City
A
city is an
urban area that is differentiated from a
town,
village, or
hamlet by
size,
population density, importance, or
legal status. In most parts of the world, cities are generally substantial and nearly always have an urban
core, but in the
United States many incorporated areas which have a very modest population, or a
suburban or even mostly
rural character, are designated as cities.
City can also be a synonym for "
downtown" or a "
city centre".
A city usually consists of
residential,
industrial and
business areas together with
administrative functions which may relate to a wider
geographical area. A large share of a city's area is primarily taken up by
housing, which is then supported by
infrastructure such as
roads,
streets and often
public transport routes such as a
rapid transit system.
Lakes and
rivers may be the only undeveloped areas within the city. The study of cities is covered extensively in
human geography.
"The city is a
human habitat that allows people to form relations with others at various levels of intimacy while remaining entirely anonymous." (This definition was the subject of an exhibition at the Israeli pavilion at the 2000
Venice Biennale of architecture)
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Map of Haarlem, the Netherlands, of around 1550. The city is completely surrounded by a city wall and defensive canal. The square shape is inspired by Jerusalem. |
The geographies of cities, both
physical and human, are diverse. Cities are often
coastal, with
harbours for shipping, or situated near
rivers to give
economical advantage.
Water transport on
rivers and
oceans was (and in most cases remains) cheaper and more efficient than
road transport over long distances.
Older
European cities often have historically intact central areas where the streets are jumbled together, seemingly without a structural plan. This quality is a legacy of earlier unplanned or organic development, and is often perceived by today's
tourists to be picturesque. In contrast,
planned cities founded after the advent of the
automobile tend to have expansive
boulevards impractical to navigate on foot.
Modern city planning has seen many different schemes for how a city should look. The most commonly seen pattern is the
grid, favoured by the Romans, almost a rule in parts of the
United States, and used for thousands of years in
China.
Derry was the first ever
planned city in Ireland, begun in 1613, with the walls being completed 5 years later in 1618. The central diamond within a walled city with four gates was thought to be a good design for defence. The grid pattern chosen was widely copied in the colonies of British North America. However, the grid has been used for a long time in history. The Greeks often gave their colonies around the Mediterranean a grid. One of the best examples around is the city of
Priene. This city even had its different districts, much like modern city planning today. Also in Medieval times we see a preference for linear planning. Good examples are the cities established in the south of France by various rulers and city expansions in old Dutch and Flemish cities.
Other forms may include a radial structure in which main roads converge on a central point, often the effect of successive growth over long time with concentric traces of
town walls and
citadels - recently supplemented by ring-roads that take traffic around the edge of a town. Many
Dutch cities are structured that way: a central square surrounded by a concentric canals. Every city expansion would imply a new circle (canals + town walls). In cities like
Amsterdam and
Haarlem this pattern is still clearly visible.
Towns and cities have a long history, although opinions vary on whether any particular
ancient settlement can be considered to be a city. The first true towns are sometimes considered to be large settlements where the inhabitants were no longer simply farmers of the surrounding area, but began to take on specialized occupations, and where trade, food storage and power was centralized. One characteristic that can be used to distinguish a small city from a large town is organized government. A town accomplishes common goals through informal agreements between neighbors or the leadership of a powerful chief. A city has professional administrators, regulations, and some form of taxation (food and other necessities or means to trade for them) to feed the government workers. The governments may be based on heredity, religion, military power, work projects (such as canal building), food distribution, land-ownership, agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, finance, or a combination of those. Societies that live in cities are often called
civilizations.
By this definition, the first cities we know of were located in
Mesopotamia, such as
Eridu,
Uruk, and
Ur, and in
Egypt along the
Nile, the
Indus Valley Civilization and
China. Before this time it was rare for settlements to reach significant size, although there were exceptions such as
Jericho,
Çatalhöyük and
Mehrgarh.
Harappa and
Mohenjo-daro (in the
Indus Valley Civilization) were among the largest of these early cities, with a combined population of up to about 80,000.
The growth of ancient
empires and particularly the grow in commerce and manufacturing in the Mediterranean sea led to ever greater
capital cities and centres of commerce and industry, with
Alexandria,
Antioch and
Seleucia on the Tigris in
ancient Greece,
Carthage,
Changan (now
Xi'an) (in
China),
ancient Rome, its eastern successor
Constantinople (later
Istanbul), and successive
Chinese,
Islamic, and
Indian capitals approaching or exceeding the half-million population level. It is estimated that ancient Rome had a population of around 1 million people by the end of the last century BCE, which is widely considered the only city to reach that number until the
Industrial Revolution.
Alexandria's population was also close to Rome's population at around the same time (in a census dated from 32 CE, Alexandria had 180,000 adult male citizens). Similar smaller administrative, commercial, industrial and ceremonial centres emerged in other areas. Most notably
Baghdad, which second to some estimates became the first city to exceed a population of one million instead of Rome.
