered

Topics inside this unit.

These topics describe the scope students most often review for this part of AP Human Geography. Treat them as a study checklist rather than an exhaustive list of what a single exam form can sample.

The origin and growth of cities: Site and situation, suburbanization, sprawl, edge cities, exurbs, megacities, and world cities in the global economy.
Urban systems and hierarchies: Rank-size rule, primate cities, the gravity model, and central place theory with its thresholds and ranges.
Models of internal city structure: Concentric zone, sector, and multiple nuclei models, plus the galactic city and Latin American, African, and Southeast Asian city models.
Density, land use, and infrastructure: Residential and commercial land-use patterns, zoning, transportation networks, and the cost of infrastructure.
Urban change and inequality: Gentrification, redlining and blockbusting, urban renewal, housing affordability, and residential segregation.
Urban sustainability: Smart growth, new urbanism, greenbelts, mixed-use development, and the trade-offs each approach involves.
Urban data and quality of life: Census and qualitative data used to evaluate urban conditions, and the limitations of each source.

Study tips

How to practice Urban.

Section-specific guidance that follows from how this material is usually tested.

Sketch each urban model and label one distinguishing feature you can name under pressure.
Compare a North American city model with a world-region model, a frequent free-response pairing.
Prepare a two-sided argument on gentrification; rubrics often ask for both a benefit and a cost.

Where this fits

Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes is 6 of 7 units in the AP Human Geography guide, and it carries a published weighting of 12–17% in the official framework. Use the full guide to balance it against everything else you have to review.

Back to the AP Human Geography guide Official exam information

Sample Urban questions

Practice questions, not yet expert-reviewed

Original practice questions written to the published framework for this section. No expert has reviewed them, and they are not taken from any official exam. Try each one before you open the answer.

Question 1Foundational
If a country follows the rank-size rule and its largest city holds 8 million people, roughly how many people does its fourth-largest city hold?
1. A2 million
2. B4 million
3. C1 million
4. D500,000
Show answer
Answer: A. 2 million
The rank-size rule predicts that the nth-largest city holds one nth of the largest city's population, so the fourth city holds 8 million divided by 4, which is 2 million. The 4 million answer is the tempting distractor because it is one half of the largest city, the figure the rule predicts for the second-ranked city.
Key insight: A country whose second city is far smaller than one half of the largest has a primate city rather than a rank-size hierarchy.
Question 2Foundational
Which model of internal city structure describes a city as a series of rings expanding outward from a single central business district?
1. AThe concentric zone model
2. BThe sector model
3. CThe multiple nuclei model
4. DThe galactic city model
Show answer
Answer: A. The concentric zone model
The concentric zone model, developed from 1920s Chicago, arranges land use in rings that grow outward as the city expands. The sector model is the tempting distractor because it also starts from a central business district, but it arranges land use in wedges that follow transport routes rather than in complete rings.
Key insight: Rings mean concentric zone, wedges mean sector, and several competing centers mean multiple nuclei.
Question 3Intermediate
In central place theory, what is the term for the minimum number of customers required to keep a particular good or service in business?
1. AThreshold
2. BRange
3. CHinterland
4. DAgglomeration
Show answer
Answer: A. Threshold
Threshold is the demand floor a business needs to survive, which is why a heart surgery center serves a whole region while a convenience store serves a neighborhood. Range is the tempting distractor, but it is the maximum distance people will travel to obtain the good rather than the number of people needed to support it.
Key insight: Threshold counts customers and range measures distance, and together they explain why only large cities support high-order services such as specialist hospitals.
Question 4Intermediate
What term describes higher-income residents moving into a deteriorated inner-city neighborhood, renovating housing, and driving up property values so that longtime residents are displaced?
1. AGentrification
2. BBlockbusting
3. CRedlining
4. DSuburbanization
Show answer
Answer: A. Gentrification
Gentrification reinvests capital in a declining district and raises rents and taxes, improving the housing stock while pricing out existing residents. Blockbusting is the tempting distractor, but it names the mid-twentieth-century practice in which agents provoked panic selling by white homeowners to profit from rapid racial turnover.
Key insight: Gentrification is the standard two-sided free-response prompt: name the reinvestment benefit and the displacement cost in the same answer.
Question 5Advanced
According to the gravity model, how do the populations of two cities and the distance between them determine the amount of interaction predicted between them?
1. AInteraction rises with the product of the two populations and falls with the square of the distance
2. BInteraction depends only on the distance separating the two cities
3. CInteraction rises with distance because longer trade routes carry more goods
4. DInteraction depends only on the population of the larger of the two cities
Show answer
Answer: A. Interaction rises with the product of the two populations and falls with the square of the distance
The gravity model multiplies the two populations and divides by distance squared, so doubling the distance cuts predicted interaction to one quarter. Treating distance as the only factor is the tempting distractor, but that would predict identical interaction between two villages and between two megacities the same distance apart.
Key insight: Size pulls and distance resists, and because distance is squared it punishes separation far more sharply than size rewards it.

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Unit 6: Cities and Urban Land-Use Patterns and Processes