A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.
For example, an article of incorporation approved by the local state legislature distinguishes a city government from a town in Massachusetts. In the United Kingdom and parts of the Commonwealth of Nations, a city is traditionally a settlement with a royal charter. Historically, in Europe, a city was understood to be an urban settlement with a cathedral.
Cities generally have complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, and transportation. The concentration of development greatly facilitates interaction between people and businesses, benefiting both parties in the process. A big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are usually associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas, creating numerous business commuters traveling to urban centers for employment. Once a city expands far enough to reach another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis.
According to Vere Gordon Childe, for a settlement to qualify as a city, it must have enough surplus of raw materials to support trade. Bairoch points out that, due to sparse population densities that would have persisted in pre-Neolithic, hunter-gatherer societies, the amount of land that would be required to produce enough food for subsistence and trade for a large population would make it impossible to control the flow of trade. To illustrate this point, Bairoch offers an example: "Western Europe during the pre-Neolithic, [where] the density must have been less than 0.1 person per square kilometer". Using this population density as a base for calculation, and allotting 10% of food towards surplus for trade and assuming that city dwellers do no farming, he calculates that "in order to maintain a city with a population of 1,000, and without taking the cost of transportation into account, an area of 100,000 square kilometers would have been required. When the cost of transportation is taken into account, the figure rises to 200,000 square kilometers...". Bairoch noted that this is roughly the size of Great Britain.
:(1) , where O is the output (area protected) and s stands for the length of a side. This equation shows that output is proportional to the square of the length of a side.
The inputs depend on the length of the perimeter:
:(2) , where I stands for the quantity of inputs. This equation shows that the perimeter is proportional to the length of a side.
So there are increasing returns to scale:
:(3) . This equation (solving for in (1) and substituting in (2)) shows that with twice the inputs, you produce quadruple the output.
Also, economies of scale:
:(4) . This equation (solving for in equation (3)) shows that the same output requires less input.
"Cities, then, economize on protection, and so protection against marauding barbarian armies is one reason why people have come together to live in cities..." .
Similarly, "Are Cities Dying?", a paper by Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser, delves into similar reasons for city formation: reduced transport costs for goods, people, and ideas. Discussing the benefits of proximity, Glaeser claims that if you double a city size, workers have a ten-percent increase in earnings. Glaeser furthers his argument by stating that bigger cities do not pay more for equal productivity than in a smaller city, so it is reasonable to assume that workers become more productive if they move to a city twice the size as they initially worked in. However, the workers do not benefit much from the ten-percent wage increase, because it is recycled back into the higher cost of living in a bigger city. They do gain other benefits from living in cities, though.
Modern city planning has seen many different schemes for how a city should look. The most commonly seen pattern is the grid, used for thousands of years in China, independently invented by Alexander the Great's city-planner Dinocrates of Rhodes and favoured by the Romans, while almost a rule in parts of pre-Columbian America. Derry begun in 1613, was the first planned city in Ireland, with the walls being completed five years later. The central diamond within a walled city with four gates was thought to be a good design for defence. The grid pattern was widely copied in the colonies of British North America.
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 had different specialized districts, much as is seen in modern city planning today. Fifteen centuries earlier, the Indus Valley Civilization was using grids in such cities as Mohenjo-Daro. In medieval times there was evidence of a preference for linear planning. Good examples are the cities established by various rulers in the south of France and city expansions in old Dutch and Flemish cities.
Grid plans were popular among planners in the 19th century, particularly after the redesign of Paris. They cut through the meandering, organic streets that followed old paths. The United States imposed grid plans in new territories and towns, as the American West was rapidly established, in places such as Salt Lake City and San Francisco.
Other forms may include a radial structure, in which main roads converge on a central point. This was often a historic form, the effect of successive growth over long time with concentric traces of town walls and citadels. In more recent history, such forms were supplemented by ring-roads that take traffic around the outskirts 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 together with town walls). In cities such as Amsterdam, Haarlem, and also Moscow, this pattern is still clearly visible.
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. In 1950 Gordon Childe attempted to define a historic city with 10 general metrics. These are: # Size and density of the population should be above normal. # Differentiation of the population. Not all residents grow their own food, leading to specialists. # Payment of taxes to a deity or king. # Monumental public buildings. # Those not producing their own food are supported by the king. # Systems of recording and practical science. # A system of writing. # Development of symbolic art. # Trade and import of raw materials. # Specialist craftsmen from outside the kin-group. This categorisation is descriptive, and it is used as a general touchstone when considering ancient cities, although not all have each of its characteristics.
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.
