Information about Cities

A city is an urban settlement with a particularly important status which differentiates it from a town.

City is primarily used to designate an urban settlement with a large population. However, city may also indicate a special administrative, legal, or historical status.

In the United States, "city" is primarily a legal term meaning an urban area with a degree of autonomy (i.e. a township), rather than meaning an entire large settlement (metropolitan area). Outside the United States, "city" implies an entire settlement or metropolitan area, although there are notable exceptions, e.g. the term City of London. In the UK, a city is a settlement with a charter ("letters patent") from the crown.

Overview

Present-day cities are products of the industrial revolution and are generally distinguished by land area and population. Large, industrialized cities generally have advanced organizational systems for sanitation, utilities, land distribution, housing, and transportation.

A big city, or metropolis, is usually accompanied by a subcity; for example, Aurora, Colorado is a subcity of Denver, Colorado. Such cities also contain large amounts of urban sprawl, creating large amounts of business commuters. Once a city sprawls far enough to reach another city, this region can be deemed a megalopolis, or a cluster of urban areas.

Geography

Older cities appear to be 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, cities founded after the advent of the automobile and planned accordingly 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 New World, 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 around for far longer than the British Empire. The Ancient Greeks often gave their colonies around the Mediterranean a grid plan. One of the best examples 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 this way: a central square surrounded by concentric canals. Every city expansion would imply a new circle (canals + town walls). In cities like Amsterdam and Haarlem, and elsewhere, such as in Moscow, this pattern is still clearly visible.

History

Towns and cities have a long history, although opinions vary on whether any particular ancient settlement can be considered to be a city. Cities formed as central places of trade for the benefit of the members living there. Benefits include reduced transport costs, exchange of ideas, and sharing of natural resources. 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 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. A city can also be defined as an absence of physical space between people and firms.

Ancient times

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. Among the early cities, Mohenjo-daro of the Indus Valley Civilization was one of the largest, with an estimated population of 41,250,^[1] as well as one of the most developed in many ways, as it was the first to use urban planning, municipal governments, grid plans, drainage, flush toilets, urban sanitation systems, and sewage systems.

The growth of the population of ancient civilizations, the formation of ancient empires concentrating political power, and the growth in commerce and manufacturing led to ever greater capital cities and centres of commerce and industry, with Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia of the Hellenistic civilization, Pataliputra (now Patna) in India, Chang'an (now Xi'an) in China, Carthage, ancient Rome, its eastern successor Constantinople (later Istanbul), and successive Chinese, Indian and Muslim capitals approaching or exceeding the half-million population level.

It is estimated that ancient Rome had a population of about a million people by the end of the first century BC, after growing continually during the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st centuries BCE.^[2] And it is generally considered the largest city before 19th century London.^[3] Alexandria's population was also close to Rome's population at around the same time, the historian Rostovtzeff estimates a total population close to a million based on a census dated from 32 CE that counted 180,000 adult male citizens in Alexandria.^[4] Similar administrative, commercial, industrial and ceremonial centres emerged in other areas, most notably Baghdad, which to some urban historians, later became the first city to exceed a population of one million by the 8th century instead of Rome.

Middle Ages

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 were not 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 Italy, Medieval communes had quite a statelike power.

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.

Early Modern

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 trade. By the late 18th century, London had become the largest city in the world with a population of over a million, while Paris rivaled the well-developed regionally-traditional capital cities of Baghdad, Beijing, Istanbul and Kyoto. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas the old Roman city concept was extensively used. Cities were founded in the middle of the newly conquered territories, and were bound to several laws about administration, finances and urbanism.

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.

Industrial Age

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 United States from 1860 to 1910, the invention of railroads reduced transportation costs, and large manufacturing centers began to emerge, thus allowing migration from rural to city areas. However, cities during those periods of time were deadly places to live in, due to health problems resulting from contaminated water and air, and communicable diseases. In the Great Depression of the 1930s cities were hard hit by unemployment, especially those with a base in heavy industry. In the U.S. urbanization rate increased forty to eighty percent during 1900-1990. Today the world's population is slightly over half urban,^[5] with millions still streaming annually into the growing cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America. There has also been a shift to suburbs, perhaps to avoid crime and traffic, which are two costs of living in an urban area.

External Effects

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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.

