Urbanwords: the website of The Dictionary of Urbanism


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Supplement of additional and amended entries to The Dictionary of Urbanism

A note on the entries
Words printed in small capitals refer the reader to other entries (many of them in the printed dictionary rather than in this on-line supplement), where further information on the topic or a related topic will be found. Dates in brackets immediately after a name – such as Patrick Geddes (1905) or (Patrick Geddes, 1905) – refer to a work listed in the references. Bracketed dates that do not follow a name serve to date an example or a publication, but do not reference it. Semi-colons are used in listing different ways of describing meanings that are the same or similar. Bold numerals indicate different meanings of the same term.
    Many of the terms described in the dictionary are used internationally. There are many, though, that relate to the law or practice of a particular country. Unless otherwise indicated, references to statutes and regulations are to law and practice in England; England and Wales; or the United Kingdom (UK). For example the letters (US) indicate that the meaning is specific to the United States. Terms in languages other than English are included only when they are used (at least occasionally) by English speakers and writers. Acronyms are included only when they make words.
    A few of the entries are distinctly rural. This reflects the fact that urban and rural issues are inextricably mixed. Large parts of rural Britain are within city regions. According to many definitions urban design includes design in villages. And at the UK government’s Urban Summit in 2002, deputy prime minister John Prescott defined the event’s remit as including villages and rural areas.
    Many of the entries could be classified as slang, being very informal words or phrases that readers would be unwise to use in professional writing or polite company. But to mark them as such in this dictionary might suggest that all the other entries are part of the mainstream language – or at least of a specialist language of urbanism. In reality, a large proportion of the entries are likely to cause bafflement, confusion or offence if used in the wrong context. So instead of classifying each problematic entry as slang, jargon, dialect, legalese, obfuscation, technospeak, govspeak, regenbabble or anything else, readers are advised that in communicating with words, context is everything.
    The dictionary is not prescriptive. It describes how words are used, on the basis of the evidence of the contexts in which they have appeared. It does not lay down how the words should be used or define correct meanings. A word means whatever the person who speaks or writes it intends it to mean. The only real test is whether that meaning is understood.

Browse the additional and amended entries by initial letter:

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Only the skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.
Rem Koolhaas

   
illustration from the Dictionary of Urbanism