Early cities developed in a number of regions of the ancient world. Mesopotamia can claim the earliest cities, particularly Eridu, Uruk, and Ur. After Mesopotamia, this culture arose in Syria and Anatolia, as shown by the city of Çatalhöyük (7500-5700BC). It is the largest Neolithic site found to date. Although it has sometimes been claimed that ancient Egypt lacked urbanism, several types of urban settlements were found in ancient times.
The Indus Valley Civilization and ancient China are two other areas with major indigenous urban traditions. Among the early Old World cities, Mohenjo-daro of the Indus Valley Civilization in present-day Pakistan, existing from about 2600 BC to 1900 BC, was one of the largest, with an estimated population of 40,000 or more. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, the large Indus capitals, were among the first cities to use grid plans, drainage, flush toilets, urban sanitation systems, and sewage systems. At a somewhat later time, a distinctive urban tradition developed in the Khmer region of Cambodia, where Angkor grew into one of the largest cities (in area) of the world.
In the ancient Americas, early urban traditions developed in the Andes and Mesoamerica. In the Andes, the first urban centers developed in the Norte Chico civilization (also Caral or Caral-Supe civilization), Chavin and Moche cultures, followed by major cities in the Huari, Chimu and Inca cultures. The Norte Chico civilization included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, flourishing between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC.
Mesoamerica saw the rise of early urbanism in several cultural regions, including the Preclassic Maya, the Zapotec of Oaxaca, and Teotihuacan in central Mexico. Later cultures such as the Aztec drew on these earlier urban traditions.
This roster of early urban traditions is notable for its diversity. Excavations at early urban sites show that some cities were sparsely populated political capitals, others were trade centers, and still other cities had a primarily religious focus. Some cities had large dense populations, whereas others carried out urban activities in the realms of politics or religion without having large associated populations. Theories that attempt to explain ancient urbanism by a single factor, such as economic benefit, fail to capture the range of variation documented by archaeologists.
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. Keith Hopkins estimates that ancient Rome had a population of about a million people by the end of the 1st century BC, after growing continually during the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st centuries BC. 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 AD that counted 180,000 adult male citizens in Alexandria. Similar administrative, commercial, industrial and ceremonial centres emerged in other areas, most notably medieval Baghdad, which according to George Modelski, later became the first city to exceed a population of one million by the 8th century instead of Rome.
While David Kessler and Peter Temin consider ancient Rome to be the largest city before 19th century London, George Modelski considers medieval Baghdad, with an estimated population of 1.2 million at its peak, to be the largest city before 19th century London. Others estimate that Baghdad's population may have been as large as 2 million in the 9th century.
Agriculture was practiced in sub-Saharan Africa since the third millennium BC. Because of this, cities were able to develop as centers of non-agricultural activity. Exactly when this first happened is still a topic of archeological and historical investigation. Western scholarship has tended to focus on cities in Europe and Mesopotamia, but emerging archeological evidence indicates that urbanization occurred south of the Sahara well before the influence of Arab urban culture. The oldest sites documented thus far are from around 500 AD including Awdaghust, Kumbi-Saleh the ancient capital of Ghana, and Maranda a center located on a trade rout between Egypt and Gao.
Cities of Late Antiquity underwent transformations as the urban power base shrank and was transferred to the local bishop (see Late Roman Empire). Cities essentially disappeared, earliest in Roman Britain and Germania and latest in the Eastern Roman Empire and Visigothic Spain.
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.
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.
Modern cities are known for creating their own microclimates. This is due to the large clustering of heat absorbent surfaces that heat up in sunlight and that channel rainwater into underground ducts.
Waste and sewage are two major problems for cities, as is air pollution coming from various forms of combustion, including fireplaces, wood or coal-burning stoves, other heating systems, and internal combustion engines. 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 makes using auto mobiles inconvenient and pedestrian traffic is more prominent in metropolitan areas than a rural or suburban one.
Cities also generate positive external effects. The close physical proximity facilitates knowledge spillovers, helping people and firms exchange information and generate new ideas. A thicker labor market allows for better skill matching between firms and individuals. Another positive external effect of cities comes from the diverse social opportunities created when people of different backgrounds are brought together. Larger cities typically offer a wider variety of social interests and activities, letting people of all backgrounds find something they can be involved in.
Cities may, however, also have a positive influence on the environment. UN Habitat stated in its reports that city living can be the best solution for dealing with the rising population numbers (and thus still be a good approach on dealing with overpopulation) This is because cities concentrate human activity into one place, making the environmental damage on other places smaller., letting the cities have a positive influence; however, can only be achieved if urban planning is improved and if the city services are properly maintained.