During the European
Middle Ages, a town was as much a political entity as a collection of houses. City residence brought freedom from customary rural obligations to lord and community:
"Stadtluft macht frei" ("City air makes you free") was a saying in Germany. In
Continental Europe cities with a legislature of their own weren't unheard of, the laws for towns as a rule other than for the countryside, the lord of a town often being another than for surrounding land. In the
Holy Roman Empire some cities had no other lord than the emperor.
In exceptional cases like
Venice,
Genoa or
Lübeck, cities themselves became powerful states, sometimes taking surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime empires. Similar phenomena existed elsewhere, as in the case of
Sakai, which enjoyed a considerable autonomy in late medieval Japan.
Most towns remained far smaller places, so that in 1500 only some two dozen places in the world contained more than 100,000 inhabitants: as late as 1700 there were fewer than forty, a figure which would rise thereafter to 300 in 1900. A small city of the early modern period might contain as few as 10,000 inhabitants, a town far fewer still.
While the
city-states, or
poleis, of the
Mediterranean and
Baltic Sea languished from the 16th century, Europe's larger capitals benefited from the growth of commerce following the emergence of an
Atlantic economy fuelled by the silver of
Peru. By the late 18th century,
London had become the largest city in the world with a population of nearly 1 million, while
Paris rivalled the well-developed regionally-traditional capital cities of
Baghdad,
Beijing,
Istanbul and
Kyoto.
The growth of modern
industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive
urbanization and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of
migrants from rural communities into urban areas. In the
Great Depression of the 1930s
cities were hard hit by unemployment, especially those with a base in heavy industry. Today the world's population is about half urban, with millions still streaming annually into the growing cities of
Asia,
Africa and
Latin America.
Modern cities are known for creating their own
microclimates. This is due to the large clustering of hard surfaces that heat up in
sunlight and that channel
rainwater into underground ducts. As a result, city weather is often windier and cloudier than the weather in the surrounding countryside. Conversely, because these effects make cities warmer (
urban heat shield or
urban heat islands) than the surrounding area,
tornadoes tend to go around cities. Additionally, towns can cause significant downstream weather effects.
Garbage and
sewage are two major problems for cities, as is
air pollution coming from
internal combustion engines (see
public transport). The impact of cities on places elsewhere, be it hinterlands or places far away, is considered in the notion of
city footprinting (
ecological footprint).
The difference between
towns and
cities is differently understood in different parts of the
English speaking world. There is no one standard international definition of a city: the term may be used either for a town possessing city status; for an urban locality exceeding an arbitrary population size; for a town dominating other towns with particular regional economic or administrative significance. Although
city can refer to an
agglomeration including
suburban and satellite areas, the term is not usually applied to a
conurbation (cluster) of
distinct urban places, nor for a wider
metropolitan area including more than one city, each acting as a focus for parts of the area.
United Kingdom
In the
United Kingdom, a
city is a town which has been known as a city since
time immemorial, or which has received city status by
letters patent — which is normally granted on the basis of size, importance or royal connection (traditional pointers have been whether the town has a
cathedral or a
university). Some cathedral cities, for example
St David's in
Wales, are quite small, and may not be known as cities in common parlance. (See
City status in the United Kingdom.)
Preston became England's newest city in the year 2002 to mark the Queen's jubilee; as did
Newport in
Wales;
Stirling,
Scotland; and
Lisburn and
Newry in
Northern Ireland.
A similar system existed in the medieval
Low Countries where a landlord would grant settlements
certain privileges (
city rights) that settlements without city rights didn't have. This include the privilege to put up city walls, hold markets or set up a judicial
court.
Australia and New Zealand
In
Australia and
New Zealand,
city is used to refer both to units of local government, and as a synonym for urban area. For instance the City of South Perth
[City of South Perth] is part of the urban area known as
Perth, commonly described as a city. On the other hand,
Gisborne is known as the first city to see the sun, despite being administered by a district council, not a city council.
United States
An interesting phenomenon in
American English is the generalisation of the term
city to all
settlements. In most U.S. states, a city is designated by the election of a mayor and city council, while a town is governed by a town manager, select board (or board of trustees), or open town meeting. Very large towns exist (such as
Hempstead, New York, with a population of 755,785 in 2004), and the line between town and city varies from state to state.
Some states also make a distinction between
villages and other forms of municipalities. Even though Americans are well aware that "village" means something smaller than a town, the word has often been co-opted by enterprising developers to make their projects sound welcoming and friendly. The results are so-called villages with 20 and 30-story high-rises, like
Westwood Village in
Los Angeles.