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). Other negative external effects include health consequences such as communicable diseases, crime, and high traffic and commuting times. Cities cause more interaction with more people than rural areas, thus a higher probability to contracting contagious diseases. However, many inventions such as inoculations, vaccines, and water filtration systems have also lowered health concerns. Crime is also a concern in the cities. Studies have shown that crime rates in cities are higher and the chance of punishment after getting caught is lower. In cases such as burglary, the higher concentration of people in cities create more items of higher value worth the risk of crime. The high concentration of people also create traffic problems and higher commute times, causing less time to be spent on more valuable activities.

The difference between towns and cities

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

Main article: City status in the 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 (the traditional test was whether the town had a cathedral). In the United Kingdom, when people talk about cities, they generally include the suburbs in that. Some cathedral cities, such as St David's in Wales and Wells in England, are quite small, and may not be known as cities in common parlance. Preston became England's newest city in the year 2002 to mark the Queen's jubilee, as did Newport in Wales, Stirling in Scotland, and Lisburn and Newry in Northern Ireland.

A Review of Scotland's Cities led to the Fair City of Perth, Scotland, losing city status.

By both legal and traditional definition, a town may be of any size, but must contain a market place. A village must contain a church. A small village without a church is called a hamlet.

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^[6] 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

In most U.S. states, a city is designated by the election of a mayor and city council, while a town is governed by people, select board (or board of trustees), or open town meeting. There are some very large towns (such as Hempstead, New York, with a population of 755,785 in 2004) and some very small cities (such as Shafer, Minnesota, with a population of 343 in 2000), and the line between town and city, if it exists at all, varies from state to state. Cities in the United States do have many oddities, like Maza, North Dakota, the smallest city in the country, has only 5 inhabitants, but is still incorporated. It does not have an active government, and the mayoral hand changes frequently (due to the lack of city laws).

In many U.S. states, any incorporated town is also called a city. If a distinction is being made between towns and cities, exactly what that distinction is often depends on the context. The context will differ depending on whether the issue is the legal authority it possesses, the availability of shopping and entertainment, and the scope of the group of places under consideration. Intensifiers such as "small town" and "big city" are also common, though the flip side of each is rarely used.

Some states also make a distinction between villages and other forms of municipalities. Even though Americans are 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. In other cases, villages combine with larger other communities to form larger towns; a well-known example of an urban village is New York City's famed Greenwich Village, which started as a quiet country settlement but was absorbed by the growing city.

In all the New England states, city status is conferred by the form of government, not population. Town government has a board of selectmen for the executive branch, and a town meeting for the legislative branch. New England cities, on the other hand, have a mayor for the executive, and a legislature referred to as either the city council or the board of aldermen.

In Virginia, all incorporated municipalities designated as cities are independent of the adjacent or surrounding county while a town is an incorporated municipality which remains a part of an adjacent or surrounding county. The largest incorporated municipalities by population are all cities, although some smaller cities have a smaller population than some towns. For example, the smallest city of Norton has a population of 3,904 and the largest town of Blacksburg has a population of 39,573.

In Pennsylvania any municpality with more than 10 persons can incorporate as a Borough. Any Township or Borough with at least 10,000 population can ask the legistlature to charter as a city. In Pennsylvania a village is simply an unincorporated town within a township.

Germany

In many other languages, there is no difference between city and town. The German word for both is Stadt, while a town with more than 100,000 inhabitants is called a Großstadt (major city), which is the most adequate equivalence for city (in terms of differentiating it from a town). On the other hand, most towns are communities belonging to a Landkreis (county), but there are some cities, usually with at least 50000 inhabitants, that are counties by themselves (kreisfreie Städte).

China

There is a formal definition of city in China provided by the Chinese government. For an urban area that can be defined as a city, there should be at least 100,000 non-agricultural population. City with less than 200,000 non-agricultural population refers to a Small city, 200,000-500,000 non-agricultural population is a Medium city, 500,000-1,000,000 non-agricultural population is a Large city and >1,000,000 non-agricultural population is an Extra-large city. Also, there is an administrative definition based on the city boundary too and a city has its legal city limits. In 1998, there were 668 cities in China - China has the largest urban population in the world.

Chile

Chile's Department of National Statistics defines a city (ciudad in Spanish) as an urban entity with more than 5,000 inhabitants. A town (pueblo), is an urban entity with 2,001 to 5,000 persons, however, if the area has some economic activity, the designation may include populations as small as 1,001. The department also defines Major Cities as provincial or regional capitals with populations of 100,001 to 500,000; Great Urban Areas which are comprised of several entities without any appreciable limit between them and populations which total between 500,001 and 1,000,000. A Metropolis is the largest urban area in the country where there are more than one million inhabitants. The "urban entity" is defined as a concentration of habitations with more than 2,000 persons living in them, or more than 1,000 persons if more than half of those persons are in some way gainfully employed. Tourist and recreation areas with more than 250 living units may be considered as urban areas.