Even within the English-speaking world there is no one standard 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. In British English city is reserved for very large settlements, smaller ones are called town or village. In the US city is used for much smaller settlements.
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. And the word "town" (also "downtown") may mean the center of the city.
Australia's most populous urban areas are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
In informal Australian English, the word "city" has several related meanings and usages. It may refer to: the capital of a state or territory; any large settlement; a local government area (LGA) or; a central business district (CBD). For instance, within the wider urban area known as Perth, Australia's fourth most populous urban area, the City of Perth is a relatively small LGA, which also includes the Perth CBD. Similarly, residents of Sydney might speak of travelling to the CBD as "going to the city".
Official definitions of cities vary significantly from one part of Australia to another. For instance, in New South Wales, a city must have a population of at least 10,000. However, for various reasons, some local governments do not seek or receive city status: for instance, Sutherland Shire – in Sydney's south eastern suburbs – has a population of 220,000 (2010) which exceeds that of the City of Sydney proper (180,000). By contrast, other states utilise quite different official definitions. For example, while the Castlemaine and Portland in Victoria were at one time officially "Cities" (in the sense of LGAs), both are now officially the centres of "Shires" and have populations of less than 10,000.
There are settlements with a city status for historical and cultural reasons (Melnik with a population of 358), or for political reasons (Pravets, Kableshkovo, etc.).
Although it has numerous cities in the traditional sense of the term, Ontario also sometimes confers city status on primarily rural areas whose municipalities have been merged into a former county government. Nova Scotia has abolished the title of city altogether, with all local government taking place at the regional municipality level.
In Quebec, there is no legal distinction between a city and a town, as both have the legal status of ville. The province formerly differentiated between ville (town) and cité (city), but no longer does so.
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 although most of its population still lives in rural areas.
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 comprise 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.
Denmark abolished the legal distinction between borough (købstad in Danish) and town (by) with the administrative reform in 1970. Before that time boroughs were chartered towns exempt from the county jurisdiction.
In Egypt the word "مدينة" (madina) means city or town & there is no distinction between a town and a city.
===Germany=== The German word for both "town" and "city" is Stadt, while a city with more than 100,000 inhabitants is called a Großstadt (big city). On the other hand, most towns are communities belonging to a Landkreis (county or rural district), but there are some cities, usually with at least 50,000 inhabitants, that are counties by themselves (kreisfreie Städte). In 2006, there were 82 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Germany. Germany's largest cities are Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt am Main while the largest urban area is in the Rhine-Ruhr region around such cities as Dortmund, Duisburg and Essen. Berlin and Frankfurt are characterized as world cities or global cities.
In Italy a city is called città, a noun derived from the Latin civitas. The status of "city" is granted by the President of the Republic with Presidential Decree Law. The largest and most important cities in the country, such as Rome, Milan, Naples and Turin, are called aree metropolitane (metropolitan areas) because they include several minor cities and towns in their areas. In the coat of arms, a golden crown tower stands for a city.
The Mexican population is increasingly urban with close to 75% of the population living in cities. The five largest metropolitan areas of Mexico (Greater Mexico City, Greater Guadalajara, Greater Monterrey, Greater Puebla and Greater Tijuana) are home to 30% of the country's population.
In 2004, a joint effort between CONAPO (National Council of Population), INEGI and the Secretariat of Social Development (SEDESOL) agreed to define metropolitan areas as either:
In New Zealand, a local authority may be proclaimed a city only if it meets certain criteria. Specifically, "a city [...] must have a minimum population of 50,000, be predominantly urban in character, be a distinct entity and a major centre of activity within the region." Some early settlements, such as Nelson and Christchurch, were proclaimed cities by royal charter. Later, laws established criteria for a town to meet before it could officially be proclaimed a city, and these criteria have changed over time. , 13 of New Zealand's 67 territorial authorities will be officially styled cities.
In informal usage, a city is simply a large, important urban centre, regardless of the composition of its local government (which may be a combination of one or more cities or districts). For example, Gisborne, which purports to be the first city to see the sun, has a population of only 44,500 (2006), many of whom live outside the Gisborne urban area; it is, therefore, administered by a district council, not a city council. Some city councils, such as Christchurch and Dunedin, also administer large areas of rural hinterland; the communities in these areas, such as the towns of Akaroa and Middlemarch, are not often thought of as part of their cities, except for certain legal and administrative purposes. Meanwhile, the cities of Wellington and Auckland are generally regarded as single cities, despite Wellington and, until recently, Auckland's being divided into several local government areas.
