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CITY
*** Shopping-Tip: CITY
:''For alternate meanings see
city (disambiguation)''
Image:Sydney_Harbour_Bridge_night.jpg panorama.html" title="Meaning of right right|thumb|400px|A [[panorama of
Sydney,
Australia at night. Note the broad and illuminated CBD to the left and the mass transit Harbour Bridge to the right..html" title="Meaning of thumb|400px|A [[panorama">right|thumb|400px|A [[panorama of
Sydney,
Australia at night. Note the broad and illuminated CBD to the left and the mass transit Harbour Bridge to the right.">thumb|400px|A [[panorama">right|thumb|400px|A [[panorama of
Sydney,
Australia at night. Note the broad and illuminated CBD to the left and the mass transit Harbour Bridge to the right.
Image:Chicago Night.JPG Chicago.html"_title="Meaning of right right|thumb|400px|[[Chicago_Nighttime Skyline
Panorama..html" title="Meaning of thumb|400px|[[Chicago">right|thumb|400px|[[Chicago Nighttime Skyline
Panorama.">thumb|400px|[[Chicago">right|thumb|400px|[[Chicago Nighttime Skyline
Panorama.
Image:Montreal Twilight Panorama 2006.jpg panorama.html" title="Meaning of thumb thumb|right|400px|Twilight [[panorama of
Montreal,
Canada.html" title="Meaning of right|400px|Twilight [[panorama">thumb|right|400px|Twilight [[panorama of
Montreal,
Canada">right|400px|Twilight [[panorama">thumb|right|400px|Twilight [[panorama of
Montreal,
Canada
A '''city''' is an
urban area that is differentiated from a
town,
village, or
hamlet (place) hamlet by
size,
population density, importance, or
de jure legal status.
Introduction
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 "
Central business district downtown" or a "
city centre".
A city usually consists of
residential,
industry industrial and
business areas together with
administration#Administrative functions administrative functions which may relate to a wider
geography 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)
The difference between ''towns'' and ''cities''
The difference between ''towns'' and ''cities'' is differently understood in different parts of the
English language 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.
A similar system existed in the medieval
Low Countries where a landlord would grant settlements
City rights in the Netherlands 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
[[http://www.southperth.wa.gov.au City of South Perth]] is part of the urban area known as
Perth, Western Australia Perth, commonly described as a city. On the other hand,
Gisborne in New Zealand 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 on forms and paperwork of the term ''city'' to all
location settlements. Britons may be bemused by forms with fields headed, not ''Town'' and ''
Postal code'', but ''City'' and ''
zip code ZIP'', even though the person needing to fill it in could be living in a city, a town without city status, or even a village or hamlet. 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 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.
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, Los Angeles, California Westwood Village in Los Angeles.
Geography
Image:Haarlem-City-Map-1550.jpg Haarlem.html" title="Meaning of |thumb|225px|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..html" title="Meaning of thumb|225px|Map of [[Haarlem">|thumb|225px|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.">thumb|225px|Map of [[Haarlem">|thumb|225px|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 geography physical and human, are diverse. Cities are often
coastal, with
harbours for shipping, or situated near
rivers to give
economics economic advantage.
Ship transport 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 city 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 plan grid, 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
[[http://worldfacts.us/UK-Londonderry.htm http://worldfacts.us]]. 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
Netherlands 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.
History of cities
Towns and cities have a long history, although opinions vary on whether any particular
Ancient history 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. Societies that live in cities are often called
civilizations.
By this definition, the first towns we know of were located in
Mesopotamia, such as
Ur, and 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 the largest of these early cities, with a combined population of up to 150,000.
The growth of ancient and
Middle Ages medieval empires led to ever greater
capital cities and seats of provincial administration, with
Pataliputra (in
India),
Changan (in
China),
ancient Rome, its eastern successor
Constantinople (later
Istanbul), and successive
China 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 large 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 (i.e. medieval Germany and Italy) 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, Osaka 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
polis 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 Ocean 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
rural migration migrants from rural communities into urban areas. In the
Great Depression of the 1930s
Cities in the great depression 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.
Global cities
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. The four traditional global or world cities are
London,
New York,
Paris and
Tokyo, but other cities now have importances approaching these four and are also referred to as global cities.
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
Global city#GaWC Inventory of World Cities 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].
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 and
Mecca are powerful in
religion religious and
history 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 (
city network connections). The interplay of these three elements, Kanter argued, means that good cities are not planned but managed.
Environmental effects
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
rain 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.
Waste 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
Ecological Footprint city footprinting (''ecological footprint'').
Inner city
''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 preceived 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
Lists
*
List of cities by country
*
List of cities by latitude
*
List of metropolitan areas by population
*
Thirty most populous cities in the world
*
List of city nicknames
*
List of fictional cities
City-related articles
*
City status in Sweden
*
City status in the United Kingdom
*
The City
*
County
*
Global city
*
Independent city
*
Megacity
*
Municipal government
*
Municipality
*
Planned city
*
Suburb
*
Town
*
Urban geography
*
Urban planning
*
Urban studies
*
Ville
Social problems in the city
*
Environmental racism &
Pollution
*
Ghetto
*
Homelessness
*
Urban sprawl
Miscellaneous topics
*
Arcology
*
Burning Man, a week-long
festival as a temporary city (housing 35,000 residents in 2004)
*
Freedom Ship, concept for a floating city
*
SimCity, a popular series of city simulators, sometimes used in education.
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".
External links
{{Commonscat|Cities}}
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A forum where one can participate with other forumers using stats, images and general debate to rate and compare cities in a civilised fashion.
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All 1M+ major urban areas
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Place Names of Europe
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Most populous city of each country
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For all countries, number of cities per size category
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For each country, part of its population that lives in its most populous city (with some odd figures due to the comparison of data of different years)
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The National League of Cities (United States)
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Inner City Press (Weekly publication on cities, United States)
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''Dictionary of the History of ideas'': The City
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Morgan Quinto's 11th Annual America's Safest (and Most Dangerous) Cities
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A friendly website designed by skyscraper enthusiasts featuring diagrams and descriptions of the buildings of cities around the world.
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bifurcaciones.cl, urban cultural studies journal
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Worldheritage-Forum Weblog and Informationen on UNESCO World Heritage topics (with focus on cities)
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Largest Cities Through History
{{Subnational entity}}
Category:Cities
Category:Subnational entities
ur:Ø´Û?ر
bg:Град
ca:Ciutat
cs:Město
cy:Dinas
da:By
de:Großstadt
el:πόλη
eo:Urbo
es:Ciudad
fi:Kaupunki
fr:ville
gl:Cidade
he:עיר
hr:Grad
id:Kota
io:Urbo
it:CittÃ
ja:市
ja:都市
la:Urbs
nb:By
nl:Stad
nn:By
pl:Miasto
pt:Cidade
ro:oraÅŸ
ru:Город
simple:city
sr:Град
sv:stad
th:เมืà¸à¸‡
tl:Lungsod
zh:市
zh-yue:城市
see
CITY-TV
*** Shopping-Tip: CITY
