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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. Geography
History of cities 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. Among the early cities, Mohenjo-daro of the Indus Valley Civilization was the largest, with an estimated population of 41,250 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 over a 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. 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 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 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 in 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 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 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, if it exists at all, varies from state to state. In many U.S. states, any incorporated town is called a city. Those places are also called towns, of course. If a distinction is being made between towns and cities, exactly what that distinction is often depends on the context—it will differ depending on whether the issue is the legal authority it posesses, 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. The results are villages with 20 and 30-story high-rises, like Westwood Village in Los Angeles. Another 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. Global cities
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 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 Lists Social problems in the city | |||||||||||
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