Statistics New Zealand has introduced the concept of main urban areas, which have a minimum population of 30,000. The 16 main urban areas identified in 2001 and 2006 correspond closely to the urban settlements traditionally regarded as cities.
Congress is the lone legislative entity that can incorporate cities. Provincial and municipal councils can pass resolutions indicating a desire to have a certain area (usually an already-existing municipality or a cluster of barangays) declared a city after the requirements for becoming a city are met. As per Republic Act No. 9009, these requirements include the following:
In Poland the word miasto serves for both town and city. Miasto is the term applied purely on the basis of the administrative decision of the central government, and specifically means either:
These formal distinctions may differentiate larger towns from smaller ones (such as status as a separate powiat, or the conferring of the title prezydent on the mayor rather than burmistrz), but none of these is universally recognized as equivalent to the English city/town distinction.
Poland's largest cities are: Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Gdańsk, Poznań, Wrocław.
The Portuguese urban settlements heraldry reflects the difference between cities, towns and villages, with the coat of arms of a city bearing a crown with 5 towers, the coat of arms of a town bearing a crown with 4 towers, while the coat of arms of a village bears a crown with 3 towers. This difference between cities, towns and villages is still in use in other Portuguese speaking countries, but not in Brazil.
There is also the notion of grande área metropolitana (great metropolitan area). There are two main metropolitan areas: Lisbon (the capital), in the centre of the country and Porto in the North. Lisbon Metropolitan Area has a population that exceeds 3 million. Greater Metropolitan Area of Porto has over 2 million inhabitants, although it is part of the Portuguese Northwestern Agglomeration that has, also, about 3 million inhabitants.
In respect to the density of the cities, if it is more than 25 km to the next city, there are further benefits the mayor can access, fundings included.
A municipality is the next status after city-status by the same law, and Romania has 82 municipalities, plus the Municipality of Bucharest.
South Korea has a system of dividing into metropolitan cities, provinces, a special city (Seoul) and one specially self-governing province (Jeju-do). In South Korea, cities should have a population of more than 150,000, and if a city has more than 500,000, it would be divided into 2 districts and then sub-communities follow as a name of dong with similar system of normal cities. Additionally, if a city's population is over 1,000,000, then it would be promoted to metropolitan city. Seoul is the world's second largest metropolitan area.
Today's Swedish terminology makes no difference between city and town, both concepts translates to the single word "stad", but sometimes town can be rendered "småstad". Statistics Sweden defines a "stad" as an urban area (in Swedish: tätort) of at least 10,000 inhabitants.
But in 1984, the metropolitan center concept was introduced. () According to definition (revised as of 2004) a metropolitan center is a city with more than 750 000 inhabitants. At present 16 of the provincial centers are metropolitan centers.
In the United Kingdom (UK), 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 are normally granted on the basis of: Population (>300,000), metropolitan character, governance, importance and / or a Royal connection. In England and Wales, prior to 1907 the criterion was simply the establishment of an Anglican Cathedral. For example the small town of Ripon was granted city status in 1836 to coincide with the creation of the Diocese of Ripon, but also in recognition of its long-standing role as a supplier of spurs to royalty. 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. However, major towns such as Reading, Northampton, Luton, Swindon and Milton Keynes all harbour populations between 170,000 and 215,000 inhabitants but are not officially cited as cities.
The situation in London is a historical anomaly: the City of Westminster and the City of London are geographically small but historically significant parts of the Greater London conurbation that have independent city status.
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.
The UK's five largest cities are generally considered to be London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow, but this is based on the population of the conurbation as a whole. In terms of formal city boundaries, the largest include Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Sheffield.
===United States=== In the United States of America, the classification of population centers is a matter of state law; consequently, the definition of a city varies widely from state to state. In some states, a city may be run by an elected mayor and city council, while a town is governed by the people, a select board (or board of trustees), or open town meeting. There are some very large municipalities which label themselves as towns (such as Hempstead, New York, with a population of 755,785 in 2004 or Cary, North Carolina with a population of 112,414 in 2006 ) and some very small cities (such as Woodland Mills, Tennessee, with a population of 296 in 2000), and the line between town and city, if it exists at all, varies from state to state. The lack of a clear-cut definition of a city in the United States can lead to some counter-intuitive labeling; for example, before it was dissolved in 2002 Maza, North Dakota, with only 5 inhabitants, was a city as by North Dakota law any incorporated location is deemed a city regardless of size. California has both towns and cities but the terms "town" and "city" are considered synonymous. The nation's top five largest cities are New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia.
In some 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 converse of each is rarely used.