Global cities

Main article: Global City

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 the sense 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.^[7] Other global cities include Singapore which is a city-state, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Milan and Chicago which are all classed as "Alpha World Cities" and San Francisco, Madrid, Sydney, Toronto, Zürich, Sao Paulo and Mexico City which are "Beta World Cities". A third tier containing Taipei, Osaka, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Montreal, Caracas, Manila and Santiago, among others is called "Gamma 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 places that are otherwise significant. For example, cities like Rome, Istanbul, Mecca, Mashhad, Karbala and Lisbon are powerful in religious and historical terms but would not be considered "global cities". 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.

Inner city

Main article: Inner city

In the United States, United Kingdom and 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, shacks and shanty towns).

The United States, in particular, has a culture of anti-urbanism that dates back to colonial times. 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.

See also

• Citistate
• World's Most Livable Cities
• Large Cities Climate Leadership Group
• Names of European cities in different languages
• Urban culture
• Urban sociology
• Ekistics
• Lost city
• Settlement types
• Village
• Town
• City
• Megalopolis
• Types of settlements in Russia
• Shrinking Cities
• Principles of Intelligent Urbanism

Lists

• List of cities by country
• List of cities by latitude
• List of metropolitan areas by population
• List of urban areas by population
• List of cities by population
• List of oldest continuously inhabited cities
• Historical urban community sizes

Social problems in the city

• Environmental racism & Pollution
• Ghetto
• Homelessness
• Urban decay
• Shanty towns

References

• 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: –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.
• M. Weber, The City (tr. 1958)
• L. Mumford, The City in History (1961)
• S. Thernstrom and R. Sennett, ed., Nineteenth-Century Cities (1969)
• W. A. Robson and D. E. Regan, ed., Great Cities of the World (3d ed., 2 vol., 1972)
• P. Geddes, City Development (1973)
• W. Rybczynski, City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World (1995)

External links

• A Dynamic Map of the World Cities' Growth
• Largest Cities Through History
• Most populous city of each country
• Global Culture Essays on cities in the age of globalization
• City Commentary Magazine (Monthly publication on city life and urban issues in America with special features on international 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 journal
• The National League of Cities (United States)
• African shack dwellers' organisation
• Evangelizing World Class Cities, contains definitions of a city

•  • [ e] Types of country subdivision

Administrative division   Political division   Census division   Electoral division Contemporary Amt Arrondissement Bailiwick Bakhsh Baladiyah Banner Autonomous banner Barangay Bairro Barrio Bezirk / Regierungsbezirk Block Borough County borough Metropolitan borough Capital Federal capital Canton Census division Census geographic unit Census metropolitan area Census subdivision Circle Circuit City Autonomous city Independent city Co-Principality Colony Comarca Commonwealth Commune Comune Community Autonomous community Residential community Condominium Constituency County Administrative county Autonomous county Metropolitan county Council Croft Department Dependent territory Federal dependency District Autonomous district Capital district City district Federal district Metropolitan district Municipal district Division Dara Duchy Eldership Frazione Freguesia Governorate Hamlet Insular area Judeţ Local administrative unit Local government area Liwa Localit Municipality District municipality Regional municipality Regional county municipality Rural municipality Neighbourhood Oblast Okrug Ostān Parish Civil parish Periphery Prefecture Autonomous prefecture Principality Protectorate Province Autonomous province Quarter Regency Region Autonomous region Capital region Special administrative region Republic Autonomous republic Ranchera Reservation Indian reserve Shabiyah Shahr Shahrestān Shire State Subdistrict Subprefecture Suzerainty Taluka Tehsil Territory Autonomous territorial unit Capital territory Union territory National territory Town Townland Township Civil township Urban (urbanized) area Village Vingtaine Voivodeship Wilayah Ward Historical Agency Barony Burgh Cantref City-State Commote Free Imperial City Hundred Imperial Circle Imperial province March Pargana Presidency Residency Riding Rural district Sanitary district (rural urban) Urban district Viscounty Viscountcy Boldface indicates a type used by ten or more countries; loanwords in italics.