In the American state of
Vermont, city status is determined by form of government, not population. Thus,
Vergennes is a city, despite its population of only 2,741. City status requires the approval of a city charter by the state legislature. In Vermont, a major difference between villiages and cities is that a village must pay taxes to the surrounding town, while a city need not pay taxes to the surrounding town.
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Modern global cities, like New York City, often include large central business districts that serve as hubs for economic activity. |
A
global city, also known as a
world city, is a prominent centre of
trade,
banking,
finance, innovations, and
markets. The term "global city", as opposed to megacity, was coined by
Saskia Sassen in a seminal 1991 work. Whereas "megacity" refers to any city of enormous size, a global city is one of enormous power or influence. Global cities, according to Sassen, have more in common with each other than with other cities in their host nations. Examples of such cities include
London,
New York City,
Paris and
Tokyo.The notion of global cities is rooted in the concentration of
power and capabilities within all cities. The city is seen as a container where skills and resources are concentrated: the better able a city is to concentrate its skills and resources, the more successful and powerful the city. This makes the city itself more powerful in terms that it can influence what is happening around the world. Following this view of cities, it is possible to
rank the world's cities hierarchically [John Friedmann and Goetz Wolff, "World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6, no. 3 (1982): 319]. Other global cities include
Los Angeles,
Hong Kong,
Frankfurt,
Milan,
Chicago and
Singapore which are all "Alpha World Cities" and
San Francisco,
Sydney,
Toronto and
Zurich, which are "Beta World Cities".
Critics of the notion point to the different realms of power. The term
global city is heavily influenced by economic factors and, thus, may not account for locales that are otherwise significant. For example, cities like
Rome,
Istanbul and
Mecca are powerful in
religious and
historical terms. Additionally, it has been questioned whether the city itself can be regarded as an actor.
In 1995, Kanter argued that successful cities can be identified by three elements. To be successful, a city needs to have good thinkers (concepts), good makers (competence) or good traders (
connections). The interplay of these three elements, Kanter argued, means that good cities are not planned but managed.
Main article: Inner city
In the United States, United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, the term "inner city" is sometimes used with the connotation of being an area, perhaps a
ghetto, where people are less wealthy and where there is more crime. These connotations are less common in other Western countries, as deprived areas are located in varying parts of other Western cities. In fact, with the
gentrification of some formerly run-down central city areas the reverse connotation can apply. In Australia, for example, the term "outer suburban" applied to a person implies a lack of sophistication. In
Paris, the inner city is the richest part of the metropolitan area, where housing is the most expensive, and where elites and high-income individuals dwell. In the developing world, economic modernization brings poor newcomers from the countryside to build haphazardly at the edge of current settlement (see
favelas).
The United States, in particular, has a culture of anti-urbanism that some say dates back as far as Thomas Jefferson who wrote that "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body." On the businessmen who brought manufacturing industry into cities and hence increased the population density necessary to supply the workforce, he wrote "the manufactures of the great cities... have begotten a depravity of morals, a dependence and corruption, which renders them an undesirable accession to a country whose morals are sound." The American
City Beautiful architecture movement of the late 1800s was a reaction to perceived urban decay and sought to provide stately civic buildings and boulevards to inspire civic pride in the motley residents of the urban core. Modern anti-urban attitudes are to be found in America in the form of a planning profession that continues to develop land on a low-density suburban basis, where access to amenities, work and shopping is provided almost exclusively by car rather than on foot.
However, there is a growing movement in North America called "
New Urbanism" that calls for a return to traditional city planning methods where mixed-use zoning allows people to walk from one type of land-use to another. The idea is that housing, shopping, office space, and leisure facilities are all provided within walking distance of each other, thus reducing the demand for road-space and also improving the efficiency and effectiveness of
mass transit.
*
World's Most Livable Cities*
Large Cities Climate Leadership GroupLists
*
List of cities by country*
List of cities by latitude*
List of metropolitan areas by population*
List of cities by population*
List of city nicknames*
List of fictional citiesSocial problems in the city
*
Environmental racism &
Pollution*
Ghetto*
Homelessness*
Urban sprawl* Toynbee, Arnold (ed),
Cities of Destiny, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. Pan historical/geographical essays, many images. Starts with "Athens", ends with "The Coming World City-Ecumenopolis".
* Chandler, T.
Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1987.
* Modelski, G.
World Cities: â€"3000 to 2000. Washington, DC: FAROS 2000, 2003.
* League of Women Voters of Vermont.
Vermont Citizens' Guide to Government in Vermont, 7th Edition. Rutland, Vermont: Sharp Offset Printing, 2004.
*
All 1M+ major urban areas*
Largest Cities Through History*
Most populous city of each country*
The National League of Cities (United States)
*
Inner City Press (Weekly publication on cities, United States)
*
Dictionary of the History of ideas: The City
*
bifurcaciones.cl, urban cultural studies journalzh-yue:城市