Some states make a distinction between villages and other forms of municipalities. In some 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. The word has often been co-opted by enterprising developers to make their projects sound welcoming and friendly. In Illinois, cities must have a minimum population of 2,500 but in Nebraska, cities must have a minimum of only 800 residents. In Oregon, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa, all incorporated municipalities are cities. In Ohio, a municipality automatically becomes a city if it has 5,000 residents counted in a federal census but it reverts to a village if its population drops below 5,000. In Nebraska, 5,000 residents is the minimum for a city of the first class while 800 is the minimum for a city of the second class. The Constitution of Idaho makes no distinction between incorporated towns or cities.
In all the New England states, city status is conferred by the form of government, not population. Town government has a board of selectmen or Town Council for the executive branch, and a town meeting for the legislative branch, but unlike the US Government, the executive acts only as an administrative body and cannot override the will of town meeting. 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. The other U.S. independent cities are Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; and Carson City, Nevada.
In Pennsylvania, municipalites with more than 10 persons can incorporate as a borough. Any township or borough with a population of at least 10,000 can ask the state legislature to charter as a city. In Pennsylvania, a village is simply an unincorporated community within a township. Parker, Pennsylvania is known as the smallest city in the United States.
A global city, also known as a world city, is a prominent centre of trade, banking, finance, innovation, 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. Notable examples of such cities include New York City, London, Chicago, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Singapore, and Shanghai.
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.
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, Jerusalem 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: 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.
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 19th century 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 the United States 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 by foot or transit.
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.
Category:Administrative divisions Category:Populated places by type
af:Stad als:Stadt am:ከተማ ang:Burg ab:Ақалақь ar:مدينة an:Ciudat arc:ܡܕܝܢܬܐ frp:Vila ast:Ciudá ay:Marka az:Şəhər bn:শহর zh-min-nan:Siâⁿ-chhī ba:Ҡала be:Горад be-x-old:Горад bh:शहर bcl:Ciudad bar:Großståd bs:Grad (naseljeno mjesto) br:Kêr bg:Град ca:Ciutat cv:Хула ceb:Dakbayan cs:Velkoměsto ch:Dangkulo cbk-zam:Ciudad cy:Dinas (daearyddiaeth) da:By pdc:Schtadt de:Stadt et:Linn el:Πόλη eml:Sitê es:Ciudad eo:Urbo ext:Ciá eu:Hiri fa:شهر hif:City fo:Býur fr:Ville fy:Stêd fur:Citât ga:Cathair (lonnaíocht) gv:Balley gl:Cidade gan:城市 got:𐌱𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌲𐍃/Baurgs hak:Sàng-sṳ ko:도시 haw:Kūlanakauhale hi:शहर hr:Grad io:Urbo ig:Ama ukwu id:Kota ia:Citate iu:ᓄᓇᓖᑦ/nunaliit os:Сахар is:Borg it:Grande città he:עיר jv:Kutha kn:ನಗರ kbd:Къалэ krc:Шахар ka:დიდი ქალაქი kk:Қала sw:Jiji kv:Кар ht:Vil ku:Bajar lad:Sivdad lbe:Шагьру la:Urbs lv:Pilsēta lt:Miestas li:Sjtad ln:Engumba lmo:Cità hu:Város mk:Град mg:Tanàna ml:പട്ടണം mi:Tāone mr:शहर arz:مدينه mzn:شهر ms:Bandar raya mwl:Cidade mn:Хот nah:Āltepētl na:Tekawa nl:Stad nds-nl:Stad (woonstee) ne:शहर new:नगर ja:都市 no:By nn:Storby nrm:Cité oc:Vila mhr:Ола pnb:شہر nds:Stadt pl:Miasto pnt:Πόλη pt:Cidade crh:Şeer ksh:Stadt ro:Oraș rmy:Foro qu:Hatun llaqta rue:Місто ru:Город sah:Куорат sco:Ceety sq:Qyteti scn:Cità simple:City sk:Mesto (všeobecne) cu:Градъ sl:Mesto szl:Mjasto so:Magaalo sr:Град sh:Grad su:Kota fi:Kaupunki sv:Stad tl:Lungsod ta:மாநகரம் roa-tara:Cetata granne tt:Шәһәр te:నగరము th:เมือง tg:Шаҳр chr:ᎦᏚᎲᎢ tr:Şehir uk:Місто ur:شہر vec:Sità vi:Thành phố fiu-vro:Liin wa:Veye (djeyografeye) vls:Stad war:Syudad wuu:城市 yi:שטאט yo:Ìlú zh-yue:城市 bat-smg:Miests zh:城市This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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