In alphabetical order

G

Garden city
A planned settlement, as conceived by Ebenezer Howard, with low housing density, and many parks, open spaces, and allotments; the maximum population size to be about 30 000 (Mayhew, 2015a). The land should be developed under ‘municipal ownership’ (Howard, 1989, pp.76-77).

G

Gemeinschaft
A German term coined by Ferdinand Tönnies, meaning ‘community’. ‘Gemeinschaft is the world of close, emotional, face-to-face ties, attachment to place, ascribed social status, and a homogeneous and regulated community’ (Scott, 2014, p.40).

G

Gender equity
‘Gender equity means fairness of treatment for men and women according to their respective needs. This may include equal treatment or treatment that is different but which is considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities’ (Pipeline, 2018, para.4).

G

Gentrification

‘A process of neighbourhood transformation in which working-class and poor residents are displaced by an influx of middle-class residents’ (Hammel, 2009, p.360).

G

Gesellschaft
A German term coined by Ferdinand Tönnies, meaning ‘society’ or ‘association’. ‘Gesellschaft has come to be linked with urbanism, industrial life, mobility, heterogeneity, and impersonality.’ It is a condition in which people’s relationships are based on rationality and calculation (Scott, 2014, p.41).

G

Global cities

Cities that contain ‘large clusters of internationally orientated producer services firms’ (Derudder, 2009, p.262). Sassen's concept of the global city emphasises ‘the flow of information and capital. Cities are major nodes in the interconnected systems of information and money, and the wealth that they capture is intimately related to the specialized businesses that facilitate those flows—financial institutions, consulting firms, accounting firms, law firms, and media organizations. Sassen points out that these flows are no longer tightly bound to national boundaries and systems of regulation; so the dynamics of the global city are dramatically different than those of the great cities of the nineteenth century’ (Fainstein, 2005, pp.28-30).

G

Goal

‘“An end to which a planned course of action is directed.” Goals may involve getting something the actor does not have or giving up something the actor does have. The goals of planned action may be categorized on the basis of specificity as ideals, objectives, and policies. These may be considered as directions, regions, and points in value space, respectively’ (Hill, 1968, p.22).

G

Goals achievement matrix

An approach for alternatives evaluation which analyzes the impacts of each alternative with the respecting impacted groups and weightings in form of matrix (Hill, 1968).

G

Governance
‘Urban governance is primarily concerned with the processes through which government is organized and delivered in towns and cities and the relationships between state agencies and civil society (a term that is used to include citizens, communities, private sector actors, and voluntary organizations’ (Raco, 2009, p.622).

G

Government
Government usually operates at multiple geographical scales. In general, local governments play ‘a key role in the delivery of welfare services such as education, housing, planning, and healthcare. In most cases, they were (and still are) run by elected councillors and their decisions had a significant impact on the everyday lives of local residents and businesses’ (Raco, 2009, p.625).

G

Green belts

Planning designation applying to specified areas at the edges of some towns and cities … which acts to preserve the openness of the countryside by restricting the type and scale of development which can be undertaken in rural locations around the main settlement. The designation was introduced after the Second World War amidst concerns that large tracts of countryside were being lost to urban sprawl as towns and cities spread outwards. (Manley, Foot & Davis, 2019)

G

Green building

‘Green building is a practice of reducing the environmental impact of buildings and enhancing the health and wellbeing of building occupants by:

  • Planning throughout the life-cycle of a building or a community, from master planning and siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition with a focus on the impact to both the environment and people.
  • Optimising efficient use of energy, water, and other resources to avoid overconsumption and adopting the use of renewable energy and eco-friendly materials to minimise carbon footprint and emission.
  • Reducing the production of waste and preventing pollution of areas like water, air, noise and land.
  • Enhancing indoor environmental quality through natural ventilation and lighting as well as good indoor air quality by design and other means.’

(Hong Kong Green Building Council, 2019)

G

Green building assessments
‘A GB (green building) assessment method is a tool for evaluating whether a building is green or not, and rank is given to the building after detailed assessment. It also serves as a management tool or guidelines to address environmental concerns during design, construction, and operation phases, and provides an avenue for communicating key environmental concern amongst the stakeholders involved. In a way, the GB assessment tools are promoting sustainable practices, and their effectiveness does have a crucial role to play’ (Li, Chen, Wang, Xu & Chen, 2017, p.152). To name a few examples of GB assessment methods, there are BEAM Plus (HK), Green Building Evaluation Label / China Three Star (mainland China), LEED (US), BREEAM (UK), Green Mark (Singapore), Green Star (Australia), and CASBEE (Japan). Each has its own specific origin, history, credit composition and requirements, assessment method and process.

G

Green infrastructure
‘Green infrastructure is the interconnected systems of soils, water, air, vegetation, and animal life that constitute a healthy ecosystem. It provides services to humans that would otherwise need to be provided by constructed infrastructure. Examples of green infrastructure include wetlands that provide storm-water filtration and trees that cool buildings by providing shade’ (Hagerman, 2011, p.224).

G

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

‘Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a broad measurement of a nation’s overall economic activity. GDP is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. GDP includes all private and public consumption, government outlays, investments, additions to private inventories, paid-in construction costs and the foreign balance of trade (exports are added, imports are subtracted). It may be contrasted with Gross National Product (GNP), which measures the overall production of an economy's citizens, including those living abroad, while domestic production by foreigners is excluded. Though GDP is usually calculated on an annual basis, it can be calculated on a quarterly basis as well (in the United States, for example, the government releases an annualized GDP estimate for each quarter and also for an entire year).’ (Chappelow, 2019)

G

Gross Floor Area (GFA)

‘The Gross Floor Area of a building, as defined in Building (Planning) Regulation 23(3)(a), shall be “the area contained within the external walls of the building measured at each floor level (including any floor below the level of the ground), together with the area of any balcony in the building, which shall be calculated from the overall dimensions of the balcony (including the thickness of the sides thereof), and the thickness of the external walls of the building”’ (HKIS, 1999, p.10).

G

Growth machine
‘Coalitions of actors and organizations (i.e., growth machines), all sharing an interest in local growth and its effects on land values, compete with growth machines elsewhere for scarce mobile capital investment, while simultaneously attempting to gain the tacit support of local publics for such urban growth’ (Rodgers, 2009, p.40).

Reference List

Chappelow, J. (2019). Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Investopedia. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gdp.asp

Derudder, B. (2009). World/Global Cities. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, p.262-268.

Fainstein, S.S. (2005). Cities and Diversity: Should We Want It? Can We Plan for It? Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 41(1), pp.3-19.

HKIS. (1999). Code of Measuring Practice. Retrieved June 18, 2019, from https://www.hkis.org.hk/ufiles/MPracticeCode-199903.pdf 

Hagerman, C. (2011). Green Infrastructure. 223-229. Retrieved from http://sk.sagepub.com.easyaccess2.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/reference/greencities/n70.xml

Hammel, D.J. (2009). Gentrification. In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, p.360-367.

Hill, M. (1968). A Goals-Achievement Matrix for Evaluating Alternative Plans. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 34(1), pp.19-29.

Hong Kong Green Building Council. (2019). What is Green Building. Retrieved from https://www.hkgbc.org.hk/eng/greenbuilding.aspx

Howard, E. (1989) (Reprint). Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Attic Books.

Li, Y., Chen, X., Wang, X., Xu, Y., & Chen, P. H. (2017). A review of studies on green building assessment methods by comparative analysis. Energy and Buildings, 146, 152-159. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778817314858

Manley, W., Foot, K., & Davis, A. (2019). Green Belt. In A Dictionary of Agriculture and Land Management. : Oxford University Press, Retrieved 26 Jun. 2019, from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199654406.001.0001/acref-9780199654406-e-1049.

Mayhew, S. (2015a). Garden city. In A Dictionary of Geography: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199680856.001.0001/acref-9780199680856-e-1330.

Pipeline. (2018). Gender Equity Vs. Gender Equality: What’s the Distinction? Retrieved from https://www.pipelineequity.com/voices-for-equity/gender-equity-vs-gender-equality/.

Raco, M. (2009). Governance, Urban. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, pp.622-627.

Rodgers, S. (2009). Urban Growth Machine. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, p.40-45.